Copyright ©1997-2005 American Society of Exercise Physiologists   All Rights Reserved.


        Professionalization of Exercise Physiologyonline    


         ISSN 1099-5862   Vol 8 No 6 June 2005 
 


 

Editor:   Tommy Boone, PhD, MPH, MA, FASEP, EPC
 
 
Editorial
Cheating, Performance-Enhancing Supplements, and Accountability: A Call for Action

Tommy Boone, PhD, MPH, FASEP, EPC
Professor and Chair
Director, Exercise Physiology Laboratories
Department of Exercise Physiology
The College of St. Scholastica
Duluth, MN 55811

“Winning isn’t everything, especially on the heels of corrupt behavior.”


Coaches, athletes, trainers, students, sports nutritionists, and just about everyone thinks that it is okay to use performance-enhancing supplements.  If the enhancers are not banned or immediately dangerous, they must be okay.  If you are an athlete, you are taking supplements!  An athlete would have to be a fool not to, right?  After all, leveling the playing field is not a new idea.  Athletes are transfixed on winning.  Achieving the competitive edge is everything.  The joys of sport are of secondary interest.  This in itself is a trend entirely in the wrong direction.  It sets the tone for something worse.

The pressure to win distorts the values of sports.  Hence, whether it is a new design for a bike, a new helmet, or a new supplement, if it is said to work it will be used.  Forget about the potential for side effects.  The desire to be bigger, stronger, and faster is strong.  This is exactly the reason why the sports performance aid, MET-Rx, has been purchased by thousands of athletes with wishful thinking.  Talk about the dark side of sports supplement companies.  Athletes celebrate the idea of being a winner at all costs.  If you aren’t using a supplement, you must be a loser.  Personally, I believe it is time to make a larger truth known.  An athlete’s integrity is more important than his win-loss record.

There is no question that athletes of all ages are heading down the supplement path; a sideshow that is indifferent to true athletics.  Unfortunately, today’s sports have become professionalized and commercialized.  The focus on winning at all costs has reached an all-time outrageous level.  This is why I believe that anyone who is promoting and/or supplying performance-enhancing supplements to student-athletes should be held accountable.  One way to hold parties accountable is to write a bill to legislate performance-enhancing supplements, including creatine-based supplements.  In addition to education, ethical thinking, and better coaching, regulation and accountability are powerful answers to this problem. 

Regulation is an important key to the integrity of athletics.  The commercialization of athletics has resulted in too many schools on probation, too many athletes cheating, and too many egos out of control.  Ethics in college athletics has been replaced with unethical behaviors.  Athletes have been found guilty of assault to gang rape, guilty of cheating on class reports to not attending class at all, and guilty of taking money under the table.  It is all about money and a distorted view of athletics.  Coaches, in particular, should be held accountable for their influence on athletes.  University presidents, deans, department chairs, faculty members, and researchers are all aware that athletes are involved in the big-money business of sports. 

It seems to me that it is time to do something about the lack of morality of the sporting world, which includes the research that many sports nutritionists are engaged in.  Otherwise, the corruption by invested researchers and the equally disturbing web sites for every conceivable supplement known will only increase.  The losers are our children and teenagers.  In writing about the ethical issues that underpin the incredible number of supplement web sites, I hope to reveal the dark side of performance-enhancers.  Coaches must take control of athletics.  Sports nutritionists must examine what they are teaching as it sets the stage for supplement use.

For many athletes, athletics has become little more than finding the “right” combination of supplements.  Guess who is benefiting?  Obviously, the distributors of the supplement products are big winners.  The objective of the CEOs is to make money.  That is their job, however corrupt or misdirected.  Also, when the researchers’ focus on supplement research supersedes all other considerations, there is a huge problem.  In this sense, university research on sports supplements have helped to confuse ethical values with the bottom line.  The consequences of continuing business as usual are unthinkable.

Like athletes, university teachers are not exempt from wanting to be winners.  After all, they are often times highly motivated with advanced academic degrees.  Part of the tenure process, aside from teaching and service, is research.  Professors have failed to obtain tenure for not being successful in research and publishing.  Hence, from the professor’s point of view, there is no room for second place (so to speak).  Not getting tenure is viewed the same as losing!  Unquestionably, research is time-consuming and necessary.  However, it can be argued that supplement research is exploitive.  Despite the athletes desire to uphold the integrity of sports, the endorsement of supplements by sports nutritionists is big (even when it is based on flawed research studies).

This is why it is so important that sports nutritionists get their act together.  Supporting the use of supplements distracts from everything participation in sports was meant to be.  Surely, professors understand that supplements don’t “burn fat while you sleep” or “optimize athletic performance.”  And, yet the fraud continues unabated and under-analyzed.  Instead of sharing “buyer bewares” – some professors (who are recognized as experts in sports nutrition) are committed to doing whatever it takes to obtain the superstar status.  For example, it may require altering the statistics of a paper or engaging in unethical practices in publishing.  This action is not too different from the coach who understands that placing first is the way to keep from being fired.  There is no value in second place or in publishing fewer papers than a colleague.  This is, of course, irrational thinking.  

Questionable practices cannot become the norm, regardless of the emphasis on winning or the bottom line.  Unethical practices have consequences or at least they should.  Whether it is gaining an unfair competitive edge in sports or publishing redundant papers, there are penalties.  And, yet it is unfortunate that most unethical behavior in sports goes unpunished.  Society has come to think about cheating as something other than actual cheating or being unethical as long as the person isn’t caught.  But, it is cheating nonetheless.  This is especially the case when they describe products with words like “secret formula” and “essential to good athletic performance.”

Often times, athletes are praised for executing illegal techniques in sports.  Whether coaches are teaching the techniques, managers are altering the playing field, or athletes are ignoring the rules of fair play, cheating is taking an unfair advantage and, therefore, it is wrong!  Similarly, it is wrong to teach athletes to tackle with such violence to hurt or to injure another athlete.  Clearly, all of these behaviors are wrong.  Coaches who engage in such practices should not be coaching.  Trainers who teach athletes to use performance-enhancers should not be working with sports programs. 

In particular, sports nutritionists who have lucrative contracts and/or other endorsements from sports supplement companies should not be allowed to encourage athletes to use company-specific performance-enhancing supplements and/or drugs.  Not only is the behavior a conflict-in-interest, it is blatantly unethical.  Exercise physiologists cannot come across to the public sector as condoning cheating, whether it is through the use of performance-enhancers or unprofessional behaviors.  Exercise physiologists must rise above the ethical maze that surrounds supplements and drugs in sports.  They cannot allow the profession to evolve into some sort of parallel with professional wrestling.  Hence, instead of promoting chemical enhancers or showboating as a researcher, exercise physiologists should dedicate their work to the development of athletes through sound nutrition. 

Similarly, the administrators of exercise science and exercise physiology programs have the responsibility to do what is right on behalf of students.  They must be confident that the faculty is behaving ethically.  This is especially a concern when the administrator is also the teacher of the sports nutrition course or when the administrator is responsible for and/or involved in the research of specific performance-enhancers.  If this concern is overlooked or dismissed, it may be viewed as a serious exploitation of the college classroom for personal gain.  Where is the evidence?  Who are the authors?  Why was it published? 

The irony is, however, that sports nutrition as it is presently taught is highly biased to teaching students and athletes the benefits (or the assumed benefits) of using performance-enhancing supplements.  This notion that sport nutritionists know something that exercise physiologists do not is a significant concern for two reasons.  First, for the most part, the sports nutritionist title is a self-proclaimed identification.  Second, while teaching sports nutrition may confer an increased understanding of the subject matter, it does not automatically build character in the sense of professional responsibility and ethical thinking.  Quacks are quacks because they have a hidden agenda (i.e., money).

Because sports nutrition is so integral to sports conditioning, it is imperative that the practices of sports nutritionists should be monitored.  At the very least, sports nutritionists should have a code of ethics.  In addition they should have an agreed upon sports nutrition philosophy based on moral reasoning.  But, of course, this is equally true for coaches and all others who quest for gold either in sports or in their field of work.  Here, the quest for success and improvement in performance, whether in sports or at work, must be matched by professionalism.  Neither one should be reduced to the quick fix way of thinking (i.e., if you have a headache, take a pill; if you want to be a winner, take a pill), regardless of the inducements.

Think about it.  How far are you willing to go?  Where is the professionalism?  Or, is it all about money?  Just because endurance athletes are told to pay increased attention to the carbohydrate in the diet, and just because they consume one of the 20 different sports drinks (such as Gatorade® and Powerade®) are they really the number one athletes?   If so, then, shouldn’t athletes who use All Sport and Sport Toddy® be winners too?  Is athletics simply a function of fuel in the muscle cells?  In short, science (particularly, exercise science) has over-simplified what it takes to win.  Dietary carbohydrate supplementation and pre-event nutrition products like Gator Pro® and Reload® are only part of the mystery of winning.

But, think about it again.  Does anyone really believe it is in the best interest of the sports beverage industry to tell athletes otherwise?  No, of course not.  The industry and its researchers are not going to tell athletes that the benefits of consuming their pre-event semisolid products are collectively one variable of dozens of interacting variables.  No, if they did, they wouldn’t expect the athlete to buy the products.  After all, it is about making money (and the dollars are in the multimillions).  If the industry can keep athletes believing that they can perform better using their products, the industry wins.  However, reporting that a product has helped an athlete win a contest is different from solid science.

What about taking vitamins?  Almost all athletes report that taking a multivitamin has helped them win.  They also believe that they perform better when taking specific vitamins.  Of course it isn’t fully the fault of the athletes.  Aside from the marketing of commercial products, sports nutritionists, coaches, and trainers have argued that it couldn’t hurt.  The truth of the matter is that the research data do not support the taking of vitamins to enhance athletic performance.  Do the makers of these products care?  No, not as long as the money is rolling in.  To me, the word “sleaze ball” comes to mind.  In fact, the more I read about the industry marketing its products to teens, the more I think of the representatives as the sleaze balls that deceive the public. 

Athletes may have a hard time believing that their sports nutritionists and staff are guilty of unethical behavior, much less being called sleaze balls.  Student-athletes are not likely to think that the coaching staff is unethical.  They participate in the sports program, do what is expected of them, and imagine that everything is good.  It is almost instinctive.  Their ultimate goal is the pursuit of fame and victory.  Athletes don’t usually get sucked in until they are convinced that they cannot win without using supplements (e.g., leveling the playing field).  If only they could learn to think differently.  If only athletes could make the commitment not just to winning, but to ethical participation as well.  This would be a clear and sharp message to the sports supplement industry. 

Drugs don’t make superior athletes.  The need to use supplements is another big lie.  Both are contrary to the ethics of sports.  However simplistic it may sound, sports nutritionists and other support persons should police themselves.  The supplement shortcut way of thinking about sports must be replaced with responsible decision-making that supports the timeless values of hard work and perseverance.   Exercise physiologists cannot wait for changes within the elite sporting industry to move down to the college and high school sports programs.  It is time to act and, indeed, it is time for sports nutritionists to evaluate futuristic aspirations.  For example, do they see performance-enhancers as a necessary evil to do well in sports?  Do they see “nutritional” supplements as a critical foundation to excellence in sports?  Do they believe that sports nutrition cannot exist without the sports supplement industry?  The questions are almost endless. 

If the answers to the questions reinforce the use of performance-enhancing supplements, as I suspect is the case, the emerging picture and discourse would suggest that articles like this one are just the beginning.  Discussions about athletic enhancement beg the question about how can athletes develop character and ethical values when using supplements to enhance themselves, since each depends upon different thinking.  Aside from the supplement view driven by the business model, sports are among the last real opportunities (work being another) to perform naturally and to benefit both mentally and physically from it.  To argue that all sports must evolve into a race of technologically advanced athletes is to miss the point of participation. 

Whether it is cheating with supplements, with enhanced technologies, or with drugs, it is still cheating.  For this reason, none of it is legitimate.  If we ever accept an “anything goes” perspective, then genetic doping will be accepted, too.  Pardon me, but the idea scares the hell out of me because I know what some parents are willing to do to a promising young gymnast.  Is there a sports nutritionist with an academic background in molecular biology waiting in the wings?  Is this person the next expert in the sports nutrition field?  What negative influences will this person have on the quest for fair play?  Should there be accountability put in place for this person’s influence and behavior?  Clearly, it is all very unsettling.

Perhaps, athletes are not meant to break records at the expense of cheating themselves and the sport.  For certain, just because there is the technology to drive 120 mph on the Interstate, the law (and thus accountability) usually controls the car’s performance at 70 mph maximum.  Hence, I do not think that it is inevitable that society must allow athletes the right to do whatever to jump higher or to run faster.  This aspect of changing the very essence of sports is clearly not in the best interest of the athletes.  Not only is it cheating, it also demonstrates a total disregard for the dangers.  Breaking records is important, but not more important than the health and well being of athletes.


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