Enhanced Games Head Rebuts Biden: Performance Enhancements in Sports Are 'Inevitable'

Just stop it. Let elite athletes honestly choose to use performance enhancements or not.

Earlier this month, the Biden White House issued a statement joining both the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in expressing "its deep concerns over…the planned 'Enhanced Games' without anti-doping requirements." Are such concerns really warranted? No.

"Why not solve the future problem of gene doping and the current problem of steroid use in professional sports by creating two kinds of sports leagues?" I asked way back in 2005. "One would be free of genetic and pharmacologic enhancements—call them the Natural Leagues. The other would allow players to use gene fixes and other enhancements—call them the Enhanced Leagues."

That is the salutary goal of the Enhanced Games, in which competing athletes will be able to use enhancements to improve their performances. "We embrace the inclusion of science in sports, and we fundamentally believe that the choice to use enhancements is a personal one," explain the organizers. "Sports can be safer without drug testing."

In their response to the White House, the organizers of the Enhanced Games point to a WADA-backed 2017 study that reported that nearly 44 percent of elite athletes had used performance enhancements in the past year. Their goal is to frankly acknowledge that reality and enable elite athletes to choose the venues (enhanced or natural) in which they would like to compete.

The organizers of the Enhanced Games additionally suggest that the data that they gather on performance enhancements will ultimately help the IOC to more effectively maintain "natural" Olympic competition.

In the Enhanced Games response, Aron D'Souza, president of the Enhanced Games, said,

We urge President Biden to engage with the Enhanced Games on what is an inevitable evolution in sports. As a champion of science, President Biden has the opportunity to help the 44% of athletes who have used performance enhancements to come out and safely compete. Only with a formal partnership between the IOC and Enhanced Games, can Olympics drug testing finally be effective and ensure the integrity of their games.

During a Zoom press conference earlier this week, D'Souza made it clear that evaluating the effectiveness of performance enhancements used in the competition will also advance transhumanist aims such as increasing healthy longevity. "The Enhanced Games, with our medical oversight and screening apparatus, will create this unique data which will benefit not only the tested sports community but also Longevity Science in general as many compounds can be repurposed to combat illnesses such as frailty which are endemic in modern society," said Michael Sagner, the scientific adviser for Enhanced Games.

Besides welcoming performance enhancements, salient differences between the Olympic Games and the Enhanced Games include the fact that the latter is a privately funded for-profit operation and that participating athletes are paid.

During the Zoom session, D'Souza said that many more details about the Enhanced Games, including a major broadcast deal, will be announced soon.

Comments

[SQRLSY One]

Bring ON the enhanced games! Also, soon now, we will need to have zero-gravity games and then Moon-gravity games and Mars-gravity games! The athletes "out there" may need MANY modifications eventually (drugs and genetic engineering, cyborg augmentation, etc.) to withstand high levels of radiation, and long-term effects of low or zero gravity. So bring it ON!!!!

[Don't look at me!]

More testing needed!

[mad.casual]

"Sports can be safer without drug testing."

Ron "Ignorance is bliss" Bailey.

It's funny how even when he's narrowly on the right side he still espouses the fundamentally wrong principles and even anti-scientific reasons for doing so.

[SQRLSY One]

Casually "Authoritarianism is Always RIGHT" Mad.

It's funny how even when it says shit, it NEVER justifies its own shit, other than with, "Because I said so!"

Butt then, Authoritarianism is ass Authoritarianism always is! Arrogant, conceited, and ALWAYS right; no explanations are needed!

[n00bdragon]

Now explain why blood sports and dueling should remain outlawed.

[SQRLSY One]

For the same reasons that war should be outlawed, but isn't, really?

[American Mongrel]

Nihilism will lead to utopia

Edit: something something Bronze Age sky daddy cult derp

[mad.casual]

"Sports can be safer without drug testing."

Fucking LOL. Ron "I'm only for MOAR TESTING!!!! when it's done by the government in surveillance of the entire population against any/all will." Bailey.

[CE]

A sports league has every right to ban performance enhancing drugs. The athletes should be competing at the same level. If PEDs are allowed, it puts pressure on everyone to use them to remain competitive, and doing so may be dangerous.

[Mickey Rat]

And if the sports league allows a dangerous PED, they may held liable for it.

[Rossami]

Did you even read the article? Yes, a sports league has that right - and a different sports league has the equal right to make a different decision. And that's all that's happening here.

Re: doing so may be dangerous - Playing that level of sports at all is dangerous. Look at NFL rates for concussions and blown knees. A percentage of climbers fall to their deaths each year. You can do the same for every sport more active than ping pong (and maybe even for that). Yet players rationally evaluate those risks and decide for themselves what risks to take. What makes this the line where you strip them of their right to agency?

[BYODB]

You realize that the athletes using these drugs are doing so illegally, right? As if a person in peak physical condition can get a controlled substance from a legitimate M.D. such as anabolic steroids.

Sure, they can probably find an M.D. to prescribe those drugs but...fun fact...that M.D. should be investigated for malpractice too.

If you want to talk about deregulating those drugs, that's kind of a separate discussion.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

Instead of calling it the Enhanced Games, I would go something more honest like the Perverse Incentive Games. It will be immediately shortened to the PI Games, and the PI Games sounds like a party.

Given the opportunity, desperate athletes might not just abuse steroids, but even go cyborg to gain an advantage like the double amputee that has titanium springs for feet. Of course, he is just making the best of a bad deal, not sacrificing his body in vainglorious competition.

If you could get fencers with sword-arms and skaters with knives for feet, people would flock to that shit.

[Don't look at me!]

Basketball players with a cannon on his chest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICRlZ_H42Xw

[SQRLSY One]

I'm holding out for cyborg-combat in which magic-underwear-equipped cyborgs forcefully grind their magic-underwear-girded groins against one another, while glazed in Vaseline, with The Donald ass the referee, and Spermy Daniels ass the prize!!! A SPLENDID contest for a TV / video format, with MANY-MANY opportunities for beer advertisers!

Here, hold my beer while I jump in between the cumbatting cuntestants!

[Eeyore]

I'm surprised this article isn't in favor of mandatory drugs. Mandatory jabs, steroids, you gotta take it all to compete.

[Fetterman's Hump]

Mandatory Jabs for everybody! Already been done.

[Rossami]

Why are you calling on Biden to "engage"? Why do you think he gets a say at all? Run your games and ignore the politics. We have to start cabining politicians back into the tiny roles that are their proper responsibilities.

[mad.casual]

It's Ron Bailey. Neither a scientist nor a libertarian. The guy has openly stated that if humans could reproduce asexually, he'd make sure to get his wife's permission first.

Some people, even into their 50s and 60s just need a parent to ask permission of and tell them things are or aren't OK.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

What about enhancements like a penis?

[SQRLSY One]

Twat, do I detect a bit of PENIS ENVY there, on your part, UnEarthly Lizard Person?

[Nobartium]

I asked way back in 2005. "One would be free of genetic and pharmacologic enhancements—call them the Natural Leagues. The other would allow players to use gene fixes and other enhancements—call them the Enhanced Leagues."

Only if the enhanced leagues leads to live rounds in the chamber.

Super-soldiers murdering each other or bust!

[Old Engineer]

Performance enhancement is the rule, not the exception, in modern sports. Everything from contact lenses to tendon replacement in baseball players' arms are forms of enhancement. Tommy Johns' fastball was faster after surgery. Modern training methods and dietary changes all constitute "unnatural" enhancement.

But this isn't only in sports. Caffeine, nicotine and Adderall are all forms of mental enhancement. Diet drugs are unnatural ways to lose weight. Nicotine, through trans dermal absorption, is one of the few common chemicals that appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Is this way of maintaining mental capacity an unnatural enhancement? Should there be "enhanced" and "natural" shuffleboard courts for seniors?

[AT]

Where do the delusional psychotics who can't tell which bathroom to use get to play?

[Jose 3]

So genetics and hard work are no longer enough? Now what "Druggies" (formerly known as athletes) really need is plenty of money and drugs to win contests...all this so they can say they are the "best"...? What utter nonsense!

[EscherEnigma]

I really don't care too much about this topic, but is Biden and the IOC doing anything to stop this, or are you just upset because they don't like it and think it's a bad idea?

'cause if it's the former... yeah, sure, they should probably step back and let this disaster run it's course. Wait for the dystopian abuses to start before regulators step in to curtail it.

But if it's the latter, then you're just complaining that someone doesn't approve of your hobby horse. And while you're free to do that, of course, it's kind of weird that you're framing this as though the rest of us should care.

And since this article doesn't actually whine about specific actions that Biden/the IOC are taking, I'm kinda guessing it's the latter.