Oxford University professor calls for performance-enhancing drugs to be legalised

What about turning it the other way. The athletes need to take drugs to keep their bloodlevels UNDER a certain level.

For example - nobody is allowed to compete with a hemocrit (or how you spell it) above 45.

Your Oxygen uptake level can't be over 85. Etc.

Now THAT's an idea!

The funny thing is that no one here has said I think he (the academic is right). Instinctively I think we are all against it. This is the direction that sport needs to go.

The latest from WADA seems to be pushing the agenda. The find of steroids and blade runners house should highlight that drugs have already hit the paralympics. This shouldn't be a surprise given the commerciality of the enterprise and should highlight that drugs are already prevalent in the regular Olympics.

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Instead, the goalposts should be shifted to harm reduction, where you pick up unsafe amounts or unsafe practices

What exactly does this achieve? You still have a set of limits, you still have to test and enforce those limits, and people will still push the boundaries of the limits to maximise performance. All you have done is push the limits of what is acceptable further out (and ironically that would probably increase harm because there would be more of an incentive to move towards the limits in a new world where PED use is "accepted").
The same rules apply to all cycle sport, not just pro racing, so what would happen to the rest of us in the non professional world? I don't want to start ingesting PEDs to remain competitive in my hobby. As pointed out by another poster above, how about PEDs for kids?

You have to give this guy the benefit of doubt, because he is being filtered through journalistic reporting, but as reported here, his ideas just sound half baked, with no real understanding of the consequences.

Interesting viewpoint - let's legalise it to stop organised crime. As if legalising anything ever made any illegal practice go away. By this token we'd abandon all our laws and go back to bashing each other over the head with clubs (and it would probably become an Olympic event to...)

I think this man has a slightly wrong perspective. Or maybe I do.

There may be several arguments that doping is not harmful to the users, it facilitates more exciting events and so on.

Call me old fashioned, but that's not what sport is about. I like athletes who push themselves to the limit, suffer, and even though they don't necessarily win they are still respected because they have the "sporting spirit" and a will to win.

If doping was legal then, in my opinion, no athlete would really be respected because you would just think "Oh, he just needs to fix his drug programme".

Thor Hushovd explained his view about racing in the mid-2000s, that "I was crying up mountains because I was in so much suffering, but just unable to keep up."

To be honest, I love moments when athletes crosses the finish line, and breaks down in absolute joy. That doesn't seem to happen when you dope since you are just "ticking boxes" as Millar described it.

Again, in my mind, this discussion just has the completely wrong focus. Sport is about the humans pushing themselves to their natural limit. For me, that's what makes it magical. If PED's were legalised I would stop watching sports all together, and suddenly I would have ALOT of free time

well he is from Australia & it has now emerged how widespread the use of doping is across lots of their top sports. its hardly surprising he has that attitude with the way they are such sore losers
(i am joking of course, sledging is after all a top ozzy sport))

As a poster up there alluded to, the involvement of organised crime in sport is surely not because of PEDs - even dosing athletes up would give no reliable assurance of a desired result. Match/race fixing - that's where organised crime comes in.

Anyway. My simple thoughts - we must try to root out the cheats. Sport is worth watching and performing because it tests the limits of the human body. Without that, bleh. Might as well watch WWF wrestling.

I have no interest to watch or be associated with a sport where the athletes take PEDs to be at the top of their game. It's boring and unsporting.

The problem is that competitive cyclists (and sportsmen and women) will use whatever advantage they can get. Ultimately this will lead to them testing any legal limit (e.g. 50% hematocrit), trying out unclassified and untested drugs for which there is no known safe limit or may even destroy competition by making the athletes so similar that they all the same (although unlikely).

Actually the problem comes at youth level too where abuse of drugs at early age for competitive advantage to reach the pro level may have disastrous consequences. No one knows what the long term effects of usage is, and sometimes drugs have permanent effects on the developing body (in the case of the adolescent brain, there is an indication that marajuana usage destroys memory making - an example of a developmental issues).

I see some point in legitimising PED. But I don't think they have anything to do with sport as everything to do with practicality. His argument about health is a bogus one considering we don't know if Armstrong on any other athlete will require heart surgery, or kidney replacements later on in life, lest we not forget Florence Grifiths-Joyner and that Arnold Schwarzenegger had to have heart surgery.

I would have to say that this article (by the academic) seems ill-advised and possibly paid for by interested parties (UCI, sports clubs owner, athletes and Lance Armstrong). I think philosophically we are poorer as people where we accept doping in Sport. No longer do we accept our natural ability. We may as well cut our legs off and stick on longer blades, or put an engine on our bikes, or enhance ourselves in whatever fashion makes us fastest, strongest....the test is no longer about us but what we can do to ourselves to be top dog.

It's good to see someone talking sense about drugs in sport, as with drugs in society.

What are the arguments against PEDs ?

Purism ? Anyone who thinks cycling, even without drugs, is some pure competition clearly has no concept of the sport and its history. Races are agreed and fixed on a regular basis and the riders put on a show, which everyone enjoys.

Cost ? We don't seem to mind that some teams invest in advanced technology, training and research beyond the means of others. Should anyone starting a local race with Lightweight wheels be given a handicap.

Health ? Cycling is inherently more risky than taking PEDs. I did a race last week where a guy had a blowout doing nearly 100km/h downhill. He came closer to death than a lifetime of EPO would bring him. Tommy Simpson ? Give it a rest - we're not talking about amphetamines and brandy any more. If drugs were approved they would be prescribed and monitored under medical supervision, not handed out furtively and without proper controls and follow-up.

Legal ? If teams (and their doctors) were responsible for providing PEDs then they would have a duty of care for the health of the rider. Anyone injured would be able to make a claim against the team, instead of it being swept under the carpet. Insurance companies hate paying out and would be the first to control any potentially harmful drugs.

It makes a lot of sense, and even if you disagree the response of saying don't even talk about it is just sticking your head in the sand.

What does he have to say regarding Claire Squires?

Prohibition leads to organised crime.

Thats true. Perhaps we should legalise Heroin, bank robbery, child pornography, and human trafficking to avoid all the organised crime it leads to.

What a sap. Just looking for attention.

There's more merit to his argument if you apply it to legalising recreational drugs. Sport on the other hand is about feats of human endeavour, not a pharmaceutical showcase.

Where would you draw the line? Elite riders only? Cat 2? Juniors..?

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...as world sports agencies vy for a 'fresh start'...

Clearly road.cc doesn't believe in the journalist's performance enhancer known as the spell checker. Vy? Really? Vie is what I think you meant.

BTW, this "academic" sounds like a real ass. Who uses the expression "fit as a trout" anyway? But then it is hardly surprising to hear such opinions, focusing solely on those who cheated their way to the top, and forgetting the honest workers in the peloton, coming from an Oxford man. That place is stuffed to bursting point with arrogant, winner-takes-all types. It is practically a condition of entry.

"Savulescu, who edits the Journal of Medical Ethics," His motives need to be investigated, and he should be checked for drug use himself, surely his entire train of thought is unethical.

What a prat!

What becomes of riders who do not want to take these risks? Just because it's hard to keep drugs out of the sport doesn't mean the goalposts should move to a different place because it's easier to manage. What makes sport exciting is believing that the events you're watching are humanly possible, as soon as there are doubts about the athletes conduct behind the scenes then it becomes less enjoyable, even if it's legitimised doping, it takes it away from a believable accessible sport, it becomes something else. All it's doing is moving the goalposts, and then the goalposts will have to be moved again when there is no meaningful reference point to police athletes, why do they need to be moved at all?

If doping is to be legitimised I'd like to know how absolute blood doping values influence different cyclists, for example, if a tall cyclists fares better or worse than than a shorter one, if a previously successful non doping cyclist would be dropped from the team if the cyclists responds badly to doping products, or becomes a relatively worse cyclists.

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Savulescu, a world-renowned philosopher and bioethicist, has argued for a decade that prohibition doesn't work but instead promotes links to organised crime.

Why, Savulescu is like totally right. Only last week, I was dodging bullets on Mare Street from rival EPO dealers. To say nothing of the bloody HGH wars in Liverpool and Manchester, chain gangs of lycra-clad, uzi-weilding assassins terrorising the A58 and A579.

Sorry Tony, I reckon you're (sadly literally) dead wrong here. The benefits from EPO and similar drugs stack up with dosage. More EPO = faster riding = more chance of complications from thickening blood etc. Even more EPO = even faster riding = even more chance of complications from thickening blood. Taking your argument to it's logical conclusion it's only a matter of time before we get to the point that several riders die on every big race or grand tour because they got too close to the built-in limits in our bodies.

That may be entertainment to you, but not to me. Nor I suspect to most readers of this website. You do yourself and your readers an injustice with your comments.

No I'm sorry John, but all you have to do is read local newspapers and you'll find regular reports of teen and twenty something (usually males) dying in their sleep or sometimes on the football or rugby pitch, none of whom have anything to do with professional sport. An ostensibly fit 12 year old died of a heart attack playing rugby not that long before Christmas. Indeed, in some sports, Football being one, you will also see more and more reports about young footballers forced to give up the game as more sophisticated health screening reveals hitherto unsuspected congenital heart defects, the sort of thing that probably wouldn't be a problem for most people but which could prove potentially fatal in top level athletes who regularly pushes their body to its limits.

Also as an aside, in Italy where EPO was, and possibly still is, available to use over the counter and where allegedly even gran fondo riders regularly use it - you don't seem to see many reports of them dying, something you used to do.

On the question of whether the races of the 90s and 00s inspired me… not sure that is the right word, I certainly enjoyed and was enthused by them. As Dave Brailsford said professional sport needs to be credible as and entertainment - so the bits that I didn't enjoy were Landis's solo attack in the 2006 Tour and Ricco taking off like a rocket in 2008 because their cheating was so obvious and so obviously going to be caught…although even Ricco was sort of entertaining to watch in a cartoonish sort of way.

I'm not sure that the argument that if PEDs were legal it would be al all about the team with the best drugs for any number of reasons. One practical one being that PEDS all come from drugs that are being developed for clinical use which cost tens of millions to develop, so there is never likely to be some secret wonder drug that one team has. They are all going to be using the same stuff and no cycling team ever is going to be in a position to develop it's own drugs… unless of course Pfizer or Smith Kline or whoever decide to inject some money into the sport by sponsoring teams and putting them on their R&D programs.

The main reason though that the argument that it will become a race between chemists doesn't stack up for me is that the teams that do best will always be the ones with the best riders, support staff and equipment and those teams in the future, as now, will be the ones with the biggest budgets. In professional sport money buys success.

Using PEDs, legal or otherwise, tend to make the race a pharmaceutical contest. Talent will come runner up to the Money-bags who can afford the best laboratory.

This is important because, I mean, can anyone honestly say they feel inspired or uplifted by watching footage of races from the 90s/00s ?

When whatshisface is whizzing up the mountain, I for one don't find myself thinking "wow, that's really inspiring". Instead I just think "Wow, he must've found a particularly pure supply" or "His 'doctor' really deserves a pat on the back."

I agree there may be an argument concerning health risks as pointed out above, but if it becomes a purely pharmeceutical contest then why bother even having the sport at all? May as well watch Robot Wars.

Surely though, EPO isn't injurious to health if you get the dosage right? Micro dosing I'd bet carries only a very slight risk.

Fit young footballers and athletes dying on the field or in their sleep is in most cases to do with undiagnosed heart conditions, a young female swimmer died only last week of just such a condition. In the early days of EPO young riders, and even not so young riders did die in their sleep because they'd got the dosage wrong and their blood became too viscous for their hearts to pump. If you shared a hotel with a cycling team (and many other sports teams too I'm sure) back in the 90s you'd see the odd sight of young men supervised by coaches or doctors running up and down the stairs at 3am just to make sure their blood kept pumping.

Personally I'd say harm reduction and legalisation should be considered - though John raises valid points about the dangers. In my opinion there has never been a golden era in professional sport - certainly not in cycling - all pro sports, have always been about winning at pretty much all costs and pushing the rules in the way that works best for that sport.

One other way to tackle the problem in cycling would be to loosen the UCI's dead hand on technical innovation so that performance gains can be made that way - and they'd also get passed on to the rest of us.

As for dismantling professional sport? That's never going to happen because there's so much money in it and the reason there's so much money is simple - people enjoy watching it dirty or clean. It's just another branch of the entertainment industry.