athletic commissions, doping, from a scientific and philosophical perspective

[special_k]

I'll try to make this short. First of all, I work in an endocrinology lab with steroids on lab animals, and am fairly confident I understand steroid physiology, and physiology in general, better than anyone in any state athletic commission.
I want to make 2 points, the first one being that the nature of steroids and physiology and any drug or substance is such that any rules as to what is allowed, disallowed, and what levels are the cut off points from what kind of testing, is subjective and irrational. There are physiological situations where someone could have more active steroid in tissues but less in the blood, making a blood test show nothing at the point of greatest action. The commissions have already shown themselves incompetent vis a vis testing and test interpretation. Even lab scientists might disagree about this stuff, let alone state bureaucrats. It is also possible for someone to have a physiology, maybe from a genetic mutation, that would cause them to be producing higher levels of steroids or the target metabolites of these tests and therefore be illegal to compete. Someone could have a physiology that gives them the downstream benefits of those steroids without the metabolites showing up in their blood at high levels. There is no objective way to measure any of this, and the dopers will always be ahead of the testers. Don't we all know pretty much everyone is taking something? The general public knows this yet continues to allow bureaucrats to control this sport and shut down anticipated events based on their hunches, hunches of previously mistaken entities. The whole concept of anti-doping is predicated on static technology, it is eminently possible that in the near future a treatment will be discovered to give anabolic effects with magnetic fields or some other process that is essentially untestable.
In the face of this ridiculous situation governments will always increase their budgets and control and deliver the same poor results that make no one happy. Which brings me to my second point, which is to question why adults engaging in a voluntary business and sport interaction should be governed by bureaucrats any way. At a practical level we can see the problems, but at a philosophical level it seems strange that Americans who just celebrated the 4th of July would be comfortable with an all-powerful, unaccountable entity telling what they as consumers, the fighters as entertainers and the promoters as business men can do voluntarily with each other regarding their bodies and their property. Does anyone think that if an athletic commission totally messed up and caused bodily harm to people they would disband, or fire all of their employees and start over? Look at the Nick Diaz situation, they obviously acted with malice towards him in an unaccountable way, doing something nobody other than they themselves wanted to have done. No one in their right mind thinks marijuana use should legally disallow an athlete from competing in a voluntary competition. Really step back and think about that for a second, the position of these bureaucrats is that if you do something they say you can't do, like if Diaz just signed for another fight with the UFC against their ban, the implication is that they would show up with armed police and physically prevent him from competing, and if he resisted I suppose they would kill him. That is what supporting an agency or a law means, that you approve of the use of violent force against violators of their rules.
Sorry this was so long, but from a scientific perspective and a broader freedom philosophy the very existence of an athletic commission in the vein of what exists now is irrational and morally wrong. Instead of arguing whether this or that substance should be allowed at this or that level, fans should take a step back and question the basis of these rules and, I hope, popularize the idea of phasing out these immoral agencies.

 

[wildgriffin]

well, at least you tried to make it short.

 

[awymore]

Being a libertarian myself, I appreciate your rationale here, but any competition has to have a baseline set of rules to establish at least a semblance of a level playing field. We would not for instance go to a track and field event and expect to see one runner with a jetpack strapped to his back. If fighters were allowed to ingest whatever they wanted regardless of the health risks involved, it puts fighters who don't want to die of liver or heart problems later at a severe disadvantage. The rules then are not put there to curtail somebody's freedom but to ensure a large enough pool of willing participants.

As with any bureaucracy though, you will eventually see rules that simply make no sense along with arbitrary decision making. It's like gardening. If you water the garden, you know that weeds are going to pop up. You don't just stop watering though. You have to be diligent and continually pluck those weeds. Keeping bureaucracy in check is a full time job.

 

[special_k]

Being a libertarian myself, I appreciate your rationale here, but any competition has to have a baseline set of rules to establish at least a semblance of a level playing field. We would not for instance go to a track and field event and expect to see one runner with a jetpack strapped to his back.

The essential mistake in your logic is assuming that the government is the entity that should create the rules. That is the same statement as "monopolized violent force should create the rules." Spontaneous institutions would pop up to fill in the gaps left by the inefficient and immoral government ones. These already exist in some areas of medicine and science but are never discussed as being better alternatives, even though they are. Most people can't wrap their heads around voluntary institutions because they were brought up in government schools. No surprise.
Also, I question the supposed health effects of these substances. It's not as simple as "take steroids, get heart disease." There are a lot worse things people can do to themselves than taking testosterone for athletic performance.
You will never stop the behavior with government rules, only change it, just as anti-drug laws will never stop drug importation, production or use. It just changes the behavior to avoidance and many times more dangerous things, just like black market drugs can be more dangerous because they are concentrated to make shipping more safe and efficient.

 

[Hans Gruber]

Being a libertarian myself, I appreciate your rationale here, but any competition has to have a baseline set of rules to establish at least a semblance of a level playing field. We would not for instance go to a track and field event and expect to see one runner with a jetpack strapped to his back. If fighters were allowed to ingest whatever they wanted regardless of the health risks involved, it puts fighters who don't want to die of liver or heart problems later at a severe disadvantage. The rules then are not put there to curtail somebody's freedom but to ensure a large enough pool of willing participants.

As with any bureaucracy though, you will eventually see rules that simply make no sense along with arbitrary decision making. It's like gardening. If you water the garden, you know that weeds are going to pop up. You don't just stop watering though. You have to be diligent and continually pluck those weeds. Keeping bureaucracy in check is a full time job.

^^^^^^^^^
Only guy that read all that

 

[ReasonableMMAFan]

Sports need an equal playing field. You can't have someone come in super jacked to the brim with steroids and Mexican supplements fight someone who is a natural, because it isn't fair. Random, out of competition testing is necessary for this reason alone. Should it all be regaled by the state? Maybe not. But there needs to be regulations.

 

[Kowboy Karl]

The nfl can barely catch 2 percent of the admitted marijuana users

They should just ask Cormier do you still wanna fight this guy?

Fine jones and all the others beyond belief. See if he still wants to fight for 10k while the rest goes to Cormier or something ridiculous.

Let the show go on

 

[awymore]

The essential mistake in your logic is assuming that the government is the entity that should create the rules. That is the same statement as "monopolized violent force should create the rules." Spontaneous institutions would pop up to fill in the gaps left by the inefficient and immoral government ones. These already exist in some areas of medicine and science but are never discussed as being better alternatives, even though they are. Most people can't wrap their heads around voluntary institutions because they were brought up in government schools. No surprise.
Also, I question the supposed health effects of these substances. It's not as simple as "take steroids, get heart disease." There are a lot worse things people can do to themselves than taking testosterone for athletic performance.
You will never stop the behavior with government rules, only change it, just as anti-drug laws will never stop drug importation, production or use. It just changes the behavior to avoidance and many times more dangerous things, just like black market drugs can be more dangerous because they are concentrated to make shipping more safe and efficient.

Oh I don't think that government is necessarily the best organization to determine what is a level playing field in sports. In fact, as your example of Nate Diaz shows, having the government do it can lead to pushing agendas that have nothing to do with sports. It probably would have been better for the UFC to do the drug testing themselves, but I would think the UFC chose to use USADA as a cost saving measure as opposed to running their own testing facilities as the NFL does.

 

[special_k]

I believe everyone would be surprised at the creative regulations and ideas that come about when you take the involuntary nature of government control out of the picture. Fans and athletes would demand a quality product and control for their safety, and promoters would respond. As long as the government is involved different things cannot be tried to see which one works the best, everyone is forced to adopt standardized rules based on nothing but the whims of unelected bureaucrats. Imagine if that's how smart phones were developed.

 

[Strange Shadows]

UFC let them into the party based upon a reaction, or a series of reactions over the years, that their consumer base exhibited. in other words, the fans wanted such testing to take place; the UFC, in turn, set forth. . . establishing a new [but old] policy for all their independent contractors (FIGHTERS). there are many organisations in the world where you can smoke weed freely and take PEDs, so exercise your freedom -- choose to fight elsewhere.

there is no philosophical level, only existence. you just are, because you are, and these so-called lurid agencies are just a reaction to us all, homie; they are US.

although i am a fan of nick diaz, the guy operates with [more of] an external locus of control. he just bounces off of everything. everyone is to blame: the people, the system, society. he's a self-starter with regard to his training, but the rest of his life is questionable (much like our own), and so -- bad example.

diaz could've stayed with DREAM and fought 10+ times, smoked weed, whatever, but he signed a contract with SF. that's business.

accept your own realities if you're going to live in this created one. man the fuck up. man the fuck up, brent.

 

[Μίλων ο Κροτωνιάτης]

I'll try to make this short. First of all, I work in an endocrinology lab with steroids on lab animals, and am fairly confident I understand steroid physiology, and physiology in general, better than anyone in any state athletic commission.
I want to make 2 points, the first one being that the nature of steroids and physiology and any drug or substance is such that any rules as to what is allowed, disallowed, and what levels are the cut off points from what kind of testing, is subjective and irrational. There are physiological situations where someone could have more active steroid in tissues but less in the blood, making a blood test show nothing at the point of greatest action. The commissions have already shown themselves incompetent vis a vis testing and test interpretation. Even lab scientists might disagree about this stuff, let alone state bureaucrats. It is also possible for someone to have a physiology, maybe from a genetic mutation, that would cause them to be producing higher levels of steroids or the target metabolites of these tests and therefore be illegal to compete. Someone could have a physiology that gives them the downstream benefits of those steroids without the metabolites showing up in their blood at high levels. There is no objective way to measure any of this, and the dopers will always be ahead of the testers. Don't we all know pretty much everyone is taking something? The general public knows this yet continues to allow bureaucrats to control this sport and shut down anticipated events based on their hunches, hunches of previously mistaken entities. The whole concept of anti-doping is predicated on static technology, it is eminently possible that in the near future a treatment will be discovered to give anabolic effects with magnetic fields or some other process that is essentially untestable.
In the face of this ridiculous situation governments will always increase their budgets and control and deliver the same poor results that make no one happy. Which brings me to my second point, which is to question why adults engaging in a voluntary business and sport interaction should be governed by bureaucrats any way. At a practical level we can see the problems, but at a philosophical level it seems strange that Americans who just celebrated the 4th of July would be comfortable with an all-powerful, unaccountable entity telling what they as consumers, the fighters as entertainers and the promoters as business men can do voluntarily with each other regarding their bodies and their property. Does anyone think that if an athletic commission totally messed up and caused bodily harm to people they would disband, or fire all of their employees and start over? Look at the Nick Diaz situation, they obviously acted with malice towards him in an unaccountable way, doing something nobody other than they themselves wanted to have done. No one in their right mind thinks marijuana use should legally disallow an athlete from competing in a voluntary competition. Really step back and think about that for a second, the position of these bureaucrats is that if you do something they say you can't do, like if Diaz just signed for another fight with the UFC against their ban, the implication is that they would show up with armed police and physically prevent him from competing, and if he resisted I suppose they would kill him. That is what supporting an agency or a law means, that you approve of the use of violent force against violators of their rules.
Sorry this was so long, but from a scientific perspective and a broader freedom philosophy the very existence of an athletic commission in the vein of what exists now is irrational and morally wrong. Instead of arguing whether this or that substance should be allowed at this or that level, fans should take a step back and question the basis of these rules and, I hope, popularize the idea of phasing out these immoral agencies.

In short:
I have the knowledge
1. Steroidstest are not valid because too inefficient
2. Self determination or free will for athletes regarding their bodies
Ergo: Fuck the paternalistic bureaucrats and Usada, let them bang on juice!

 

[special_k]

there is no philosophical level, only existence. you just are, because you are, and these so-called lurid agencies are just a reaction to us all, homie; they are US.

State institutions are the people? So the Jews committed suicide during the Holocaust? People throw themselves into jail for possession of drugs? These agencies exist to parasitize the productive sector of society. You will notice that they didn't take over command of the sport until it became professional and dealt with money, allowing fleecing to occur.
And the reaction of the public to crack down on doping is partly a government mindset, that someone other than the parties themselves needs to be "in charge," and partly an ignorant view point from government propaganda about certain substances. Serotonin, for example, is much more dangerous than testosterone but no one thinks that because of what they are told by the authorities.

 

[platypus44]

As I understand it, the argument is that some supplements have: 1. positive effects of performance but 2. serious negative side effects. Allowing some athletes to use the substance would force all to use it in order to achieve parity and therefore require all athletes to expose themselves to the negative side effects. Therefore, an effort must be made to control those substances.
The testing doesn't have to be perfect. Part of its effect is to deter non-compliance and it can have this deterrent effect even if it is less than perfect.

 

[BJ@LW&WW]

no real paragraphs, smell bs in the first two sentences, white belch:

tldr.

 

[rjmbrd]

1) Paragraphs are important

2) WADA accredited labs have a more credibility than those who work with lab animals

3) THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ATHLETIC COMMISSIONS

 

[special_k]

1) Paragraphs are important

2) WADA accredited labs have a more credibility than those who work with lab animals

3) THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ATHLETIC COMMISSIONS

1) ok
2) To who? What is the educational background of these WADA workers? Do they publish papers in academic journals about endocrinology and physiology? Or do they just have B.S. degrees and some lab tech experience, and follows orders and look at the numbers on a reference paper for amounts of substances in samples?
3) Yes it does, my whole point is that athletic commissions are just another example of the government forcing itself into the role of something when it's not the best way to do it. How do you know it's not the best? Because if it was they would allow competition.

 

[special_k]

Allowing some athletes to use the substance would force all to use it in order to achieve parity and therefore require all athletes to expose themselves to the negative side effects. Therefore, an effort must be made to control those substances.

1) I'm not advocating allowing this or that, rather that the government should not be involved in telling athletes or anyone what they can or can't put in their bodies.
2) MMA athletes don't have to use anything, nor do they have to be MMA athletes, if they don't want to. No one has the right to "achieve parity." Maybe training more is bad for your health long term, but better for short term performance. Does that mean people should not be allowed to train past a certain amount?

 

[platypus44]

1) I'm not advocating allowing this or that, rather that the government should not be involved in telling athletes or anyone what they can or can't put in their bodies.
2) MMA athletes don't have to use anything, nor do they have to be MMA athletes, if they don't want to. No one has the right to "achieve parity." Maybe training more is bad for your health long term, but better for short term performance. Does that mean people should not be allowed to train past a certain amount?

How would you feel about a group of athletes who decided to form a league in which they would all agree not to use certain substances and would agree to testing in order to enforce the arrangement? Should the government intervene and prevent them from forming such a league? Would it be a rational thing to do? Would you rather compete in this league or an open league with no restrictions.
Is there any PED that you can conceive of for which you would support a government ban? Suppose there was a substance which virtually guaranteed you would win a certain competition but also guaranteed that you would die within 5 years - would you allow its use? Would you participate in a league where its use was permitted?

 

[touchedbyjab]

tl/dr

Then i looked at the replies to figure out what you posted and even they were too long. So im out of this thread.