One step too far – about WADA's whereabouts rule

Abstract

This article attempts to demonstrate the potentially dehumanizing and counter-productive nature of the World Anti-Doping Agency's whereabouts rule, which came into force with the World Anti-Doping Code in 2004, and to show that the rule may run counter to basic ethical and human rights principles. It begins with a critical review of an article by Dag Vidar Hanstad and Sigmund Loland regarding the defence of the whereabouts requirements. Then it presents the rationale and logic behind the surveillance regime and it is argued why the French historian Michel Foucault's classical analysis of the panopticon is unhelpful for the attempt to understand the kind of surveillance the whereabouts rule represents before it moves on to the more fruitful perspective of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell's novel demonstrates in artistic form the dehumanizing effect of stringent surveillance and this article concludes with the Danish theologian and philosopher K.E. Løgstrup who argues that trust is an essential condition of human living and society.