This house would allow doping in sport - closing speeches

3rd proposing speech

Dear ladies and gentlemen, the issue about whether we should allow doping in sports has given rise to several discussions and has become quite a topical issue nowadays. As the third proposer of our team which stands for “This house would allow doping in sports”, I would like to start with a brief summary of what we have discussed up to now. […]

by YH

3rd opposing speech
Everybody admit that one part of athletes use doping. During any kind of sports’ competition, there are always one or two case of doping. The common mainstream is that most athletes are doped, and therefore, in order to offer them a better health control and to re-establish fairness and equity in the competition, we should legalize doping.

And I say No No No! [...]

by HT

3rd proposing speech

Dear ladies and gentlemen, the issue about whether we should allow doping in sports has given rise to several discussions and has become quite a topical issue nowadays. As the third proposer of our team which stands for “This house would allow doping in sports”, I would like to start with a brief summary of what we have discussed up to now.

Our team has firstly clearly pointed out the fact that doping was, is and will be an existing phenomenon in competitive sports that has already exerted considerable influence on fairness in sports. Then we defined specifically to which extent our allowance should support: adult sportsmen under medical surveillance. On top of that, we have provided several arguments showing that under the world’s keen eager to appreciate better physical performance of the mankind, using performance enhancement drugs falls right into place. Our second proposer described our position through a historical eye, which put emphasis again on common presence of doping in nowadays’ world of sports with a strong evidence of La Tour de France. Therefore we think allowing doping in sports has become a necessity in modern sports.

Unfortunately, our opposing team kept fixating on the health risks that come along with using performance enhancement drugs. However, we insist that we are not avoiding the fact that doping leads to health risks, as there’s no reason denying that, the position we stand for is to use them wisely. Most drugs’ side effects such as kidney damage are predictable, hence, controllable. Scientific study shows that with appropriate medical care and diet regulation, side effects from blood doping like the drop of RBC density (increasing blood viscosity) can be recovered in 4 to 6 weeks. As we clearly defined earlier that all doping should be under severe medical surveillance and with athletes own willing to do so. Hereby we think that with enough precaution and reasonable amount of usage, the health risks can be reduced to an affordable level for those who are willing to pay for it to get a better performance.

Evidence that was used by the opposing team was the detection of gene doping. Here we admit that for 2012 London Olympics, the detection of gene doping will come into being. And we admit that there are several effective methods to catch the gene cheats. However it's not contradictory with what we have mentioned about how many drugs or methods which are still undetectable. In fact, it is natural to be harder to find evidence on our side as nobody would publish to the whole world some kind of drug that can pass testing, those who failed do! We can only see this trough historical fact as our second fellow proposer has already mentioned about Armstrong. And for the matter of gene doping, WADA has banned such drug since 2003, but it is only since 2008 and the Repoxygen case that gene doping has been caught. Hereby we have strong reason to believe that the racing game between gene doping and anti-gene doping detection if far from an end. That brings us back to our starting point: better to control than to prohibit, as you can’t actually detect them all.

The opposing team came to their last resort of ethical issues, whether taking drugs would make athletes less popular and for those who did not want to take at first place would be forced to get doped under the pressure of maintaining competitive condition. Well, we should really wake our dear fellow opposing team up from the utopia where only few cheating athletes depend on EPOs to win the game and others obeying their mottos of so-called “pure sports”. The fact is, whether you believe or not, people are taking drugs. We should probably distinguish two very different aspects of sports: the world of sport which we enjoy from TV, and jogging that we do every morning. The world on TV attracts attention, money, fame and all other stuff that people craving for. The increasing audience of sports through all kinds of media has made this cake larger than ever, therefore in order to keep this cake as tempting as usual, people needs passionate breakthrough. As we approaching our natural physical limit (scientific expected 100m for men for 9.50s as the world record now is 9.58s), people will soon realize that before knowing how, drugs will be a part of the achievements that athletes accomplish. Modern sports consist no longer of simple search for men’s limits, but a complex industry. A champion includes not only the athlete’s brilliant performance itself but also with the whole team’s support: coach, doctor, equipments, and drugs are no different than them as a key to success.

Finally, we would like to stay clear of the fact that we stand for allowing doping in sports, not encouraging. It is more like a compromise between the reality of modern sports lying in front of us and the ideal world we used to experience “pure competition”. As we cannot ban them all for good, the rest is to find a most efficient way to regulate it as it can be used properly. That is what our “allowance” truly stands for.

Thank you for being with us for the entire week and hope you can vote for us!

YH

3rd opposing speech
Everybody admit that one part of athletes use doping. During any kind of sports’ competition, there are always one or two case of doping. The common mainstream is that most athletes are doped, and therefore, in order to offer them a better health control and to re-establish fairness and equity in the competition, we should legalize doping.

And I say No No No!

First, I want to highlight the issue of health of athletes in this legalisation. As the proposing team has shown in their speech, competition is very influenced by pharmaceutical companies and sponsorship. Huge amount of money are invested into finding new products, and avoiding anti-doping controls. If we legalize doping, or in other words, if we « open the market » to all pharmaceutical companies, sports competition will become a pharmaceutical competition. Why? Because, as proposing team said, the performance is higher with these products than without these products. So legalization of doping will lead us inevitably to a war of pharmaceutical product. But, doping has already showed his harm on athletes; many athletes died in 1990 after the use of EPO. According to many survey, even in therapeutic use, EPO has huge impact on life expectancy. The proposing team told us that we would help athletes with medical control. I don’t think that would help them; if you look at what happen in several countries after the legalisation of weeds, there is no significant impact on medical control on people. Besides, when you start doping product, you will have to take it even more the next time. You still want to hear the clapping and the shouting of your fans, you still want to be on the top. And so you take even more doping. So, legalising doping will endanger severely athletes.

Moreover, legalising doping will bring more inequalities in sports. Could we say that all the athletes doped? For example, during the Olympic games, can we assume that all the 2,000 athletes running, walking, jumping and throwing, coming from all the corner of the globe, are doped? Of course not! But if we legalize doping, should we impose them doping? Will everybody agree to practice his sport by taking doping? Don’t you think that many religions, such as Christianity and Islam, will ban this kind of practice? We are talking here about something that will inevitably change human body and that will be more difficult to accept by other culture. Furthermore, do you think that in many countries, national team won’t be able to afford to these kind of treatment. Theoretically speaking, there would be equality, but in practice, there will be more and more injustice, because more and more money will be invested in the system.

  
That’s why our team is definitely against the motion. First, doping is harmful, it’s medically proved, and its legalisation won’t solve the problem. Then, we focused on the point its legalisation would be changed the image of sports. Instead of having a global entertainment, which promote moral values, sports will become a savage event. Champion wouldn’t have the same gratifications. Victory will then become a financial issue. Therefore, there won’t be any equality for those nations which don’t have enough money or which don’t want its athletes to be caught into such dilemma.

At least, you may ask us: what do you propose? We propose to increase the number of anti-doping controls and to be more severe in the punishment. These anti-doping controls aren’t 100% efficient, but we have showed that, as time goes by, no medical modifications, such as gene manipulations or new molecules, will be undetectable. If we take the analogy of smoking, everybody agrees now that the image of smoking has changed during this 40 years. We have to change the mainstream about doping as well.

Thank you for reading, and VOTE FOR US

HT