Sports & surgery: When does it become cheating?
Today I read about Simona Halep's alledged breast reduction. It reminded me of stuff like Tiger Woods' LASIK treatment and reports of improved pitching ability of baseball players who had undergone elbow surgery. It even made me think about the metal in Lance Armstrong's shoulder.
So many people are talking about doping and blood controls, but apparently it's common practice to resort to surgery that improves your performance in a chosen field of sports. And it's not only to fix you up quicker after an accident.
Somehow I can't see anything wrong with the use of metal to speed up the recovery of Lance Armstrong's broken collarbone. It's meant to return him to the 'state' he was in before the accident. It's "healing", just like his recovery from cancer. Let's not get into the details of drugs that are used to improve healh that can also be used to improve sports performance just yet. Lance can compete in the Tour de France with some metal screws in his collarbone.
In Tiger Woods' case, there can be little doubt that the LASIK surgery improved his golf game. His natural ability to see was improved by surgery. What if it had been possible to give him bionic eyes to improve his eyesight even further? Would he have been allowed to compete after that? I think not.
The same goes for Simona Halep. It's a shame that even with the help of Google it's hard to find a non-sexist story about the subject, but it seems that her natural physique (big breasts) limited her tennis performance. So, she had surgery to make her breasts smaller, and the world seems to pay most attention to what people that like big breats think. But we are talking about surgically altering an athletes body to make her perform better. I suppose it might not feel like not cheating because the surgeon removed part of her body. What if something was added to the body? What if she had surgery to make her muscles stronger? Would she have been allowed to compete in professional tennis again?
Surgically enhancing muscle strength is not too strange an idea. Some believe it is already happening. According to Wikpedia, American parents go to doctors asking them to perform Tommy John surgery on healthy kids, with the idea that these kids will become better pitchers. A procedure intended for healing, now (mistakenly?) believed to improve your game. Let's suppose this is so (and if it isn't so, I'm sure there are or soon will be surgical procedures that not only heal you but make you stronger than you were before). An injured player gets Tommy John surgery and is able to pitch better than before because his elbow works better. What's the difference between that and using drugs to improve muscle strength in order to to pitch better?
How is undergoing surgery to improve sports performance different from taking performance enhancing drugs? Let me know what you think! I'm especially curious to hear the opinions of athletes!
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