Why Should Performance Enhancing Drugs Be Allowed in Sports - Essay Example

The use of performance-enhancing drugs lends a range of benefits in sports including increased strength, fat loss, and improved performance (“Hartgens and Kuipers). I plan to explore the need to use performance-enhancing drugs in sports. Performance-enhancing drugs have been used by athletes for a long time. Among these drugs are steroids whose use has attracted a lot of controversy and criticism (“Position Statement”). Steroids decrease the level of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) while increasing the level of lower-density lipoprotein (LDL) (“Anabolic Steroid Abuse”).

Excessive use of steroids causes physiological feminization of male athletes and physiological masculinization of female athletes (“Steroids Vs Human”). There is a lack of sufficient research regarding what are the safe levels of consumption of performance-enhancing drugs in sports. For this research, I shall choose a particular sport i.e. swimming, and find out the benefits of using performance-enhancing drugs for the swimmers. This research will also identify safe levels of consumption of performance-enhancing drugs for swimmers. Another outcome of this research will be testing the reliability and validity of information in the literature regarding the medical disadvantages of drug use in sports.