PEDs & NCAA

LISTEN. It's another exam day, followed by a requested meeting (2d annual, now) with a "Leisure & Sport Management" class from the Department of Health and Human Performance. At my suggestion they've read Michael Sandel's The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering.

“The descent of sport into spectacle is not unique to the age of genetic engineering. But it illustrates how performance-enhancing technologies, genetic or otherwise, can erode the part of athletic and artistic performance that celebrates natural talents and gifts.”

We'll discuss it, as well as some of the questions their professor has directed them to research:

1. Which philosophical view is most commonly used in Western culture? i.e. Aristotle,
Locke, Kant. Hmm. I'm not sure western culture as we know it today commonly uses any philosophical view consistently. Utilitarianism is probably as common as any.

a. Which is most commonly used in sport? Another 'hmm'... Nietzschean will to power, "what doesn't kill me" etc.?

2. Would an Aristotelian view on the issue of performance enhancing drugs in the NCAA
be appropriate? Pretty sure Aristotle would oppose PEDs in amateur (and even our nominally amateur) collegiate athletic programs, as compromising the official commitment to the pursuit of personal and team excellence achieved on fair and level playing fields. Appropriate, yes indeed.

3. Can you give us a detailed description of an autonomous person? In Kantian terms, an autonomous person acts consistently to follow an imperative to will what is universalizable for all moral agents. This is typically construed as an absolutist approach  which admits no exceptions to rigid rules like "Do not lie." I'd qualify that with the phrase "all else being equal," thus admitting the possibility of mitigating and un-equalizing circumstances -- such as the knowledge that your honesty in the wrong context, as for instance when responding  to Nazis, may produce grievous harm to innocent persons. 

More broadly, autonomous people always try to act in principled and rational ways to uphold standards of enlightened decency. They are reflective, deliberate, intentional, and un-deferential to authority, when said authority is perceived to be irrational or unprincipled.  

4. Is it ethical to manipulate human nature to achieve biological perfection? Neither ethical nor prudent nor practical.

Safety:
1. Does an organization have an ethical responsibility to legislate morality? Well, an organization of constitutionally legitimated legislators has an obligation to legislate on all matters of the public interest. But the phrase "legislate morality" is fraught with overtones of excessively prescriptive moralism that oversteps its bounds and threatens to undermine personal liberty. And "legislate" is probably not the word we're looking for. How about inculcate?

A. Legislate safety? Yes - not as a matter of law, but of common sense and humane mutual regard.

2. Should the safety of an individual outweigh their autonomy? Insofar as we value both, we must not allow either one to supplant the other.

3. What is the age in which an individual cognitively can make informed decisions? Not sure what the latest neuro-psychological research says about that, but we should expect individuals to accept responsibility for making informed decisions from the onset of adulthood. Though many don't act like it, I'd put that at eighteen.

Philosophical: [Oh, I thought all of this was "philosophical" - Is for me, anyway.]
1. Are student athletes mature enough cognitively to take PED’s? I don't see this as an issue of maturity, but of integrity and sportsmanship.* In those terms, though, it's immature of any athlete to seek illicit advantage in competition via banned substances-and doubly so if it results in a loss of eligibility and, more important, integrity. ("The penalty for a positive test for a performance-enhancing drug (PED) is strict and automatic: student-athletes lose one full year of eligibility for the first offense (25 percent of their total eligibility) and are withheld from competition for 365 days from the date of the test." NCAA.org... NCAA Drug Testing Program

*On the other hand, thinking again of Kant, maturity is in play here: the maturity, and the courage, to think for oneself and do the right thing (as opposed to the thing one feels pressured to do). "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] "Have courage to use your own understanding!"—that is the motto of enlightenment." Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment? (1784)

2. Is it ethical to punish coaches who might have athletes that use PED’s? Yes. Not just ethical, but compelling. If they colluded with the athletes of course, but also if they were just clueless. I never bought Tony LaRussa's claim, for instance, that he'd had no idea what was going on in his clubhouses in Oakland and St. Louis with McGwire, Canseco  et al. But if so, he was running a shockingly un-taut ship.

3. Should the Philosophical side of this argument outweigh the physiological side of this
argument? Philosophers don't separate "the philosophical side" from everything else. The rationally-determined philosophical position applies to all "sides" of an ethical issue.

Conclusion:
1. Based on your knowledge of this issue, would you support the NCAA allowing student
athletes to use performance enhancing drugs if they are regulated? No, except in the case of specific PEDs deemed appropriate and approved for all NCAA athletes, and that do not mask, obscure, or obviate an athlete's "gifted" (Sandel's term) natural abilities.

Bottom line, for me: the NCAA has already, long since, gone way too far in professionalizing collegiate athletics. I vote NO on PEDs.