Lance Armstrong Cheated to Win. Why is that Wrong? - Reason Magazine

[Dr. Maserati]

Sure. Ask his doctor. He was dying. Would have died without the treatment. With the treatment, he rode a lot better than a dead guy, so I say he gave up his right to compete when he accepted the advantage provided by the chemo.

What's the difference between ifosfamide and EPO? Both are artificial. Both conferred an advantage to Armstrong over what he would have been naturally, and both were necessary for him to win the Tour.

As we have seen from the Armstrong affair, PEDs are not only illegal if you have them in your system at a race. They are illegal always and everywhere because their effects confer an advantage long after the drug is gone. So does cisplatin and etoposide if you have certain cancers.

He should have been retired in 1996. I'm sorry he got cancer, but if we really want a "natural" sport, well, that's the breaks.

PED = Performance Enhancing Drugs.
I don't think taking EPO to help you survive cancer (or any other drug) qualifies as a PED.
It is also why people can get TUEs to allow them take products for underlying conditions.

 

[gjdavis60]

PED = Performance Enhancing Drugs.
I don't think taking EPO to help you survive cancer (or any other drug) qualifies as a PED.
It is also why people can get TUEs to allow them take products for underlying conditions.

Could I get a TUE for EPO if I have a diagnosis of anemia from chronic kidney disease?

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Could I get a TUE for EPO if I have a diagnosis of anemia from chronic kidney disease?

I have no idea - but WADA, or the anti-doping authority would know.

 

[Tinman]

PED = Performance Enhancing Drugs.
I don't think taking EPO to help you survive cancer (or any other drug) qualifies as a PED.
It is also why people can get TUEs to allow them take products for underlying conditions.

I wonder whether treatment for bilharzia/schistosomiasis can reasonably include EPO (on a TUE)...

Or whether just treating a dormant infection with anti-parasitics actually confers an endogenous EPO benefit.

By all accounts Froome had a stellar season after he got his treatment working for him.

 

[Ninety5rpm]

You have to realize reason.com is THE site for Ayn Rand nutters. Considering how one's decisions affect other people is not part of the ideology. It is a heresy.

“There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-kld’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.”

That part in bold expresses a typical misunderstanding. This is about Rand on Reason.com:

One major misconception is that Rand worshipped the rich and saw moneymaking as life’s highest goal. In fact, most wealthy characters in her novels are pathetic, repulsive, or both: businessmen fattened on shady deals or government perks, society people who fill their empty lives with luxury. (There are also sympathetic poor and working-class characters.)
...
Rand extolled “selfishness,” but not quite in its common meaning. (To some extent, she was using the now-familiar confrontational tactic of turning a slur against a stigmatized group—in this case, true individualists—into a badge of pride.) Roark’s foil, the social-climbing opportunist Peter Keating, gives up both the work and the woman he truly loves for career advancement. Most people, Rand says, would condemn Keating as “selfish”; yet his real problem is lack of self.

To Rand, being “selfish” meant being true to oneself, neither sacrificing one’s own desires nor trampling on others. Likewise, Rand’s stance against altruism was not an assault on compassion so much as a critique of doctrines that subordinate the individual to a collective—state, church, community, or family.
...
Attacks on Rand have also focused on her person, from her disastrous extramarital affair with a much younger protégé to her brief infatuation, at 23, with a notorious killer she described as an “exceptional boy” warped by conformist society. Ugly stuff, to be sure; but plenty of other intellectuals had a sordid personal lives and romanticized murderers as rebels.

Rand is best viewed as a brilliant maverick. But there are reasons this woman attracted hordes of followers, influenced many others, and impressed smart people from journalist Mike Wallace to philosopher John Hospers. Those who treat Rand as a liberal bogeyman will forever be blindsided by her appeal.

You'll even find criticism there:

Was Rand’s individualism too radical? Yes. Her hostility to the idea of any moral obligation to others led her to argue that, while helping a friend in need is fine, doing so at the expense of something it hurts you to give up is “immoral.” In her fiction, even private charity as a vocation is despised; so, mostly, is family. Rand made little allowance for the fact that some people cannot help themselves through no fault of theirs, or that much individual achievement is enabled by support networks.

It's a good piece.

What Liberals Don’t Understand About Ayn Rand

 

[Ninety5rpm]

The problem with the argument in the quote from the article is there is a presumption that Lance Armstrong had more 'capital' to invest in his cycling preparation than others, whether that be to pay for diet or a chateaux at altitude.

Well, before Armstrong started winning big races, if remember rightly, he was from a very humble background with relatively little money.

In terms of capital, I think he was on a pretty level playing field before the cancer. But after the cancer, once he got back on a team, he leveraged the "cancer survivor" story, to obtain more capital (Nike, Oakley, etc.). He apparently used that money to obtain an exclusive contract with Ferrari, and that's when it really became unlevel.

 

[gjdavis60]

PED = Performance Enhancing Drugs.
I don't think taking EPO to help you survive cancer (or any other drug) qualifies as a PED.
It is also why people can get TUEs to allow them take products for underlying conditions.

We all have different physiology, and we all react differently to agents that are introduced into our bodies. Not everyone responds to EPO, and not everyone responds to chemotherapy, but those that do may experience a dramatic improvement in performance over their untreated state.

Armstrong didn't choose to get cancer, but I didn't choose to have a lousy VO2 Max, either. It's just the way our bodies developed. Is it fair for him to be able to compete after altering his physiology, but not me?

Armstrong's cancer came from his own cells; perhaps even predetermined by his genetics. How can we allow athletes to compete after they alter the fundamental nature of their own bodies by artificial means, and where does it end?

If we want a clean sport based on the achievement of unadulterated athletes, then I'm sorry but people like Armstrong (and Contador who would also be dead were it not for medical intervention) should be disqualified. It's not like we're sentencing them to death. I'm delighted they survived, but they shouldn't be allowed to race bicycles anymore. They had their chance. The sport is too important for such compromise.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

We all have different physiology, and we all react differently to agents that are introduced into our bodies. Not everyone responds to EPO, and not everyone responds to chemotherapy, but those that do may experience a dramatic improvement in performance over their untreated state.

Armstrong didn't choose to get cancer, but I didn't choose to have a lousy VO2 Max, either. It's just the way our bodies developed. Is it fair for him to be able to compete after altering his physiology, but not me?

Your assuming it altered his physiology. It didn't.

Armstrong's cancer came from his own cells; perhaps even predetermined by his genetics. How can we allow athletes to compete after they alter the fundamental nature of their own bodies by artificial means, and where does it end?

Where does it end? When the need for the treatment ends - very simple.

If we want a clean sport based on the achievement of unadulterated athletes, then I'm sorry but people like Armstrong (and Contador who would also be dead were it not for medical intervention) should be disqualified. It's not like we're sentencing them to death. I'm delighted they survived, but they shouldn't be allowed to race bicycles anymore. They had their chance. The sport is too important for such compromise.

So, you break your leg - sorry, no splint or pain killers for you?
Sport is about being able to function at your best, clean sport is without the enhancements - taking something for an ailment is not enhancing.

 

[MarkvW]

We all have different physiology, and we all react differently to agents that are introduced into our bodies. Not everyone responds to EPO, and not everyone responds to chemotherapy, but those that do may experience a dramatic improvement in performance over their untreated state.

Armstrong didn't choose to get cancer, but I didn't choose to have a lousy VO2 Max, either. It's just the way our bodies developed. Is it fair for him to be able to compete after altering his physiology, but not me?

Armstrong's cancer came from his own cells; perhaps even predetermined by his genetics. How can we allow athletes to compete after they alter the fundamental nature of their own bodies by artificial means, and where does it end?

If we want a clean sport based on the achievement of unadulterated athletes, then I'm sorry but people like Armstrong (and Contador who would also be dead were it not for medical intervention) should be disqualified. It's not like we're sentencing them to death. I'm delighted they survived, but they shouldn't be allowed to race bicycles anymore. They had their chance. The sport is too important for such compromise.

Excellent sarcasm.

 

[BroDeal]

That part in bold expresses a typical misunderstanding. This is about Rand on Reason.com:

You are really going to get some quality information about Ayn Rand from Reason.com, about as much quality as you would expect The Pyongyang Times to give about Kim Jong Il.

What I wrote about Rand is correct. Objectivists are incapable of accepting that they are part of a society. The whole philosophy--if you want to go so far as to dignify it by calling it a philosphy--is based on a revulsion of obligations people have to others. Instead the Rand nutters cling to teenage fantasies of being an island unto themselves. They have no appreciation or care for how their actions affect others or society. It is natural that they would not have much of a problem with cheating.

 

[datalore]

Sigh.
There are no valid points - particularly when they write nonsense like this...

+1. If you want to throw out the rules set forth by the governing body of the sport as an index of what is considered right or fair, you can claim that any form of cheating is permissible. However, the fact is that there are rules, and they exist for a reason.

 

[MarkvW]

+1. If you want to throw out the rules set forth by the governing body of the sport as an index of what is considered right or fair, you can claim that any form of cheating is permissible. However, the fact is that there are rules, and they exist for a reason.

There are also the unwritten rules of the peloton. And the fact is that those unwritten rules also exist for a reason. The unwritten rules allow pretty much any kind of doping--so long as you don't get caught.

An "index of what is considered right or fair" is only needed to mollify sponsors or fans. Vino and Kolobdnev certainly had their own distinct understanding of what is right and fair! And Lance, snitching off other dopers? Only Whitey Bulger (and Hein Verbruggen) would think that was fair!

Pro cycling is an enjoyable joke. The races are ALWAYS corrupt, because they are ALWAYS debased by a large proportion of doped riders. And it has ALWAYS been that way.

The written rules of the UCI are just hints to the real rules that control the actual behavior of the actors in the filthy drama of pro cycling.

 

[Ninety5rpm]

Objectivists are incapable of accepting that they are part of a society. The whole philosophy--if you want to go so far as to dignify it by calling it a philosphy--is based on a revulsion of obligations people have to others. Instead the Rand nutters cling to teenage fantasies of being an island unto themselves. They have no appreciation or care for how their actions affect others or society. It is natural that they would not have much of a problem with cheating.

You obviously get your opinions about Rand and Objectivism not by reading her, but by reading her critics.

The fundamental precept of Objectivism is all about the obligations we all have as members of a society - no one has the right to initiate the use or threat of force against anyone else. To say Objectivists are incapable of accepting that they are part of a society is patently absurd.

Of course what's really going on here is you believe that being part of a society puts other obligations on its members too. That's really about negative and positive rights.

 

[red_flanders]

If y'all want to digress more deeply into Ayn Rand and other politics, please start a thread in the General forum. Let's try and separate the message from the messenger here. Thanks.

 

[BroDeal]

You obviously get your opinions about Rand and Objectivism not by reading her, but by reading her critics.

I get my opinions from having read all of her fiction and most of her non-fiction. It should not surprise anyone that has read her narcissistic malarkey that her followers don't think society's rules should apply to them.

 

[blackcat]

@mountainrman your argument is nonsensical. If wind tunnels and helmets are so significant why go to the trouble of bribing the UCI, paying small fortunes to Ferrari, mucking about with blood transfusions, getting Hein to pop the competition and having the french president cut the AFLD's budget in half?

marginal gains < rounding error

 

[blackcat]

+1. If you want to throw out the rules set forth by the governing body of the sport as an index of what is considered right or fair, you can claim that any form of cheating is permissible. However, the fact is that there are rules, and they exist for a reason.

the peloton exists and creates their own norms. it can be seen time and again, the governing bodies, UCI, ASO, Tour, IOC, are wrecked with their own corruption and incompetence.

when the peloton develops its own norms, and doping to a degree, is accepted, tolerated, and encouraged, the you need to be a pragmatist and revise this rules for public consumption. that is what they are, the qualifier, public consumption. dont revise them for the peloton, just revise the definition unsaid, which is the gear is tolerated by the peloton, and therefore accepted. that last caveat is unsaid for public consumption.

it is not doping, if it does not show up.

flaw in my position, is the sample's code has only inducted a body who will indulge. Bassons et al, dont pay the entry price. so ofcourse, the sample is skewed.

but its a decision you need to make. Does 131313 take a plunge, or is he happy riding Gila and Utah on his own terms. (131313 I will edit this immediately if you wish, or ask a mod to redact the final para, cheers)

I have come full 180degrees on this position. As some will no doubt be aware.

 

[silverrocket]

There are also the unwritten rules of the peloton. And the fact is that those unwritten rules also exist for a reason. The unwritten rules allow pretty much any kind of doping--so long as you don't get caught.

An "index of what is considered right or fair" is only needed to mollify sponsors or fans. Vino and Kolobdnev certainly had their own distinct understanding of what is right and fair! And Lance, snitching off other dopers? Only Whitey Bulger (and Hein Verbruggen) would think that was fair!

Pro cycling is an enjoyable joke. The races are ALWAYS corrupt, because they are ALWAYS debased by a large proportion of doped riders. And it has ALWAYS been that way.

The written rules of the UCI are just hints to the real rules that control the actual behavior of the actors in the filthy drama of pro cycling.

You imply that riders all want to dope, and only "restrain themselves" out of concern for public perception, but is that true? Might riders actually prefer that nobody doped, and so that they didn't have to? Or if all doping was allowed, how would cycling change? Would there still be unwritten rules about "how far" somebody can go with doping, or would we have guys doping to the edge of lethality?

I look at pro riders like children that need boundaries. If they don't get them they will kill themselves, and though they continually push those boundaries, they are all ultimately happy they exist.

 

[blackcat]

On the contrary - my argument make perfect sense.

My comment is without drugs it is and was far from a level playing field.

Money makes a difference, and every little helps

Who noticed on the womens worlds road race championship that emma pooley had all the vents on the front of her helmet blocked? It is because it has a measurable increase in performance

blocked because there is a perception of measurable increase in performance. And Maslows rule of instrument. Bureaucratic regulatory bodies gonna regulate and enforce.

as always, this marginal very marginal imperceptible gain, does not even register as a rounding error on the PED program.

 

[blackcat]

The moment the first drop of chemotherapy entered his system, the natural progression of Armstrong's biology was fundamentally and permanently changed yielding an immeasurable advantage over competitors who did not have the same benefit. He should be disqualified from all results obtained since his diagnosis on those grounds alone, for if he had not taken chemo, he would not have been able to compete at the same level.

Are there any reliable sources that support your theory that "Armstrong's biology was fundamentally and permanently changed yielding an immeasurable advantage" from the chemotherapy?

yeah. hed be dead. 6 feet under. pushing daisies. under the roses.

 

[Turner29]

Historically, sports competition is founded on the notion of genes plus training. To be a champion requires the right combination of both, although more the first.

Doping only "levels the playing field" in that rewards the least genetically gifted the most. In addition, results are highly dependent upon the doping program's sophistication, Armstrong is a good example.

However, the real issue is health risk, here again, Armstrong is a good example.

 

[blackcat]

There are also the unwritten rules of the peloton. And the fact is that those unwritten rules also exist for a reason. The unwritten rules allow pretty much any kind of doping--so long as you don't get caught.

An "index of what is considered right or fair" is only needed to mollify sponsors or fans. Vino and Kolobdnev certainly had their own distinct understanding of what is right and fair! And Lance, snitching off other dopers? Only Whitey Bulger (and Hein Verbruggen) would think that was fair!

Pro cycling is an enjoyable joke. The races are ALWAYS corrupt, because they are ALWAYS debased by a large proportion of doped riders. And it has ALWAYS been that way.

The written rules of the UCI are just hints to the real rules that control the actual behavior of the actors in the filthy drama of pro cycling.

^this post. this post
*2

 

[blackcat]

You imply that riders all want to dope, and only "restrain themselves" out of concern for public perception, but is that true? Might riders actually prefer that nobody doped, and so that they didn't have to? Or if all doping was allowed, how would cycling change? Would there still be unwritten rules about "how far" somebody can go with doping, or would we have guys doping to the edge of lethality?

I look at pro riders like children that need boundaries. If they don't get them they will kill themselves, and though they continually push those boundaries, they are all ultimately happy they exist.

no, they do not have to ride the TdF.

Its the price of market entry. Not a palatable prospect for sure, but a choice nonetheless.

 

[blackcat]

Historically, sports competition is founded on the notion of genes plus training.

I thought they were founded on the ideal of competition. And ideals and myths, the ubermensch, grew out of that. you reverse engineered it. I thought they were products, the foundation and basis was a competition, and then aspiration with that Olympic ideal.

Faster
Higher
Stronger


....

drug propelled?

the ideals were a product of the competition. Why have sports, or competitions in javelin, and archery, plus greco roman wrstling. These were based on combat, when combat meant near certain death when one lost a mano-a-mano fight.

genes and training had something to do with it. but they were never foundation stones.

 

[MarkvW]

You imply that riders all want to dope, and only "restrain themselves" out of concern for public perception, but is that true? Might riders actually prefer that nobody doped, and so that they didn't have to? Or if all doping was allowed, how would cycling change? Would there still be unwritten rules about "how far" somebody can go with doping, or would we have guys doping to the edge of lethality?

I look at pro riders like children that need boundaries. If they don't get them they will kill themselves, and though they continually push those boundaries, they are all ultimately happy they exist.

I don't look at them like children. I look at them like men who are part of a culture that treats them like children. That paternalistic culture is disgusting--and it leads to people like Zabriskie getting paid ONLY $15,000 per year by people like Bruyneel. Sometimes, I can't help it, I'm revolted. Those sheep-men need to grow a pair and ORGANIZE!

The system is hopelessly corrupt. The "clean" riders promote the corrupt culture just like the "dirty" riders promote the corrupt culture. Every race is a corrupt joke--on both the cheaters and the clean riders.

Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .