I will leave most of the writing to the experts today. The link below is an interesting discussion of why we are passionate about sports. It also talks, briefly, about why doping has become such an issue, tied to the financial rewards that are governing excess competition these days.

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2016/01/is-there-too-much-competition-in-sport-.html

I am less interested in doping in sports – despite the interesting political ramifications – and more interested in the equivalent in the academic realm: neuro-enhancers. It has been an ongoing controversy since the first discussion appeared in Nature in 2008. The authors argued that taking certain drugs or stimulating the brains in other ways to enhance cognitive performance might not be something to be afraid of. (Note they did not necessarily recommend it.)

Drugs are already a large part of the competition in the intellectual work, not just colleges and grad schools, but the workplace as well. From the article below:

“Off-label use is already a problem. Amphetamine and dextroamphetamine (Adderall) and methylphenidate (Ritalin) are drugs prescribed to millions of Americans to treat attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They are also widely used on college and high school campuses as “study drugs” to help students without an ADD or ADHD diagnosis fight off sleep and focus better on their work. A survey in 2008 showed that four percent of 1,800 randomly surveyed students at a large public university had prescriptions for Adderall or Ritalin; another 34 percent of the students (including more than half of the juniors and seniors) had used the drugs without a prescription, almost all of whom said they took it to help them study.Yet we have few, if any, good studies of the safety and efficacy of these drugs when students use them without a prescription to try to improve their educations (or at least their grades).” This was 5 years ago – it has only gotten worse.

http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/2010/Enhancing_Brains__What_Are_We_Afraid_Of_/

Greeley’s arguments are worth a read in order to be informed about the debate of something that will develop in our lifetimes – and it is up to us to promote it or fight it as we see fit.