Drugs in sport: doping development and ethical analysis

Doping is a complex and ancient phenomenon considering the vast variety of substances, supplied through both legal and illegal trading routes, and the extensive connections between the people involved in the network. It occurs in elite athletes but also affects amateur athletes. Furthermore, it involves athletes’ friends and relatives, medical staff, managers, chemists, biologists and pharmacists, pharmaceutical industries, clandestine laboratories and criminal organizations. Over time, doping has shown a great ability to discover and always use new substances and appropriated the new scientific discoveries. Unfortunately, new discoveries for the human health are been used in distorted way by the athletes. In fact, the athletes may be able to use gene therapy to re-engineer their bodies for better performances. Drug dependence depends on several factors: the socio-environmental context of the subject and what effects have the substance in the body. The drug dependence could be connected to the indirect gratification. We will agree that sport is essentially under the current anti-doping campaign executed by a coordinated alliance between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), law enforcement authorities, sports organizers and the media. Therefore, doping is a public health issue and not simply a problem inside the professional sports community.