Zusammenfassung Nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges kam es über Ländergrenzen hinweg zu internationalen Initia­tiven gegen Doping, an deren Ende 1999 die Gründung einer unabhängigen, sowohl vom Sport als auch den Regierungen getragenen Welt Anti-Doping Agentur, der WADA, stand. Grundlage dieses vermehrten Engagements der Politik war das über Jahrzehnte erkennbare Versagen des organisierten Sports, einer wachsenden Verbreitung von Doping effizient entgegenzutreten. Im Ergebnis führte dies zu einem fundamentalen Wandel des Verhältnisses zwischen Sport und Politik: Die Politik ge­wann Einfluss in (...) bisherige Domänen des Sports. In Deutschland führte die Gründung der WADA zu einer Umstrukturierung der Anti-Dopingpolitik. Maßgebliches Ziel der NADA-Gründung 2002 war die Zentralisierung von Anti-Dopingmaßnah­men in einer Organisation, die von Sport und Staat unabhängig sein sollte. Die Bundesregierung hielt jedoch an ihrer Grundposition fest, die Dopingbekämpfung dem organisierten Sport zu über­antworten und selbst nur im Rahmen der ihr durch völkerrechtliche Verträge auferlegten Gewähr­leistungsverantwortung tätig zu werden. Wiederholt aufkommenden Debatten über ein deutsches Anti-Dopinggesetz stand sie ablehnend gegenüber; sie beschränkte sich auf Verschärfungen des Arzneimittelrechts. (shrink)

Recent discussions among lawyers, philosophers, policy researchers and athletes have focused on the potential threat to privacy posed by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) whereabouts requirements. These requirements demand, among other things, that all elite athletes file their whereabouts information for the subsequent quarter on a quarterly basis and comprise data for one hour of each day when the athlete will be available and accessible for no advance notice testing at a specified location of their choosing. Failure (...) to file one’s whereabouts, or the non-availability for testing at said location on three occasions within any 18-month period constitutes an anti-doping rule violation that is equivalent to testing positive to a banned substance, and may lead to a suspension of the athlete for a time period of between one and two years. We critically explore the extent to which WADA’s whereabouts requirements are in tension with existing legislation on privacy, with respect to UK athletes, who are simultaneously protected by UK domestic and EU law. Both UK domestic and EU law are subject to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 8, which establishes a right to “respect for private and family life, home and correspondence”. We critically discuss the centrality of the whereabouts requirements in relation to WADA’s aims, and the adoption and implementation of its whereabouts rules. We conclude that as WADA’s whereabouts requirements appear to be in breach of an elite athlete’s rights under European workers’ rights, health & safety and data protection law they are also, therefore, in conflict with Article 8 of the ECHR and the UK Human Rights Act 1998. We call for specific amendments that cater for the exceptional case of elite sports labour if the WADA requirements are to be considered legitimate. (shrink)

The anti-doping policies of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) aim to promote a level playing field and protect the health of the athlete. Anti-doping policy discourages research using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) or methods and prohibits athlete support personnel, including healthcare providers, from providing advice, assistance, or aid to an athlete or others seeking to use, or using PEDs until harm has occurred. Athletes are individually responsible for the presence of a prohibited substance in their bodies and (...) face sanction regardless of knowledge or intent. I will argue (i) that WADA policies fail to meet the epistemic and control conditions needed to adequately assign individual responsibility and (ii) that transferring responsibility for use of PEDs solely to the athlete results in harm. WADA is drifting perilously close to the morally impermissible ‘doing of harm’ to athletes by initiating or sustaining a causal sequence of events that can result in harm. (shrink)

Current anti-doping in competitive sports is advocated for reasons of fair-play and concern for the athlete's health. With the inception of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), anti-doping effort has been considerably intensified. Resources invested in anti-doping are rising steeply and increasingly involve public funding. Most of the effort concerns elite athletes with much less impact on amateur sports and the general public.

A category of enhancement technologies target neural systems as a means of improving physical performance. The author calls these as neurophysical enhancements. This chapter demonstrates why neurophysical enhancements deserve an ethical assessment which is independent of those relating to physical and cognitive enhancements. It focuses almost exclusively on the use of neurophysical enhancements in the sporting arena, where they are for the most part prohibited. World Anti‐Doping Agency (WADA) does permit some drugs which are effective enhancements. (...) Caffeine is permitted on the rationale that it is ineffective at unsafe doses (and hence safe at an effective dose). It makes little sense to ban every performance enhancer from sporting competition, no matter what it is used for, and what the risks are, since sport is essentially a project of performance enhancement. If every form of enhancement is to be considered unethical, competitive sport must be abandoned. (shrink)

This article seeks to critically question the internal logic and coherence of ‘anti-doping’ through the case study of advantage-seeking practices in the sport of Brazilian Jui-Jitsu (BJJ). We provide an analysis of the recent controversy between high-profile fighters Gordon Ryan and Nicky Rod involving the relative morality of image and performance enhancing drug (IPED) use compared with ‘greasing’, whereby BJJ athletes apply substances, such as oil or lubricants, to the body to make it harder for opponents to establish a grip (...) or maintain control during grappling exchanges. We employ this case study to highlight the impasse between the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) ethical foundation of the ‘spirit of sport’ and the anti-doping industry’s ‘anti-policy’ stance. We then query why a host of non-chemical advantage-seeking practices are normalised and overlooked within the rigid and constrictive systems. Ultimately, we characterise WADA as a myopic compliance system that stifles moral debate around advantage-seeking in sport and is hamstrung by an ethical discord between anti-policy and the neo-Aristotelian ideal of the spirit of sport. We close with a call for a holistic ethical understanding of advantage-seeking in sport and the need to encourage stakeholders to ‘think institutionally’ in order to establish a malleable and reactive response to doping. (shrink)

In light of the World Anti Doping Agency’s 2013 Code Revision process, we critically explore the applicability of two of three criteria used to determine whether a method or substance should be considered for their Prohibited List, namely its (potential) performance enhancing effects and its (potential) risk to the health of the athlete. To do so, we compare two communities of human guinea pigs: (i) individuals who make a living out of serial participation in Phase 1 pharmacology trials; (...) and (ii) elite athletes who engage in what is effectively ‘unregulated clinical research’ by using untested prohibited or non-prohibited performance enhancing substances and methods, alone or in combination. Our comparison sheds light on norms of research ethics that these practices exacerbate with respect to the concepts of multiplicity, visibility, and consistency. We argue for the need to establish a proper governance framework to increase the accountability of these unregulated research practices in order to protect the human guinea pigs in elite sports contexts, and to establish reasonable grounds for the performance enhancing effects, and the risks to the health of the athlete, of the methods and substances that might justify their inclusion on the Prohibited List. (shrink)

The current World Anti-doping Code can be characterised as a tough approach to doping. In this paper we investigate how the World Anti-Doping Agency justifies this tough approach. To this end, WADA advances two justificatory arguments. It maintains, first, that protection of the spirit of sport warrants tough measures and, second, that athletes have voluntarily consented to the Code. We argue that in the way they are presented by WADA, neither of these arguments can withstand (...) scrutiny. In the second part of the paper, we go on to show that these arguments are in fact ideological in nature. The specific aim of these arguments is not to be correct, but rather to distort social reality, because in this way they can be used to ward off any critical discussion of the Code. We conclude that WADA’s interest is to create a façade of justice, not in serving justice itself. (shrink)

After two years of discussions and revisions, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published the 2021 World Anti-Doping Code on June 16, 2020. Among the most significant additions to this iteration of the Code was the inclusion of new categories of athletes subject to differential treatment by WADA, including the “protected person” category. In this paper, we examine the recent case of figure skater Kamila Valeryevna Valieva, the first athlete given differential treatment due to her being (...) categorized as a “protected person.” We apply a relational justice framework to the case to provide a nuanced, descriptive analysis of the case generally, and the application of the “protected person” category in particular.We first describe details of the athlete, her performances and anti-doping rule violation, and the “protected person” category, to provide context. We then describe and analyze the relations between several institutional actors, principally WADA and the International Court for the Arbitration of Sport (CAS), the athlete and her team, and other figure skating athletes at the Beijing Winter Olympic Games. To do so, we use two concepts of justice, conservative and ideal, and their component parts, entitlement, desert, and need.Our description and analyses demonstrate that (1) WADA’s notions of justice are essentially conservative, while CAS acted toward more ideal notions, creating a fundamental disagreement in what was owed and to whom. We show (2) that CAS’ decision may have nonetheless caused harm to the athlete, raising questions about the efficacy and capability of the “protected person” category. Finally, (3) our analyses show the influence that notions of justice necessarily have these actors shape each other, thus change the sporting institutions and activities themselves. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present and critically discuss a gametheory- based argument in favour of the view that sports organizations ought to ban the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport. After presenting the argument in detail, I try to show that the argument is not convincing. First, the argument cannot be used to argue in favour of WADA’s (World Anti-Doping Agency) current ban on doping, at least if it rests on the assumption, that doping (...) use is always harmful. However, that in itself may not be a problem for adherents of the argument, and they can and should modify the harm assumption to cover only harmful use of doping. Second, even with this modification, it is argued that the harm assumption is flawed, for example, because it is not obvious why we should accept certain harms in sport but not harm to athletes caused by doping. Third, the argument is also flawed because it entails the non-competitive assumption: if all athletes dope, then no competitive advantages are gained by any athletes assumptions. The noncompetitive assumption is challenged in view of the observations that doping can have some non-competitive advantages and is, so to speak, not only a positional good and because doping, due to unequal responsiveness, can give some highly responsive athletes a competitive advantage over less responsive athletes. (shrink)

A debate has arisen over whether “the spirit of sport” is an appropriate criterion for determining whether a substance should be banned. In this paper, I argue that the criterion is crucial for Olympic sport because Olympism celebrates humanity, specifically human agency, so we need to preserve the degree to which athletes are personally and morally responsible for their performances. This emphasis on what I call “athlete agency” is reflected metaphysically in the structure of sport, which characteristically prescribes (...) inefficiencies in order to create challenges, and seeks to reduce or eliminate the proportion of a performance outside an athlete’s control. Emphasizing athlete agency also prevents wealthier and more technologically developed countries from using their resources to gain an advantage in sport. Interpreted according to athlete agency, the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) “spirit of sport” can be clarified to imply that substances, techniques, and equipment that reduce athlete agency should be reduced or eliminated, while things that increase it should be encouraged. (shrink)

Apart from a short clarification of what neuro-doping is, the aim of this article is twofold. First to give a few reasons in favour of having a special issue on neuro-doping. Second to present an overview of the articles in this issue. One reason for having this special issue, is that it needs to be established whether methods such as transcranial direct-current stimulation should be added to World Anti-Doping Agency’s prohibited list or not, as it is currently under (...) discussion by WADA. Another reason for dealing with the ethics of neuro-doping is that ethical analysis of the use or possible use of neuro-doping in sport is a neglected subject. This issue cover a wide range of ethical analyses of the use of neuro-doping among athletes, chess players, e-gamers and even couch potatoes. For example, whether tDCS ought to be prohibited by WADA and/or the state; or whether its use ought to be promoted by the state; whether the use of neuro-doping is unfair; or whether it should be allowed for businesses to advertise high-sugar, high-caffeine beverages to youngsters. (shrink)

The discourse surrounding the spirit of sports, especially under the purview of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), often centers on the philosophical implications of doping and fair play. This research aims to reframe the discussion by employing the lens of historical materialism and Marxist theory, considering sports not merely as isolated physical endeavors but deeply interwoven with societal and ideological transformations. This approach traces the evolution of sports from ancient times, where it served religious and communal functions, (...) to its current status as a component of global capitalist culture. By analyzing the spirit of sports through the theoretical frameworks of Althusser and Žižek, this study explores how sports act as ideological state apparatuses (AIEs), shaping and being shaped by the prevailing economic and social structures. The core argument posits that the spirit of sports is both a reflection of and a contributor to the ideological superstructures that define different historical epochs. The analysis highlights the transition from viewing sports as communal and ritualistic engagements to mechanisms of capitalist ideology, emphasizing competition and profit. Through this historical and ideological critique, the research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the spirit of sports, challenging traditional perspectives that isolate sports from their socio-economic and ideological contexts. The findings suggest that any discussion about the spirit of sports, particularly in anti-doping debates, must consider the broader ideological forces at play, thereby opening pathways for a more nuanced understanding of sports ethics. (shrink)

The current anti-doping policy in sports has enormous costs in economic, social, and human terms. As these costs are likely to become even bigger with the advent of bioenhancing technologies, in this paper I analyze the reasons for this policy. In order to clarify this issue, I compare sports with dance, an activity that has many similarities with sports but where there are no bans on performance enhancers. Considering the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) criteria for banning a (...) substance, we argue that two of them, the potential to enhance performance and the risk for health, are similar in dance and sports, thus I claim that the difference had to be in the so-called “spirit” of sports and dance. After looking into this matter and analyzing the special case of dancesport, I conclude that the main difference can be found in the competitive character of sports and the subsequent concern about competitive justice. (shrink)

Morgan has argued that attitudes to the medicalisation of sports are historically conditioned.While the history of doping offers contested versions of when the sports world turned againstconservative forces, Morgan has argued that these attitudes are out of step with prevailingnorms and that the World Anti Doping Agency's policy needs to be modified to better reflectthis. As an advocate of critical democracies in sports, he argues that anti-doping policy mustacknowledge and reflect these shifts in order to secure their (...) legitimacy. In response, wecritically present the World Anti-Doping Agency's policy that incorporates the Prohibited Listof Substances and Methods for athletes. We evaluate the validity of the therapy-enhancementdistinction in relation to its role in both justifying and sustaining the operation of theProhibited List. In particular, we focus on the case of thyroxine, which has been the subjectof controversy in athletic doping. While thyroxine is not currently banned, critics haveclaimed that its use in the absence of a relevant pathology is tantamount to doping. Wechallenge Morgan's claim that a conventionalist defence of the therapy-enhancementdistinction is the best available, and his conclusion that this properly supports a morepermissive stance towards performance-enhancing drug use. Furthermore, we reject hisconventionalist support for democratic line drawing in relation to doping and in particular thestatus of thyroxine with regard to the prohibited list. We offer a modified defence of the statusquo, a qualified, naturalist account of health and disease, where athletes may be prescribeddrugs that are genuine responses to medical necessity that do not, or do not typically, threatenthe goods of athletic excellence. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes.