Otto von Bismarck reportedly said that to retain respect for sausages and laws, one should never watch them being made. I’d like to add professional athletes to that category…as well as monthly magazine columns.
Last July’s Tour de France saw local cycling pro Levi Leipheimer on the winner’s stand with a third-place finish. It also saw the overall leader, two other riders and two entire teams expelled or withdrawn from the race as a result of failing or missing drug tests. Professional cycling has been dogged by allegations of enhanced performances for as long as I can remember. And I’d wager almost no one reading this column lacks an opinion about Barry Bonds’ breaking of Hank Aaron’s longtime home run record.
The issue is this: In athletic competition, where the economic difference between first and second place can be enormous, the difference (sans drugs) comes down to training, determination and, finally, genetics. Because of the huge value placed on finishing ahead of the next person, competitors will look for every edge they can find.
In the case of cycling, if you follow the anti-doping rules, you’ll most likely lose to someone who doesn’t. All too often, it becomes a question not of how good an athlete you are, but of how good you are at avoiding detection for cheating. It’s sad, and I hope it can be corrected.
What do bicycle-riding druggies have to do with business and technology? Allow me this hypothetical situation: Suppose I told you I know a guy (a doctor, perhaps, or a university medical researcher) who would prescribe for you a drug that would enhance your brain chemistry, increasing your ability to remember and process numbers, focus on tasks and make complex decisions. There might be some small side effects, such as a minor increase in irritability, and the effects wear off if you stop taking the drug, but it’s a perfectly legal drug being prescribed “off-label” (meaning for other than the condition it’s normally used to treat).
Would you take it? You might not, but legal associates seeking to make partner, hedge-fund traders or any number of people who make their living with their brains might. Is it wrong to take drugs to make your brain work better? If you answered “yes,” consider people who take antidepressants. There are many normal, high-functioning people who’d be lost without their Lexapro. Are they cheating?
What would you do if the woman who beat you out for that promotion had seemed more irritable for the past few months? Was she cranky because she was working hard, or was she taking the performance enhancer you turned down? Even if you can prove she’s taking drugs (prescribed by a doctor and not otherwise illegal), the boss probably doesn’t care, and you may not have any legal recourse—at least under current law. (Any lawyers care to comment? Drop me a line.)
Suppose you discover opposing counsel in a major case at your law firm is taking a so-called “smart drug” (it’s an employee benefit for all the lawyers at their firm). Would you offer it to your team? And what do you do if your client demands your team take it to level the playing field in court? They might retain other, drug-enhanced counsel should you demur, resulting in a major loss of business to your firm.
As you can see, there are lots of questions and few answers. The point is, society at large has no anti-doping laws, yet technology is rapidly moving toward this reality. Evidence? The Guardian reports the drug Ritalin has been used by some business executives seeking to improve their decision-making ability (as well as students to increase exam performance). A 2005 Los Angeles Times article noted that Modafinil, used to treat narcolepsy, has been shown to increase performance on mental agility tests by 50 percent. The U.S. military dispenses it to soldiers in Iraq to maintain performance over long periods of wakefulness. Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) has an article on nootropics, which are drugs aimed at enhancing brain function by increasing the brain’s supply of neurochemicals, increasing oxygen levels in the brain or stimulating the growth of brain cells.
Those of us who grew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s—and somehow passed our SATs unassisted—now send our kids to SAT-preparation courses to ensure they’ll get into a “good” college. Would you seek out a nootropic drug for your high school students who have Ivy League dreams and not-quite-800s on their SATs? There are certainly parents of high school athletes who condone performance-enhancing drugs when athletic scholarships and professional sports contracts are at stake. Is it unfair that you can afford to pay for an SAT prep-course or smart drug when other families can’t? Modafinil costs about $6 a dose, good for one exam.
Interestingly, many professional ethicists suggest we should just let athletes take drugs and focus instead on whether the drugs cause permanent harm. After all, drugs just level the genetic differences between competitors. Some might question whether such an environment remains a “sport,” but I fear that question was decided long ago, when sports became professional (that is, an economic enterprise). Focused training was the first step down a slippery slope. Individuals with access to the best trainers, training facilities and equipment will tend to outperform equally determined and genetically gifted competitors without those advantages.
And ultimately, what constitutes fairness in a world where we’re equal under the law, but not genetically or economically? Clearly, the parents of Venus and Serena Williams and Tiger Woods had an impact on them. What happens when Mozart is born to a tone-deaf family—or one that can’t afford a piano?
I’m pretty old-school. I’ve never had Lasix surgery because of a fear of ending up worse than I started (a reaction to the early problems with many forms of vision-correction surgery). After all, you can’t get replacement eyeballs (yet). But I make my living with my brain, and I know that, while I have lots more experience to draw on than the twentysomethings fresh out of college, I’ve probably lost a step in the brain race. I take atenolol for my inherited high blood pressure, why not something for my slowing neurochemistry?
