The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and national anti-doping agencies have been treating the use of anabolic steroids and performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) like an epidemic in sports. They have shown little regard for athlete privacy with increasingly more invasive and intrusive testing requirements. Athletes have given up considerable liberties in order to participate in high-level sports. After all, anti-doping crusaders see anabolic steroids and PEDs as one of the greatest threats to the health of the sport. This justifies whatever means they choose in order to accomplish their end goal of eradicating doping in sport.
Some academic researchers agree that this “anti-epidemic approach” is warranted. Perecles Simon, a professor in the Department of Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany, has called the widespread use of steroids in sports a “highly commutable epidemic”.
“Whether it is the coaches, the doctors, whatever is the source, we need to know where it is” Simon told Play the Game. “We need to find out the route of transmission, and we need to spend money on fighting this”.
An epidemic is defined to occur when an event, usually a disease, occurs at a higher frequency than expected based on recent experience. Simon believes that the spread of doping in professional sports represents an epidemic. However, the declaration of an epidemic requires having accurate baseline rates of steroid use in sports.
The big question is has the incidence of steroid and PED use actually increased so dramatically in recent years? Doping has been pervasive in elite sports since the 1960s. While the nature of doping may have changed given pharmaceutical advances, doping technology and drug testing, it is doubtful that it has seen an increase sufficient to justify the declaration of an epidemic.
One thing is certain. The hysteria surrounding doping has certainly increased dramatically since the creation of WADA. Of course, WADA has been the primary beneficiary of the doping hysteria.
Source:
Hoy, M. (October 5, 2011). Doping: Dispatches from the frontline. Retrieved from http://www.playthegame.org/news/detailed/doping-dispatches-from-the-frontline-5266.html
