Antidoping policy regulates and punishes the use of substances that are listed on a Prohibited List (PL). These substances are colloquially known as ‘performance-enhancing substances’. There is very little empirical evidence of enhancement for most of the substances on the PL raising the possibility that the perceived enhancement of performance experienced by an athlete is a placebo effect. A placebo effect is a response to an inert substance that is strongly influenced by psychological and social cues in the surrounding environment. (...) It is our contention that, given the lack of proper empirical testing of the substances on the PL, it is in fact the appearance of a substance on the PL that has the strongest performance-enhancing effect in elite athletes. This disconnect between science and WADA’s code raises the question of what we really object to: real performance enhancement achieved using substances on the PL or performance enhancement that occurs because WADA has told us that the substance will enhance performance by placing it on the PL? In this case, antidoping policy would punish those who believe the performance-enhancing myth at the heart of the PL thus leading to a deeply flawed policy that creates its own victims. (shrink)

The anti-doping policies of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) aim to promote a level playing field and protect the health of the athlete. Anti-doping policy discourages research using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) or methods and prohibits athlete support personnel, including healthcare providers, from providing advice, assistance, or aid to an athlete or others seeking to use, or using PEDs until harm has occurred. Athletes are individually responsible for the presence of a prohibited substance in their bodies and face sanction regardless (...) of knowledge or intent. I will argue (i) that WADA policies fail to meet the epistemic and control conditions needed to adequately assign individual responsibility and (ii) that transferring responsibility for use of PEDs solely to the athlete results in harm. WADA is drifting perilously close to the morally impermissible ‘doing of harm’ to athletes by initiating or sustaining a causal sequence of events that can result in harm. (shrink)