

How about an Olympic games for enhanced athletes? - ananyob
http://www.nature.com/news/performance-enhancement-superhuman-athletes-1.11029

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Xcelerate
As a D1 athlete (track & cross-country), I've put a lot of thought into this
sort of question. My conclusion is that sports are inherently unfair. This may
sound like a strange thought coming from someone who has been running
competitively for a good portion of my life, but I believe it is the truth.

People are born with a lot of genetic variation. I realize that no matter how
hard I train, I will never run 5,000m in less than 13 minutes. It's not a
matter of increasing dedication or anything like that -- it's simply getting
the right genes. Even in high school and college, you see the people with the
best genes rise to the top with significantly less effort.

So why would I participate in something that rewards luck? Because it's not
entirely luck, and the further away from an elite athlete you are, the less
luck matters. A high school runner with poor innate running ability can easily
beat the most gifted runner by working hard and training correctly. It's
because even those born with low potential have a huge _range_ in which they
can improve, before they begin reaching their genetic limit. In fact, I would
argue that very few people ever come close to reaching their limit.

So I can appreciate that even though there is still an unfairness in how hard
different athletes have to work to achieve the same goal, the goal that
matters in competition (winning) is really determined by those who are the
most dedicated and committed at the more local levels of a sport. (Of course,
we could get into the debate that hard work and commitment are also genetic
traits, in which case the whole thing becomes a crapshoot, but I'll leave that
question for another time).

Now, elite athletes are nothing like normal people. Almost every single one of
them has hit (or is very close to) their genetic limit. They're at a point
where more, or different types of training just won't do anything. At that
point, "winning" comes down to a genetic lottery. Which is kind of sad,
because these people have spent their whole lives working for something where
achieving it depends mostly on chance. I assume most of them either don't
recognize this or (more likely) don't care. There is a third option though...
recognizing this and fixing it. This is where drugs come in. My first thought
is that these high performance drugs "fix" what was never fair to begin with.
But the problem is that sports weren't designed this way. When these athletes
began their decades of training, they recognized what the rules of the game
were. Like a board game, there's some element of luck and some element of
skill. And because they knew the rules of this game very well before they
began competing, I can't condone anyone using drugs to make the game more
fair, because the other competitors never agreed to this.

Simply put, it's cheating. And the majority of the world (at least for the
moment) thinks cheating is immoral. So we should continue to ban athletes that
don't play by the rules of the game, regardless of the fact that they are
trying to make the game more fair for themselves.

What are the pitfalls to breaking these rules? You're cheating all of the
other players in the game, who never agreed to let you break the rules. You're
cheating the fans of the game. You're stealing money (highly competitive
sports have large amounts of money involved for the winners).

Now, if somebody wants to create a _new_ game, with _new_ rules, by all means
go ahead. I personally wouldn't take an interest in this manner of competing,
but I'm sure there are many who would. And they would be doing it morally.

Just my thoughts.

~~~
rsanchez1
This truth has been understood for thousands of years. It's only with the
coddling that has been going on in recent generations that it feels like a
revelation.

~~~
Xcelerate
I can't tell if this is a subtle insult or not...

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MrFoof
So it'd be like motor racing -- stock and modified classes?

How would the modified classes be regulated, or would they? Would there be
100m stock, 100m GT and 100m Prototype, based on the types of enhancements and
weight of the participant? Wow, imagine if the rules changed year to year.
Like suppose you had folks in Prototype chopping off their noses to increase
their power to weight ratios, and next year they increase the minimum weight
and now you have to install ballast in your ass last minute to get your weight
back up.

~~~
mindcrime
_So it'd be like motor racing -- stock and modified classes?_

Heh yeah... as they used to say "run whatcha brung."

I'm not sure how a "claimer rule"[1] would work though.

[1]:
[http://www.circletrack.com/techarticles/ctrp_0703_low_cost_c...](http://www.circletrack.com/techarticles/ctrp_0703_low_cost_claimer_engine_tips/viewall.html)

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ananyob
With the Olympics due to kick off on 27 July in London, this article takes a
look at how far science would be able to push human athletic abilities if all
restrictions on doping were lifted. The article mentions anabolic steroids (up
to 38% increase in strength), IGF-1 (4% increase in sprinting capacity),
EPO/blood doping (34% increase in stamina), gene doping and various drugs and
supplements, as well as more 'extreme' measures such as surgery and
prosthesis. Hugh Herr, a biomechanical engineer at MIT, says performance-
enhancing technologies will one day demand an Olympics all their own. But is
that time already upon us?

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user49598
It's kind of disgusting to encourage people to fuck up their bodies to win an
athletic competition.

A lot of the things you could do to yourself to help you run faster next year
are not exactly going to improve your health. And children need role models.

~~~
tatsuke95
_> "It's kind of disgusting to encourage people to fuck up their bodies to win
an athletic competition."_

You know what else is disgusting? The fact that we have medicine out there
that, because it's seen as "performance-enhancing" in sport, maintains a
stigma of being disgusting and harmful.

The same people who tell you that taking steroids and other enhancers will
instantly shrink your balls and kill your liver are the same folk who told you
that smoking a joint would make you jump off the roof of your building. It's
nonsense.

I can't wait for the day when humans are taking performance enhancing
substances of all sorts, fully accepted by all, because _they can enhance
performance_. Who doesn't want that?

~~~
freehunter
The problem is, once an athlete begins taking performance enhancers, every
other athlete in the sport has to as well, to stay competitive. Then suddenly
those in the minor leagues/college are not competitive to move to the majors,
so they start taking performance enhancers. But then high schoolers aren't
competitive to move up, so high schoolers have to take performance enhancers.

This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing _if_ we had performance enhancing
drugs that had no side effects. Unfortunately we don't. You seem sure that
performance enhancers are harmless, but they most certainly are not.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The same is true of any training method which has harmful side effects or
risks.

How do you distinguish morally between the (completely natural) risk of death
by heatstroke during summer training and the risks of performance enhancing
drugs?

~~~
freehunter
The difference between training harder and taking drugs to be able to train
harder is that your body is naturally only capable of so much. Eventually you
will give out, and that is your limit. The point where you start feeling pain
is the point where you know to stop. Taking drugs to increase this limit is
where the risks lie; your body isn't capable of sustaining that level of
performance. For example, caffeine might wake you up, but it puts you in a
crash not long after. Your body isn't capable of sustaining that high of an
adrenaline level.

Training regimes allow your body to tell you its limits, drugs bypass that to
get you a new, unsustainable level where doing long term damage isn't just
possible.. it's likely.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Eventually you will give out, and that is your limit._

Many natural athletes don't know where that point is (precisely) and harm
themselves by pushing past it.

A serious athlete sustaining long term damage from training isn't just
possible.. it's likely.

------
yummyfajitas
I believe the powerlifting and bodybuilding organizations already have
doped/undoped competitions. I have no idea to what extent cheating occurs.

Anyone have more info on this?

~~~
mtrimpe
My previous personal trainer was Netherland's best 'natural' (undoped) body
builder.

It works fairly well and the cheating is, similarly to say a Tour de France,
limited to the extent it can go undetected by drug testing.

It is however looked down on and seen as 'the minor leagues' in practice and
switching to the 'doped league' later in the game just doesn't work as there's
a surprisingly large amount of skill involved in doping up effectively.

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netcan
While insiders (and outsiders) are prone to quibble about specifics, I think
most people understand and basically agree with arguments for anti enhancement
rules.

Things start to get very fuzzy when/if previously banned enhancements start
becoming common among non athletes. Hormone treatments to slow or reverse
aging, aid recovery, improve body fat levels and such. If a drug can improve
stamina in athletes, a milder dose will probably be a nice enhancement for
ordinary people. If everyone is taking a drug that makes you more alert and
patient, it's weird that athletes aren't allowed to take it. If everyone is
doing anti aging hormone treatments to look 40 at 60, it seems ridiculous when
a tennis players retires at 31 for want of those hormones.

Competing athletes will "abuse" these enhancements in the sense that they will
go well beyond what doctors will recommend. But, you could say that doctors'
recommendations take into account the median cost benefit considerations and
athletes are at the extreme. In any case, athletes abuse their bodies in other
ways. They train well past the optimal (in terms of health) levels. It's
obviously not good for your head to get punched 500 times per week, but boxers
do it.

Anyway, when your mother can toss a judo player into a second story window,
watching the olympics will seem pretty quaint.

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htf
I would like to see an Olympic Games that make no assumption as to what the
competitors are made of. A competition where robots are allowed to compete as
much as humans. To avoid injuries to human athletes, you would probably have
to limit it to sports where competitors don't interact with one another, but
it would be interesting to see the evolution over the years as robots get
better than humans.

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colinshark
I'd happily support a Mutant League. The games were really fun.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutant_League_Football>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutant_League_Hockey>

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Kilimanjaro
Picture this, while regulars can't go down the 9s barrier in 100mts dash, in
the powerlympics they would easily break that record year after year, all the
records will fall like a house of cards bringing more enthusiasm, more money
and more advertisement. What's not to like?

Soon ancient olympics will be forgotten.

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Tyrannosaurs
Who knows what scientists might be able to develop that would have other uses
if they could focus on doing it openly and safely.

We shouldn't kid ourselves that chemists aren't working on this stuff at the
moment but they're having to focus on stopping detection as well as pure
performance and have to conceal what they do (not the greatest way to advance
science).

But surely the toughest thing is the atheletes. How can you really get
informed consent for stuff which is going to be that far out on the bleeding
edge, particularly from someone who, let's put this kindly, has a far greater
focus on their physical than their mental development?

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snitzr
The All Drug Olympics SNL sketch is the first thing I think of for articles
like this. <http://www.hulu.com/watch/4090/>

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recursive

        > Bizarre - I submitted this 4 hours ago:
        > http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4265126
        -----
    

@urbanjunkie: I can't respond to you directly for some reason, but that item
is marked as "[dead]" for me.

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sadga
Paralympics basically are this, but you have to take one step back before you
take two steps forward with enhancements:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paralympic_Games>

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metatronscube
I think this is inevitable, when the body has a limit, people will look for
ways to push those limits. Augmenting and enhancing the human body has to be
considered and may end up being beneficial for other purposes. I prefer bionic
myself ;)

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moondowner
Instantly reminded me of Amped, an excellent book.

<http://boingboing.net/2012/06/07/amped-daniel-wilson.html>

~~~
rickyconnolly
A similar story is told from a somewhat different perspective in Beggars in
Spain, an excellent novel by Nancy Kress. It won both the Hugo and Nebula
awards.

<http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68333.Beggars_in_Spain>

~~~
moondowner
Looks interesting, maybe I'll get it.

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sahglie
And people here don't think the most elite are already taking PED? _cough
cough_ Don't be so naive.

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ta12121
Allowing enhancements puts any athlete that doesn't want to screw up their
body at a severe disadvantage.

~~~
powerslave12r
Who is stopping this athlete from choosing the option of participating in the
no-enhancements category?

~~~
ta12121
Having multiple categories doesn't really solve the problem. First, it divides
the market, and second, anyone who uses enhancments and can get away with it
in the unenhanced category still has an advantage.

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thornofmight
The HBO show The Wire would refer to this as "keeping the devil down in the
hole."

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rsanchez1
Here's your Augmented Olympics opening ceremonies, courtesy of Deus Ex.

