lbb

The ostensible purpose of regulating and banning performance enhancing drugs, and the justification behind the considerable invasions of privacy that are supposedly needed to support that, is to prevent a situation where the use and effectiveness of harmful performance-enhancing substances and practices was such that athletes had to use them in order to have a chance of winning. It is not and never has been to create the "level playing field" that comes up so often in casual discussion of these issues, or to remove any and all "unfair advantages". An athlete who has a government subsidy that allows him/her to train full-time has an "unfair advantage" over one who does not, yet that doesn't have WADA up in arms, nor are they frothing at the mouth to "level the playing field" between athletes who can afford the best nutrition (certainly good food is a performance-enhancing substance) and those who can't. The sole objective was to eliminate this situation in which athletes would be pressured to harm themselves in order to win, and the only justification was to improve and safeguard athletes' welfare.

In its current state, WADA is hopelessly corrupt. I don't mean "corrupt" in the usual sense people use the term, of people in positions of power who abuse their authority in return for payments or favors. I mean corrupt in the sense that they have completely lost sight of their original purpose. The goal has long since shifted from athlete welfare into the extension and perpetuation of WADA's authority (and, no doubt, some well-paying jobs for certain individuals). Their statements are telling: when an athlete is "caught", we are treated to a sorrowful sanctimonious lecture about "fairness" -- which, after all, makes a better fig leaf (simpler and more well-understood by the masses) than what their original purpose was (too complicated, that concept), and is a lot better than the truth. Nowadays, WADA does what it does because it can and because it will help WADA. Whether these actions do anything whatsoever to help athletes is highly debatable. Anyone who willingly accepts WADA's overlordship is a natural-born fool.