It may be a popular opinion that sports and ethics are incongruent or contradictory, but ethical principles in sports are in fact integral for its protection. Because of this invalid popular opinion, a new conversation on ethical principles and issues in sports is warranted. This should start here with a philosophical investigation into the areas of epistemology and autonomy with an effort to address ethical issues associated with the use of performance-enhancement drugs (doping) in sports, fair play, equity, and responsibility. Readers are introduced to a new theoretical approach to addressing ethical issues in sports. These issues are based on arguments advanced on responsible freedom, perspective knowledge, and duties that can be utilized by sports stakeholders (athletes, team doctors, fans, sporting organizations, coaches, etc.) as they strive for success and minimize unfair practices. Important questions are posed concerning respect for others, respect for rules, respect for the game, and respect for self. Also, an investigation into ethics and doping is conducted to unravel whether doping athletes impose undue limitations on their freedom. Thus, the idea of absolute freedom is questioned, and "privileged freedom" is explored.

This book considers ethical arguments about performance enhancing drugs in sport in a global context. It examines: * The forces that are bringing about the debate of ethical issues in performance enhancing drugs in sport * The sources of ethical debates in different continents and countries * The variation of ethical arguments in different cultural, political, ideological and sports systems. Whilst there has been a significant body of work that has looked at the importance of ethical issues in performance enhancing drugs in sport - there has been little, if any, consideration of the various ethical concepts in different countries and cultures involving sport. This is a major omission. This book fills the gap and provides a thorough review and analysis of the ethical literature on performance enhancing drugs in sport in the global society. It makes a major contribution to the worldwide anti-doping campaign in sport. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal Sport In Global Society.

This volume presents articles which focus on the ethical evaluation of performance-enhancing technologies in sport. The collection considers whether drug doping should be banned; the rationale of not banning ethically contested innovations such as hypoxic chambers; and the implications of the prospects of human genetic engineering for the notion of sport as a development of ’natural’ talent towards human excellence. The essays demonstrate the significance of the principles of preventing harm, ensuring fairness and preserving meaning to appraise whether a particular performance enhancer is acceptable in the context of sport. Selected essays on various forms of human enhancement outside of sport that highlight other principles and concepts are included for comparative purpose. Sport enhancement provides a useful starting point to work through the ethics of enhancement in other human practices and endeavors, and sport enhancement ethics should track broader bioethical debates on human enhancement. As a whole, the volume points to the need to consider the values and meanings that people seek in a given sphere of human activity and their associated principles to arrive at a morally grounded and reasonable approach to enhancement ethics.

The book provides an in-depth discussion on the human nature concept from different perspectives and from different disciplines, analyzing its use in the doping debate and researching its normative overtones. The relation between natural talent and enhanced abilities is scrutinized within a proper conceptual and theoretical framework: is doping to be seen as a factor of the athlete’s dehumanization or is it a tool to fulfill his/her aspirations to go faster, higher and stronger? Which characteristics make sports such a peculiar subject of ethical discussion and what are the, both intrinsic and extrinsic, moral dangers and opportunities involved in athletic enhancement? This volume combines fundamental philosophical anthropological reflection with applied ethics and socio-cultural and empirical approaches. Furthermore guidelines will be presented to decision- and policy-makers on local, national and international levels. Zooming in on the intrinsic issue of what is valuable about our homo sapiens biological condition, this volume devotes only scant attention to the specific issue of natural talent and why such talent is appreciated so differently than biotechnological origins of ability. In addition, specific aspects of sports such as its competitive nature and its direct display of bodily prowess provide good reason to single out the issue of natural athletic talent for sustained ethical scrutiny.​

Good Sport argues that the values and meanings embedded within sport provide the guidance we need to make difficult decisions about fairness and performance-enhancing technologies. By examining how sport's history, rules and practices identify and celebrate natural talent and dedication, the book illuminates not just what we champion in the athletic arena but more broadly what we value in human achievement.

This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of experts in bioethics, sports, law, and philosophy to examine the need for regulating such athletic performance-enhancing technologies as steroids and gene doping. The use of performance-improving drugs in sports dates back to the early Olympians, who took an herbal tonic before competitions to augment athletic prowess. But the permissibility of doing so came into question only in the twentieth century as the popularity of anabolic steroid use and blood doping among athletes grew. Sports officials and others—aided by the development of technologies to test participants for proscribed substances—became concerned over the physical safety of athletes and competitive fairness in sporting events. In exploring the culture, ethics, and policy issues surrounding doping in competitive athletics, the contributors to this volume detail the history and current state of drug use in sports, analyze the distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable usages, evaluate the ethical arguments for and against permitting athletes to avail themselves of new means of improving athleticism, and discuss possible future doping technologies and the issues that they are likely to raise. They explain how and why some athletes resort to doping and assess what the fair opportunity principle means in theory and practice and how it relates to the concept of an equal opportunity to perform. This frank discussion of doping in sports includes accounts by former elite athletes and offers an illuminating exchange over the meaning and value of natural talents and genetic hierarchies and the essence of fair competition.

The debate around the role of drugs in sport is vibrant. There is a wealth of evidence from the hard end of science, telling us how drugs work, how drug testing works, and how many athletes have fallen foul of the system. The evidence from social science is still building momentum. For example, what makes an athlete use a performance enhancing substance? "To win" simply fails to explain the drug use behaviour we see among athletes. This book provides a foundation for anyone trying to understand the drugs in sport problem beyond the hard science by looking at the "people factor" from different perspectives. After building a case for the social science of drugs in sport, it is examined from the ethical, sociological, economic, legal and psychological points of view. The book concludes with a definitive statement about what researchers, policy makers, sports administrators, athletes and fans can do to achieve a social science of drugs in sport that puts people firmly in the centre of the debate. This volume was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

The book aims to establish a critical dialogue between sports ethicists and bioethicists across the range of sporting disciplines at elite level. It will address questions such as: are the increasingly intrusive testing methods of elite sports compatible with the right to autonomy and privacy granted to patients in general medicine? could there be a moral obligation to correct injustices produced by the genetic lottery? how should the goals of sports medicine be viewed from the perspective of rationing scarce health care resources? This book was published as a special issue in Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.

The ethics of sports medicine is an important emerging area within biomedical ethics. The professionalization of medical support services in sport and continuing debates around issues such as performance-enhancing technologies or the health and welfare of athletes mean that all practitioners in sport, as well as researchers with an interest in sports ethics, need to develop a clear understanding of the ethical aspects of the sport–medicine nexus. This timely collection of articles explores the conceptual and practical issues that shape and define ethics in sports medicine. Examining central topics such as consent, confidentiality, pain, doping and genetic technology, this book establishes an important baseline for future academic and professional work in this area.