Doping, Performance-Enhancing Drugs, and Hormones in Sport: Mechanisms of Action and Methods of Detection examines the biochemistry and bioanalytical aspects of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and other questionable procedures used by athletes to enhance performance. The book informs the specialist of emerging knowledge and techniques and allows the non-specialist to grasp the underlying science and current practice of the discipline. With clear and compelling language appropriate for a broad spectrum of readers, this book provides background on prevalence, types of agents, their actual or supposed benefits, and their negative effects on health. The technical aspects of detection are discussed, followed by a discussion of why detection is a problematic and still-evolving science. To facilitate comprehension, each chapter is organized in a uniform way with six sections: (1) standard medical uses, (2) why the drugs are used by athletes, (3) biological mechanism of action, (4) what research says about efficacy in improving performance, (5) major health side effects from use and abuse in sport, and 6) concluding key points. - Presents the scientific concepts of how performance enhancers work, how they are used, and how they are detected and masked from detection - Features language that is neither simplistic to scientists nor too sophisticated for a large, diverse global audience - Provides a short "close-up in each chapter to illustrate key topics that engage, entertain, and create a novel synthesis of thought

Doping in sports and the fight against it has gained increasing attention in recent years. The pharmacological basis for a possible performance enhancement in competitive sport through the administration of prohibited substances and methods as well as the analytical disclosure of such practices are comprehensively covered in 21 contributions by outstanding and distinctive authors.

This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of experts in bioethics, sports, law, and philosophy to examine the need for regulating such athletic performance-enhancing technologies as steroids and gene doping. The use of performance-improving drugs in sports dates back to the early Olympians, who took an herbal tonic before competitions to augment athletic prowess. But the permissibility of doing so came into question only in the twentieth century as the popularity of anabolic steroid use and blood doping among athletes grew. Sports officials and others—aided by the development of technologies to test participants for proscribed substances—became concerned over the physical safety of athletes and competitive fairness in sporting events. In exploring the culture, ethics, and policy issues surrounding doping in competitive athletics, the contributors to this volume detail the history and current state of drug use in sports, analyze the distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable usages, evaluate the ethical arguments for and against permitting athletes to avail themselves of new means of improving athleticism, and discuss possible future doping technologies and the issues that they are likely to raise. They explain how and why some athletes resort to doping and assess what the fair opportunity principle means in theory and practice and how it relates to the concept of an equal opportunity to perform. This frank discussion of doping in sports includes accounts by former elite athletes and offers an illuminating exchange over the meaning and value of natural talents and genetic hierarchies and the essence of fair competition.

This BMA report discusses the current situation regarding performance enhancing drugs as well as the effects of prescribed medication on sports people's performance. Written with expert advice, and rigorously reviewed by specialists, the report addresses the physician's role and responsibilities in this highly sensitive area. It will prove an invaluable guide for all doctors who are involved with the well being of sports people.

This book offers a new history of drug use in sport. It argues that the idea of taking drugs to enhance performance has not always been the crisis or ‘evil’ we now think it is. Instead, the late nineteenth century was a time of some experimentation and innovation largely unhindered by talk of cheating or health risks. By the interwar period, experiments had been modernised in the new laboratories of exercise physiologists. Still there was very little sense that this was contrary to the ethics or spirit of sport. Sports, drugs and science were closely linked for over half a century. The Second World War provided the impetus for both increased use of drugs and the emergence of an anti-doping response. By the end of the 1950s a new framework of ethics was being imposed on the drugs question that constructed doping in highly emotive terms as an ‘evil’. Alongside this emerged the science and procedural bureaucracy of testing. The years up to 1976 laid the foundations for four decades of anti-doping. This book offers a detailed and critical understanding of who was involved, what they were trying to achieve, why they set about this task and the context in which they worked. By doing so, it reconsiders the classic dichotomy of ‘good anti-doping’ up against ‘evil doping’. Winner of the 2007 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize for the best book in British sports history.

"This thin volume will be well used by students, coaches, parents, and educators who want to build up their knowledge of the issues surrounding steroids."WILSON LIBRARY BULLETIN

Anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) remain the most used/abused drugs in the athlete and recreational gym user. However, there are some new drugs such as human growth hormone and insulin that are being used by athletes in order to gain a competitive advantage. This book presents separate and multi-disciplinary perspectives of anabolic androgenic steroids and other current drugs of use in sport. The perspectives discussed in this book range from those of sports medicine research scientists, a medical practitioner and sports physician, behavioural scientists and molecular physiologists. There are further contributions from experts in the sociology and ethics of sports doping.