> Drugs are banned in sport to avoid people using "artifical" enhancements to their innate trained abilities. If someone gets genetic modification to enhance, say, their muscles abilities to use energy, how are you going to police that?
> Have everyone playing submit their genome for examination?
My point is is that it does not matter. What is current top competition sport is not natural anymore so I do not really care about whether they take drugs (illegal today, maybe legal tomorrow) or not. Or modify they genome.
Wasn't there a case of a (South African?) athlete who was asked for a sample of their DNA to check weather they were a man or a woman? (it was not that long time ago I think)
> What is current top competition sport is not natural anymore so I do not really care about whether they take drugs (illegal today, maybe legal tomorrow) or not. Or modify they genome.
Two things:
This is a minority viewpoint. I believe most sports fans and participants want sports to remain free of exogenous performance enhancing drugs.
The second: the situation you describe would disadvantage everyone who does not engage in maximizing their use of such PEDs, and the sport in question would rapidly be transformed from what it is now into something vastly different, as the people willing to ingest these modifications would quickly displace the ones that aren't, or don't embrace the practice as fully.
That may be fine for you, but it is a big change, and many people like it the way it is now.
Personally, I agree with you. There should probably be a drugs league in various sports where people get as insanely artificially enhanced as human bodies can support, I might even watch that despite my general aversion to sports just to see the extreme tech involved. But it's absolutely silly to equate that to what is happening today because "today's athletes are not natural". It's not the same thing at all.
There is a big risk of causing permanent damage and significantly reduced lifespans by creating drug league, which has its own ethical issues. It would create incentives for people to push naive children or newly-adult into taking many drugs that will destroy the rest of their lives.
Drug league could have people dying mid competition, as they took too many drugs that they had a heart attack when trying to go all out, and that would create so much backlash and vicarious trauma that it gets shut down hard. I think it's the main reason why it doesn't exist.
As long as everyone involved consents and isn't coerced, it sounds ethical and entertaining to me.
I imagine that many of the people who would participate are already taking these things (these are not the people competing professionally today). Perhaps mainstreaming it would incentivize more research into safety and sustainability around artificially pushing humans beyond their current physical limits.
> As long as everyone involved consents and isn't coerced, it sounds ethical and entertaining to me.
Given the extreme competitive and monetary pressure already involved in sports, as well as expectations of audience, I question how much we can talk about consent and lack of coercion. If a drug league would exist, players would be pressured to take part to the very limit of what's legal, health be damned - as they already are in regular leagues.
> Wasn't there a case of a (South African?) athlete who was asked for a sample of their DNA to check weather they were a man or a woman? (it was not that long time ago I think)
In April 2018, the IAAF announced new "differences of sex development" rules that required athletes with specific disorders of sex development, testosterone levels of 5 nmol/L and above, and certain androgen sensitivity to take medication to lower their testosterone levels, effective beginning 8 May 2019. Due to the narrow scope of the changes, which also apply to only those athletes competing in the 400m, 800m, and 1500m, many people thought the rule change was designed specifically to target Semenya.
On 19 June 2018, Semenya announced that she would legally challenge the IAAF rules. On 1 May 2019, the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected her challenge, paving the way for the new rules to come into effect on 8 May 2019. During the legal challenge by Semenya, the IAAF amended the regulations to exclude hyperandrogenism associated with the 46,XX karyotype and clarified that the disorders of sex development affected by the regulations are specific to the 46,XY karyotype. The legal case divided commentators such as Doriane Coleman, who testified for the IAAF, arguing that women's sport requires certain biological traits, from commentators such as Eric Vilain, who testified for Semenya, arguing that "sex is not defined by one particular parameter ... for many human reasons, it's so difficult to exclude women who've always lived their entire lives as women — to suddenly tell them 'you just don't belong here.'"
Semenya has appealed the decision to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland. On 3 June 2019, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court advised that they had "super-provisionally instructed the IAAF to suspend the application of the 'Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification for athletes with differences of sex development' with respect to the claimant [Semenya]" until the court decides whether to issue an interlocutory injunction. On 30 July 2019, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court reversed its earlier ruling that had suspended the Court of Arbitration for Sport decision and the IAAF rules. For that reason, Semenya missed the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha in October 2019, while continuing her appeal.
In July 2019, Semenya said that the ongoing issue has "destroyed" her "mentally and physically".
> Have everyone playing submit their genome for examination?
My point is is that it does not matter. What is current top competition sport is not natural anymore so I do not really care about whether they take drugs (illegal today, maybe legal tomorrow) or not. Or modify they genome.
Wasn't there a case of a (South African?) athlete who was asked for a sample of their DNA to check weather they were a man or a woman? (it was not that long time ago I think)