Letter to the Editors - The Prohibited List and Cheating in Sport

Dear Editors,

In 2000 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) handed over its leading role in the fight against doping in sport to the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), founded in 1999. Although the basis of the doping List also aims at protecting the athlete's health, it should be acknowledged that several sport disciplines do involve acute, serious danger to health. Doping is generally considered to be synonymous with cheating in sport, rather than detrimental for health, and it is widely assumed that substances on the WADA Prohibited List [[28]] have performance enhancing properties [[12], [20]]. However this is not always the case. According to the WADA Code any substance or method that meets any two of the three following criteria can be included on the Prohibited List: (1) performance enhancement, (2) health risk, and (3) violation of the spirit of sport. Although the spirit of sport partly duplicates the two other criteria, without this criterion methods like gene doping would be difficult to ban, since they may enhance performance but may not be hazardous to health. Since gene manipulation with the intention to improve performance may create an uneven playing field, it is against the spirit of sport and should be banned.

In the present World Anti-Doping Code the three “inclusion criteria” are given equal weight. As a consequence substances that have neither performance enhancing nor masking properties are finding their way onto the Prohibited List. Since doping has always been considered in the first instance as cheating (by the use of drugs to unfairly enhance performance), it could be argued that performance enhancement should be the primary criterion, with at least one of the two other criteria required before a substance can be included on the List [[17]]. As most agree that some substances on the List are not performance enhancing but raise medical or attitude concerns, these concerns should not be treated like doping offences, but should be dealt with differently.

There is scientific evidence to show that some groups of substances on the Prohibited List may be performance enhancing, while also meeting at least one of the two other criteria [[9], [11], [16]]. However, for some other groups of substances, performance enhancement is not that clear cut. According to the WADA Code, the decision to include a substance (or method) on the Prohibited List for performance enhancement or health reasons should be based on medical or other scientific evidence, and in cases where no direct scientific evidence is available, expert consensus and known pharmacological effects should be taken into consideration.

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