Introduction: From the very beginning when humans have engaged in competitive sports, they have tried to gain every possible edge against their adversaries. After all, the desire for any and every competitive advantage is a completely understandable element of human nature. Not surprisingly, there are records of the use of performance enhancing drugs going as far back as ancient times. Despite this long and storied history of performance enhancing drugs in sports, doping is arguably the most controversial and most talked-about issue in modern sports. It is an issue that cuts across all sports, regardless of technology, popularity, or tradition. It affects the sports that are traditionally thought of as “muscle-bound,” such as football and bodybuilding, …show more content…
Many of these arguments, as this paper has sought to demonstrate, are spurious and should not be grounds for banning steroids from the game. However, there are a couple arguments that stand up to rigorous analysis. One is the physical harm that many of these drugs are strongly suspected of causing. This rationale is particularly strong when viewed from the context of the prisoner’s dilemma. The other argument is not so much a rationale, as merely an explanation: performance enhancing drugs should be banned because society says they should be banned. The democratic nature of sports requires that sports ban performance enhancing drugs. But it should be noted that these bans are not without costs and harms to innocent athletes, and these costs should be kept in mind when evaluating whether to maintain, expand, or eliminate doping policies. When all’s said and done, however, sports leagues are doing the right thing by prohibiting the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs by their athletes, at least until additional medical consensus is