‘William J. Morgan on Fair Play, Treatment versus Enhancement and the Doping Debates in Sport’

Abstract

ABSTRACTDrawing on two primary publications, I attempt to demonstrate that Morgan’s analysis of fair play in the doping wars, the treatment-enhancement distinction and the use of what he has called ‘emotional-psychological enhancement’ lends significant support to (1) the calls for fairness and respect in anti-doping strategies (and I would add in particular for athlete’s rights); (2) the calls for moral evaluation of ‘psycho-doping’ and its inclusion on the banned list; and (3) the calls for the consideration of the doping problem being reflective of ‘…a deep moral malaise’ where we have mistakenly sought ‘…a technical solution for what is wrongly perceived to be essentially a technical problem’ (Morgan 2007, 177). Further, through this analysis of Morgan’s work, I add an exploration of an inversion of the ‘Doctrine of Double Effect’ from medical ethics for its potential application to consideration of criteria for the evaluation of both the treatment-enhancement distinction and the banned list.