BIOETHICS

Is Michael Phelps A Sonic Doper?

(Listening to an iPod Is Like Taking Drugs)

Imagine you have qualified for the Olympics and are walking down a Beijing street the day before your event, when a vendor gives you a covert signal to come closer. You approach warily as he opens a flap of his trench coat, revealing something half tucked into an inside pocket.

“Pssst,” he says. “You want to win gold? Guaranteed to help. And perfectly legal.”

“What is it?” you ask, as he shows you a mysterious device, smaller than a credit card and with wires dangling from it.

“Intracranial transducers,’” he says in practiced English, pointing to the ends of the wires. “Stick them in your ears and they focus the brain, increase blood oxygen, prepare muscles for action. Made here in China.”

“So it’s a doping device!” you say with disgust.

“No, no,” the man exclaims in a hoarse whisper, looking around to make sure no one else has heard your incriminating comment. “Like I said, totally legal.”

“So what is it called?” you ask.

He looks askance again, then leans over and whispers in your ear: “‘iPod,’” he says. “We call it ‘iPod.’ It worked for Phelps. It can work for you.”

***

It is now a widely known fact that Michael Phelps, winner of a record-breaking eight gold medals in this year’s Olympics, is an iPod fanatic. In the minutes before diving into the pool, those trademark white wires were almost invariably hanging from his ears. He has confessed at various times to using tunes by Eminem, Young Jeezy, Lil’ Wayne and Jay-Z to motivate him and enhance his concentration.

When broken down to its mechanical elements, an iPod is nothing more, and nothing less, than what my hypothetical Chinese huckster was pitching—a device that transduces electrical energy into acoustical energy, namely music.

You see where I am going with this. And before I go any further, why don’t you get it out of your system? Let me have it. I know what’s coming because soon after I began to wonder about the parallels between iPoding and doping, an Israel-based medical doctor and scientist with whom I have communicated occasionally in the past—Alexei Koudinov, who among other things edits an online scientific publication called The Doping Journal—sent me a blog in which he raised the same issue. And that blog, I saw, had led to instant and effusive derision by his online readers.

“Who pays this guy to think up things like this?” one respondent wrote, after Koudinov argued the undoubtedly extreme case that Phelps should give up his medals. Others called the idea that music should be classified as a performance enhancer “asinine,” “silliness,” “a crock,” “ridiculous,” and “mean-spirited.”

One clever commentator claimed that “The writer of the article is qualified
to write for that [Doping] Journal: He is a Dope!” Another, less clever, called Koudinov’s posting “a waste of ink.” In fact, as with most online postings, no ink was involved.

But let’s pursue the idea a bit further. When broken down to its mechanical elements, an iPod is nothing more, and nothing less, than what my hypothetical Chinese huckster was pitching—a device that transduces electrical energy into acoustical energy, namely music. And as everyone knows, music can have profound psychological and physiological effects. It can relax a listener. It can anger or enthrall. It can excavate deep emotions and energy.

If that is not specific enough, consider research published in the Journal of Nursing Research in 2003, which showed that hospitalized infants who had music played for them had significantly higher oxygen levels in their blood than other babies . Now consider that the 2008 World Anti-Doping Code of the World Anti-Doping Agency, in Article M1 under the category of “Prohibited Methods,” bans methods of “artificially enhancing the uptake, transport or delivery of oxygen….”

I suppose this raises the interesting legal and philosophical question of what is “artificial.” In the words of one especially cynical blogger: “As just about everyone knows, breathing increases blood oxygenation. Should this also be considered illegal?” I won’t go that far. But even if normal breathing is acceptable, what about the arguably less-natural activities known as deep breathing or stretching or limbering up?

Moreover, music can affect more than mere oxygen levels. Koudinov cites research by Stefan Koelsch of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, who has published research on biological responses to music. According to Koelsch, music can induce biochemical “relaxing effects.” Given all the talk during this year’s Olympics about the risks and downsides of “having the jitters,” which can throw even the best of gymnasts off their balance beams, relaxation is clearly a big potential benefit.

Yet anti-jitter drugs, such as beta blockers, are expressly prohibited in many Olympic sports (including marksmanship, as evidenced last week when the North Korean Olympic shooter Kim Jong Su was stripped of his silver and bronze medals after blood tests came up positive for propranolol, which can slow a heart that is racing from nervousness and, in so doing, reduce anxiety and enhance concentration).

Phelps may even have received a double benefit by yanking out his ear buds in the last minute or two before competing. Research published in 2005 suggests that intense music followed by a sudden silent pause may be just the ticket for someone poised at the edge of an Olympic pool, since the music itself can boost arousal and the sudden silence that follows can induce, in handy sequence, a wave of relaxation.

“Music, especially in trained subjects, may first concentrate attention during faster rhythms, then induce relaxation during pauses,” that study concluded.

Now that the tomatoes are well on their way to my e-podium, let me tell you that I raise these points not to call for an end to music at the Olympics, much less for an end to respiration, oxygenating though both may be. Rather my goal here is to make a distinction between the rationales that many in the anti-doping community use to justify their anti-doping efforts and the single rationale that, in my opinion, is the only one that stands up to real scrutiny.

The arguments against doping come down to two major moralistic themes:

1) Doping is not fair because it rewards those who artificially augment their abilities instead of rewarding what sports are supposed to be about, namely hard work and perseverance.

2) Doping often carries health risks and we should not encourage or inspire people to put their health at risk, and we should especially not inspire children—who are known to worship sports heroes—to take such risks.

By my analysis, No. 1 falls apart because, the Declaration of Independence notwithstanding, all men and women are not created equal. No amount of training is going to make me a gold medal sprinter or swimmer. Some folks have extraordinary genetic potential (indeed, the Chinese seem very good at picking them out early and incarcerating them in training camps). Others are born into environmental privilege, including access to coaches or high-tech running shoes (which are legal, while artificial spring-loaded prosthetic feet are not, of course). The Olympics do not exclude the genetic and environmental Haves out of a concern for fairness to the Have-nots like me. All are invited to compete as though equal, even though we know which group is going to win. So what is so morally obvious about the need to exclude the Have-drugs out of fairness to the Have-no- or Use-no-drugs?

No. 2 falls apart because society already allows adults to take risks as long as they understand them. (Or purport to understand them. Consider the case of Fort Lauderdale kite-boarder Kevin Kearney, whose decision to make sport of Tropical Storm Faye’s recent winds resulted in his getting tossed hundreds of yards through the air before being slammed against a building and hospitalized in critical condition. Arguably stupid, but not illegal.) As for influencing kids, well, the law allows adults to do all kinds of stuff that’s a bad influence on kids—smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, engage in unprotected intercourse. Allowing adult athletes to dope does not mean that kids must ethically be allowed to do the same.

No, there are no moral reasons to oppose music, meditation, or methamphetamine in sports. But there is one water-tight reason, and it is a reason that will resonate with every kid who grew up with a parent. The reason, in short, is, “Because I said so.” Not because an individual “I” said so, of course, but because those who have been elevated to the status of rulemakers have agreed on the rule. And that is that.

As Gary Wadler, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Prohibited List and Methods Committee explained at a recent Center for American Progress event on athletic enhancement and reiterated in a later interview: “These things are arbitrary. But people settle on a set of rules.”

There is no moral reason why the distance from home plate to first base must be 90 feet, Wadler said, but people have agreed on that distance. And unless and until the rules get changed, that’s the way it’s going to be. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to play. But if you do play, that’s a rule you’ll have to follow.

It may sound shallow and less convincing than relying on some grand ethical theory of fair play and the quest for human excellence. And let’s face it: nothing was more irritating than hearing one’s parent fall back on the seemingly lame comeback of “Because I said so.” Surely our “Whys?” deserved better than that.

But it is good to remember—especially in these times of great religious and moral fervor, when presidential candidates feel oppressively obliged to affirm their belief in Christ as their personal savior and presidents invoke disproportionately righteous reasons for going to war—that not every decision is, in fact, a big fat moral decision. Sometimes we should just do things because those are the rules we have agreed upon. Because, for example, the Constitution says so, or the laws passed by our representatives in Congress say so. Removing the fatty cover of moral certitude when morality is not, in fact, the best argument for action would simplify life, make us more honest and, perhaps most important, put us more in the habit of acting on the basis of evidence rather than on received wisdom and protestations of personal piety.

You question that? Well too bad. When you’re in my column space, you play by my rules.

Now go to bed.

Rick Weiss is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Science Progress.

Tags: bioethics, enhancement

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