ABSTRACT
Relationships between sports physicians and elite athletes have been ethically troubling for most of the century that has elapsed since high-performance sport emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century. The extreme demands that are imposed on elite athletes have created two kinds of ethical problem. The first is the implicit mandate to handle injuries in such as way as to keep the athlete functioning; this can mean suppressing pain and thereby running the risk of doing further damage. The second, and more publicized, ethical problem is the focus of this chapter: the participation of doctors in the doping of athletes by means of illicit performance-enhancing drugs. Over the past half century medical officials have consistently opposed doctors’ collaborations with athletes who dope. But official disapproval has coexisted with many doping collaborations between physicians and elite athletes. This chapter examines how doctors have rationalized their participation in such arrangements and either addressed or evaded the demands of medical ethics as they are understood by the medical establishment. We will see how the most aggressively nonconformist sports physicians exempt their relationships with athletes from the normal rules of medical practice. Finally, we will briefly examine the careers of five doping doctors from four countries whose declarations of independence from traditional medicine ended in criminal charges and/or disgrace.
