Hastings Center News

What’s Actually Wrong with Sports Doping?

What’s actually wrong with doping—if all athletes had access to the same performance-enhancing drugs, wouldn’t that make competitions fair?  If the purpose of sport is to maximize performance, shouldn’t we welcome technologies that do that? How should the values that give our lives meaning shape how, and whether, we use biomedical “enhancements”?

These are among the questions that will be discussed at Good Sport: Why Our Games Matter and How Doping Undermines Them, a talk by Thomas H. Murray, President Emeritus of The Hastings Center, about his recent book of the same name. The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place on Saturday, April 27 at 4 PM at The Hastings Center in Garrison, N.Y. A light reception will follow the event.

Murray is a leading expert on the ethics of doping in sports and a former chair of the ethical issues review panel for the World Anti-Doping Agency. His book, Good Sport — Why Our Games Matter, and How Doping Undermines Them, was published in 2018.

RSVP to events@thehastingscenter.org; space is limited.

Listen to Murray in conversation with Hastings Center president Mildred Solomon on why some performance-enhancing technologies are acceptable, and others are not, on The Hastings Center’s podcast, Hastings Conversations.