Blood Doping

Abstract

Doping in elite-sport is a topical issue that polarizes public opinion. This dissertation outlines crucial, fundamental questions that go unasked in general discourse about doping in elite-sport and that through being answered will allow the debate to be had at more meaningful level. 

This interdisciplinary dissertation draws widely on: scientific journal entries, textbooks, multimedia and official documents in subjects of biochemistry, biology, psychology and ethics.

A comprehensive, balanced, inter-disciplinary approach to the research that was used to form this dissertation allows for a multifactorial coverage of the issues addressed and means that, at the very least, the conclusions made have some equity.

This​ dissertation examines include: what doping is and who decides, the (not so) valiant institutional structures through which doping detection is currently undertaken, and what the current prevalence of doping is likely to be.  It aims to answer two questions: (i) is the playing field levelled by the current paradigm of doping prohibition? and (ii) in this human world, there are many examples of ideals that only fitfully work in reality, but is this an argument for not making the effort to put ideals into practice?

Through this research it can be concluded that doping is far more pervasive that WADA's statistics would suggest, doping detection methods are unfit for purpose, it is questionable whether the true motives for those who organise testing are more political than egalitarian and there are great genetic dissimilarities between elite-athletes (who are, as a group, already genetically superior to the rest of the population in terms of athletic potential).

All of these conclusions highlight that elite-sport has never and probably will never be an even playing field.  Looking forward, there are far-reaching moral and political implications for organised testing.