The Pros And Cons Of Blood Doping

It would be hard to come across a sport that did not have at least one scandal involving a performance-enhancing drug. Alex Rodriguez was suspended from playing baseball for an entire season for using human growth hormone. More recently, Peyton Manning was accused of using the same drug. HGH is not the only performance-enhancing drug on the market though. In the cycling community, one specific type of performance enhancer is king, blood doping. Blood doping is the misuse of certain techniques or substances to increase the number of red blood cells circulating through the blood stream (“Blood doping”). By increasing your red blood cell count, you increase the amount of oxygen your body is capable of moving to your muscles. A single red blood cell contains about 250 million molecules of hemoglobin and each molecule of hemoglobin binds four oxygen molecules to transport to muscles (Bowers). Naturally, increasing the number of red blood cells increases the total amount of oxygen delivered to cells. When …show more content…
Blood doping is just another form of cheating. Cheating should not be tolerated in any form in professional sports. The beauty of sports is that these people, professional athletes, dedicate their entire lives to working hard and competing against one another to the best of their ability. Winners should be those who worked the hardest, had the most skill, and the best performance. The legality of blood doping would poison that notion and the winner would become the person with the best pharmacist or transfusions. The president of a bioethics foundation, Thomas Murray is an amateur cyclist who is an anti-doping advocate. He says, “I could probably do a four-mile climb much better with EPO, but I could also do it much better if I put a motor on my bike.” (Thompson, 2012) Aside from the nasty side effects of blood doping, drugs should not be the focus of professional sports and should remain