Drugs in sport are big news and the use of
performance-enhancing drugs in sport is common. Here,
Chris Cooper, a top biochemist at the University of
Essex, looks at the science behind drugs in sport. Using
the performance of top athletes, Cooper begins by
outlining the limits of human performance. Showing the
basic problems of human biochemistry, physiology, and
anatomy, he looks at what stops us running faster,
throwing longer, or jumping higher. Using these
evidence-based arguments he shows what the body can, and
cannot, do. There is much curiosity about why certain
substances are used, how they are detected, and whether
they truly have an effect on the body. Cooper explains
how these drugs work and the challenges of testing for
them, putting in to context whether the 'doping' methods
of choice are worth the risk or the effort. Exploring
the moral, political, and ethical issues involved in
controlling drug use, Cooper addresses questions such as
'What is cheating?', 'What compounds are legal and
why?', 'Why do the classification systems change all the
time?', and 'Should all chemicals be legal, and what
effect would this have on sport?'.Looking forward, he
examines the recent work to study the physical
limitations of rat and mice behaviour. He shows that,
remarkably, simple genetic experiments producing
'supermice' suggest that there may be ways of improving
human performance too, raising ethical and moral
questions for the future of sport. |
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