Transforming the Doping Culture: Whose responsibility, what responsibility?

This PhD project studied if, and in what sense doping is incompatible with fairness in sport and whether notions of fairness and fair play may function as a foundation upon which arguments opposing doping in sport can based on in a constructive manner.

Doping sometimes is perceived as an admissible method used in order to render the sport fairer by leveling an otherwise unfair dispersal of natural talents in sport. In this view, those with less talent are given a possibility to compensate by means of doping and this will make sport fairer. However, the term fairness seems to have different meanings in the arguments concerning doping in general and gene-doping in particular.

This project constituted an attempt to achieve an “inside-out” perspective in regard to ethical and philosophical questions concerning performance enhancement in sport. This entails that by understanding sport as a form of social activity, and by placing this activity within the broader social context, this project aims at addressing ethical and philosophical issues by considering, as a starting point, qualities that are inherent to sport.

Publications

Atry A, Transforming the Doping Culture: Whose responsibility, what responsibility? doctoral thesis, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2013

Atry A, Hansson MG, Kihlbom K, Doping and The Participatory Responsibility of Sports Physicians, Submitted

Atry A, Hansson MG, Kihlbom K: Cheating is the Name of the Game - Conventional Cheating Arguments Fail to Articulate Moral Responses to Doping, Physical Culture and Sport. Studies and Research(ISSN 2081-2221)(EISSN 1899-4849)

Atry A, Hansson MG, Kihlbom K, Beyond the Individual: Sources of Attitudes Towards Rule Violation in Sport, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2012;6(4):467-479.

Atry A, Hansson MG, Kihlbom K, Gene Doping and the Responsibility of Bioethicists, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2011;5(2):149-160.

PhD Student

Ashkan Atry was a PhD student at CRB from 2008-2013. He holds a degree of Master of Arts in Theoretical Philosophy from Uppsala University (2008). His thesis dealt with questions about doping and fairness in sports.

Supervisors

• Ulrik Kihlbom, Senior lecturer in Medical Ethics
• Mats G. Hansson, Professor of Biomedical Ethics

Funding

The Swedish National Centre for Research in Sports (Centrum för idrottsforskning) and the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences (Gymnastik och idrottsskolan)