Rethinking Enhancement in Sport

A Pragmatic Approach to Resolving Technological Unfairness: the Case of Nike's Vaporfly and Alphafly Running Footwear

BACKGROUND

Technology is often introduced into sport to facilitate it or to improve human performance within it. On occasion, some forms of novel technology require regulation or prevention entirely to ensure that a sport remains fair and accessible. Recently, the Nike Vaporfly and Alphafly shoes have received some concerns over their appropriateness for use in competitive distance running.

METHODS

This paper evaluates the use of these shoes against an existing framework for sports technology discourse and adopts a pragmatic approach to attempt to resolve them.

RESULTS

It is proposed that the three concerns regarding cost, access and coercion cannot be ruled out but likely remain short-term issues. As a result, it is proposed that these running shoes are acceptable forms of technology but that ongoing vigilance will be required as such technologies develop further in the future.

CONCLUSIONS

The Nike Vaporfly/Alphafly shoes do push the perceived acceptability of running shoes to the limits of the current sports regulations. However, the alleged gains have not manifested themselves to a level that could be considered excessive when reviewing historical performances or when evaluated against a set of well-cited criteria. The sport will need to adopt a stance of ongoing vigilance as such technologies continue to develop or be optimised in the future.

Critical Realism and Empirical Bioethics: A Methodological Exposition

This paper shows how critical realism can be used to integrate empirical data and philosophical analysis within 'empirical bioethics'. The term empirical bioethics, whilst appearing oxymoronic, simply refers to an interdisciplinary approach to the resolution of practical ethical issues within the biological and life sciences, integrating social scientific, empirical data with philosophical analysis. It seeks to achieve a balanced form of ethical deliberation that is both logically rigorous and sensitive to context, to generate normative conclusions that are practically applicable to the problem, challenge, or dilemma. Since it incorporates both philosophical and social scientific components, empirical bioethics is a field that is consistent with the use of critical realism as a research methodology. The integration of philosophical and social scientific approaches to ethics has been beset with difficulties, not least because of the irreducibly normative, rather than descriptive, nature of ethical analysis and the contested relation between fact and value. However, given that facts about states of affairs inform potential courses of action and their consequences, there is a need to overcome these difficulties and successfully integrate data with theory. Previous approaches have been formulated to overcome obstacles in combining philosophical and social scientific perspectives in bioethical analysis; however each has shortcomings. As a mature interdisciplinary approach critical realism is well suited to empirical bioethics, although it has hitherto not been widely used. Here I show how it can be applied to this kind of research and explain how it represents an improvement on previous approaches.

Ethics, Nanobiosensors and Elite Sport: The Need for a New Governance Framework

Individual athletes, coaches and sports teams seek continuously for ways to improve performance and accomplishment in elite competition. New techniques of performance analysis are a crucial part of the drive for athletic perfection. This paper discusses the ethical importance of one aspect of the future potential of performance analysis in sport, combining the field of biomedicine, sports engineering and nanotechnology in the form of 'Nanobiosensors'. This innovative technology has the potential to revolutionise sport, enabling real time biological data to be collected from athletes that can be electronically distributed. Enabling precise real time performance analysis is not without ethical problems. Arguments concerning (1) data ownership and privacy; (2) data confidentiality; and (3) athlete welfare are presented alongside a discussion of the use of the Precautionary Principle in making ethical evaluations. We conclude, that although the future potential use of Nanobiosensors in sports analysis offers many potential benefits, there is also a fear that it could be abused at a sporting system level. Hence, it is essential for sporting bodies to consider the development of a robust ethically informed governance framework in advance of their proliferated use.

The controversy of sports technology: a systematic review

Changes or introductions of technology or equipment can affect how a sport is played or influence its performances. This article conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature to identify any case studies of controversial events surrounding the implementation or use of sports technology. 56 articles were identified that highlighted 31 different case studies found over a three decade time period. Thematic analysis revealed six distinctive themes when reviewing the articles. Whilst the sport of golf had the highest number of case studies, it was found that a significant level of attention had been recorded in the cases of Oscar Pistorius use of prosthetic legs in athletics and the use of full length swimsuits in swimming. The trend surrounding the number of articles was shown to be initially intermittent but saw a peak period from 2008 to 2010. However, the frequency of such articles since this peak has been more consistent. It is proposed that long periods of time without intervention or resolution by a governing body often increases the peer-reviewed attention paid to such cases in examples such as those identified in this systematic review.

In sport and social justice, is genetic enhancement a game changer?

The possibility of genetic enhancement to increase the likelihood of success in sport and life's prospects raises questions for accounts of sport and theories of justice. These questions obviously include the fairness of such enhancement and its relationship to the goals of sport and demands of justice. Of equal interest, however, is the effect on our understanding of individual effort, merit, and desert of either discovering genetic contributions to components of such effort or recognizing the influence of social factors on the development and exercise of individual effort. This paper analyzes arguments about genetic enhancement with the goal of raising questions about how sport and justice regard unchosen, undeserved inequalities and what is assumed to be their opposite-namely, the exercise and results of individual effort. It is suggested that contemplating enhancement of natural assets previously outside human control may reinforce recognition of responsibility to intervene with regard to social advantages so as to support individual effort and improve individuals' life prospects.

Therapeutic bodily assistive devices and paralympic athlete expectations in winter sport

OBJECTIVE

To ascertain the impact of therapeutic bodily assistive devices that enable beyond-the-normal body abilities on sport in general and the Paralympics and Olympics in particular.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional survey.

SETTING

Online.

PARTICIPANTS

Members of the National Council on Rehabilitation Education (United States). Distribution of online survey link to membership.

ASSESSMENT OF RISK FACTORS

The survey used a combination of 37 simple yes or no, Likert scale, and opinion rating scale questions. This article is based on 4 of the 37 questions that focus on the impact of therapeutic enhancements on various aspects of sport.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Whether respondents felt that there is an impact of therapeutic bodily assistive devices that enable beyond-the-normal body abilities on the participation of people with disabilities in sport of all levels and the self-identity of athletes with disabilities. Secondary outcome measure was what the respondents felt the impact may be.

RESULTS

The respondents indicated that therapeutic bodily assistive devices, which enable beyond-the-normal body abilities, will have an impact on participation of people with disabilities in sport at all levels and on the self-identity of athletes with disabilities.

CONCLUSIONS

Given the result that the respondents felt that therapeutic enhancements will impact various aspects of sport, it may be prudent to initiate a broader discourse around therapeutic enhancement and to revise codes of ethics so that they give guidance on this topic.

Gene doping: the hype and the harm

"Gene doping" is the term used to describe the potential abuse of gene therapy as a performance-enhancing agent. Gene doping would apply the techniques used in gene therapy to provide altered expression of genes that would promote physical superiority. For example, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) is a primary target for growth hormone; overexpression of IGF-1 can lead to increased muscle mass and power. Although gene doping is still largely theoretical, its implications for sports, health, ethics, and medical genetics are significant.

Philosophy on steroids: why the anti-doping position could use a little enhancement

There is currently much concern over the use of pharmaceuticals and other biomedical techniques to enhance athletic performance--a practice we might refer to as doping. Many justifications of anti-doping efforts claim that doping involves a serious moral transgression. In this article, I review a number of arguments in support of that claim, but show that they are not conclusive, suggesting that we do not have good reasons for thinking that doping is wrong.

Potential Use of Gene Transfer in Athletic Performance Enhancement

After only a short history of three decades from concept to practice, gene therapy has recently been shown to have potential to treat serious human diseases. Despite this success, gene therapy remains in the realm of experimental medicine, and much additional preclinical and clinical study will be necessary for proving the efficacy and safety of this approach in the treatment of diseases in humans. However, a potential complicating factor is that advances in gene transfer technology could be misused to enhance athletic performance in sports, in a practice termed "gene doping". Moreover, gene doping could be a precursor to a broader controversial agenda of human "genetic enhancement" with the potential for a significant long-term impact on society. This review addresses the possible ways in which knowledge and experience gained in gene therapy in animals and humans may be abused for enhancing sporting prowess. We provide an overview of recent progress in gene therapy, with potential application to gene doping and with the major focus on candidate performance-enhancement genes. We also discuss the current status of preclinical studies and of clinical trials that use these genes for therapeutic purposes. Current knowledge about the association between the natural "genetic make-up" of humans and their physical characteristics and performance potential is also presented. We address issues associated with the safety of gene transfer technologies in humans, especially when used outside a strictly controlled clinical setting, and the obstacles to translating gene transfer strategies from animal studies to humans. We also address the need for development and implementation of measures to prevent abuse of gene transfer technologies, and to pursue research on strategies for its detection in order to discourage this malpractice among athletes.