Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

H1 Group 4 - PED's and Other Enhancements in Life


Today in our group discussion, we talked about whether the use of performance enhancing drugs (PED's) is right or wrong in sports. This ended up being a two second discussion of a unanimous NO and "it is just wrong." Then we moved on to the discussion of the different aspects of life, especially the use of technology we have today.

We talked about the difference of using enhancements for your health and enhancements to improve your body. We agreed that the use of technology for health purposes is a great way to use the enhancements in today's society. However, we disagreed about how enhancing your body to something that is not natural is just plain wrong. Also, we discussed how you might actually have to look at each individual case to determine if using the enhancements is right or wrong.

There are two floaters that I would like to point out that had interesting input. The first one was Nate Tilton. He asked the question, "To someone who doesn't believe in God, what stops someone from using PED's"? This is a question I will leave for everyone to comment on as they like.

The second floater was Kailey McDonald. She pointed out that once someone uses performance enhancing drugs, then everyone else has to do it." I agree with that because everyone (or at least some people) wants to be better than everyone else. Therefore, if they have an advantage on you, someone might take PED's to become the best.



(Just a little humor)

DQ: How do you choose someone to be your friend? Is it personality, common interests, or other?

FQ: Q: True or False? According to Nigel Warburton, Friendship is an extraordinary important relationship in almost everybody's life.

A: False (According to Alexander Nehamas)

Link: http://science.howstuffworks.com/10-performance-enhancing-drugs.htm#page=0

I was wondering what type of performance enhancing drugs people used, and I found this website that shows you the type of drugs that are not steroids that people use to enhance themselves.

7 comments:

  1. Erin Paul9:11 PM CST

    When Nate floated in, he asked us what sports meant in our opinion. I believe it to be a competition. Humans are wired to seek competition. This shows in our society pressuring people to do everything in their power to be the best. I also believe that a competition is not a competition unless it's fair. If some athletes are using PED's, then it is no longer a healthy competition, nor is it a competition worth watching or participating in. It takes away from the natural competition, which is the basis of sports.

    We also talked about using technology for other things besides sports such as using TI-89 calculators on tests, getting braces or lasik eye surgery, or altering the sex or health of your baby. I think technology is good and has helped us make many important advancements. However, I do believe we need to be extremely careful on how much we depend on technology and how often we use it. I believe too much technology does more harm than help. I think we should continue using it for health reasons, but not for unnatural things that have no real benefits at all except looking better to the outside world. We really need to control how much technology we are using, especially if humans and hard work can achieve the same result. Every generation after us is going to have more technology available to them and we need to be an example of how not to get completely sucked into it.

    DQ: How have your friends shaped you into the person you are today?

    FQ: Which philosopher said that "friendship is by no means an unalloyed good?"
    Alexander Nehamas

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    1. Wowie! We said like the same thing! Just saw it after I posted haha

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  2. Nice post Evan!

    Something else we discussed in class was the role that sports play in society, and why by the players using performance enhancing drugs it draws away from it. Why are sports so important? Athletics serve as entertainment, a way to showcase talent, and (perhaps the most important) as an outlet for the competitive nature in humans. Everyone is competitive in some way or another; some people are academically competitive, while others try to edge ahead of the car driving next to them!

    Going off of what Kailey said, I agree! In order to be competitive, and be able to “hang with the being kids” athletes need to be in the same league. If we had to two populations (one enhanced and one not) like Sandel suggested, one would be clearly superior. The bottom line is: peer pressure exists and never vanishes. Kinda tough, who said teenage years were the hardest?

    FQ: What are the 2 types of genetic enhancements?
    ANSWER: health related & non-health related

    DQ: Where do YOU draw the line at enhancements? (braces, oxygen chambers, etc)

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  3. Michele Kelley9:23 PM CST

    During the Olympics there was a lot of talk about Oscar Pistorius. The debate was not necessarily with Pistorius' eligibility, but with the future of sports with physically handicapped athletes. What happens when technology that is suppose to give handicapped athletes a level playing field becomes more advanced that human bodies are able to compete with? Does it soon become a competition of who was afforded the latest technology? It seems far off, but I think it is a consideration that will happen in our life time. So how do we draw the line?

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  4. I also think that maybe it is in some part the sport. It seems that people always strive to be perfect. We mentioned someone getting braces for cosmetic reasons or even having lasik surgery. It plays into our vision of beauty, of trying to look perfect. I feel like sports can get so extreme and competitive. We constantly want athletes to do better, to reach that point of perfection. There is so much pressure. The human body has its physical limits. Maybe there is no other option but to use performance enhancing drugs. I mean, if you look at retired athletes, they have so many health problems. If our complaint is that PEDs are not natural, would you not say that by this token athletes are already pushing themselves too far beyond their natural ability? Maybe the sport has already reached that level of being too extreme.

    DQ: Do you think that the problem is with the sport, society, our competitive nature, etc?

    FQ: According to Alexander Nehamas, what is the difference between the values of morality and the values of friendship?
    Answer: The values of morality depend on commonality while the values of friendship rely on individuality.

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  5. Kailey McDonald2:38 PM CST

    I feel like that's a great point Michelle. That is another problem I had with the idea of altering the genetics of children. If we were able to make genetic alterations to children, it would be very expensive. Only the wealthy people would be able to make these enhancements, further separating them from the average person. In our culture, people already have a problem with the opportunities of the rich man being greater than those of the poor man. It's often hard for a poor man to work his way up the social classes. I think that if genetic enhancement was available, it would be near impossible for the average person, with his original genes, to compete with someone who has been "genetically re-mastered" and "souped-up".

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  6. In response to the question on the original post that Nate asked, "To someone who doesn't believe in God, what stops someone from using PED's?", I would respond that most PED's are harmful to the body after extensive use. Even someone who has no religious affiliations still desires to have a properly functioning body. In addition, any athlete with an ounce of sportsmanship, which can be derived from personal integrity as well as religion, would not take PED's to give himself/herself an unfair advantage: It would ruin the point of the sport. Sports are like competitions in that two teams utilize their individual talents, as well as their ability to work as a cohesive unit, and pit these acquired skills against each other to determine which team is better. Each team has the exact same abilities, but the test is which team practiced harder, or which team's athletes possess more NATURAL talent. Therefore, if an athlete DOES choose to take PED's, then the outcome of the game or competition is moot. The audience still doesn't know which team is better, because that one athlete had an advantage that wasn't given to the other team. That one athlete didn't have to practice harder or earn their prowess, they took a pill or shot. That one athlete will never know if he/she is better than any other athlete, because instead of earning and developing their skills naturally (the way everyone else has to), they took PED's. In short, they cheated.

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