Ask HN: Should professional gamers be screened for performance enhancing drugs? For example, stimulants, nootropics, anxiolytics, etc. My thought process came from thinking about the growth of regulation in the Olympics over many years. I'm curious to know what the community thinks about this, since professional gaming (or streaming) is becoming more and more popular by the day but is still relatively new as a "sport". |
Also I do not think Olympic athletes should be tested. I once competed at a very high level in sports and the use of drugs is significantly higher then anyone would expect. The difference was that the poorer countries only had access to old school steroids (testosterone, dbol, tren etc) while the richer countries had access to things which at the time were impossible to detect (GH, IGF-1, Research Peptides).
The effects of steroids specifically are seen many years after use, so unless you are testing the lifetime of an athlete the test is meaningless anyway.
2 twins, one does steroids for 2 years, one does not. The steroid user comes off of drugs for another 2 years, and still has a major advantage over the non-using athlete.
But based on your comment and other readings I think that is a false choice, and the real choice is between letting the best drug infused athlete win, or letting the best athlete who can hide their drug use win.
The difference between natty and enhanced body building is not drug use, but deception.
An example being Lance Armstrong was considered a hyper-responder to his doping, and it put him at unfair advantage.
Other than stimulants to keep people awake for long periods of time, I doubt there are any drugs that would serve as an unfair advantage.
Being well rested and physically healthy would probably be the most effective strategy.
In practice, this is better than someone getting the edge because of a medical condition.
Not entirely true - you might have a "therapeutic use exemption" (TUE).
See http://theconversation.com/athletes-need-performance-enhanci... for a good discussion
I think the gear would give more of an advantage over drugs since it would be more consistent.
A few cups of tea might just do all of these better than drugs would. And things like L Theanine or creatine don't really need to be banned.
I would imagine that Adderall would be useful for TRAINING for games, if you need to practice some repetitive task over and over (I'm thinking of ssbm here). Not that this warrants a ban.