The Paracetamolympics

Quantum Qorner
Drunk on Science

Performance enhancing drugs: why not?

Don’t we owe it to our evolution?

Author: Short Bald Bloke

Article originally published in Theobabble column GTG Dec 2010 – The GTG: thinking out of the box

As someone who is too short to win anything in sport, I find myself asking: what’s the problem with sportsmen and women taking drugs to enhance their performance?

If sport is supposed to be simply about ability, why are athletes allowed to train? Surely they should just turn up, stub out their fags and get on with it. The naturally most gifted runner, jumper, or whatever will win

Training distorts the competition in favor of those who have the time and resources to invest in improving their performance. That seems unfair and of no particular value to our long-term evolution as a species

Cheetahs will always win
Secondly, what’s the point of humans racing, jumping, etc anyway? Other species are much better at those things. We can never outrun a cheetah or swim faster than a shark, so what’s interesting or valuable about one man running 100m 0.01 seconds faster than another?

Surely Man’s greatest natural asset is his intelligence, his ability to develop technology and manipulate Nature, drugs included. So wouldn’t it make sense if sport provided a proving ground and platform for celebrating Man’s ingenuity?

For able bodied people there are the Olympics
For the disabled there are the Paralympics

So, why not have a third category for drug assisted competitors: the Paracetamolympics!

Catch up with the cheetahs!

SBB

Explanatory note: our contributing author, Short Bald Bloke, has a lingering chip on his shoulder over having been forced on too many occasions to be a baton-fumbling middle stage runner in his school’s 4 x 100m relay team

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