The Goals of Sports Medicine: What are they and what should they be?
Christian Munthe
Dept. of philosophy, Göteborg University
Presented at the conference The Ethics of Sports Medicine,
Stockholm University, may 23-24, 2005.
While other parts of medicine and health care seems traditionally to be
primarily directed at preventing losses of bodily functions, repairing
said functions in the case of such losses, or at least to provide
ailment for unpleasant symptoms, sports medicine has allready from the
beginning been involved with the project of enhancing bodily functions
with regard to sports performance. First, when sports medicine involve
itself in the traditional health care activity of prevention, therapy
and ailment, the aim is often very different from ordinary medical
activities in that it tries to secure bodily functions far beyond what
is required to reach what would normally be seen as a non-pathological
state of a person. Second, sports medicine actively involves itself in
the project of extending and enhancing human performance capacities
through medical knowledge and technology. This raises several issues
both with regard to medical ethics and the ethics of sports. For
example, how should the goals of sports medicine be viewed from the
perspective of rationing scarce health care resources? Should sports
medicine be restricted by rules from the sports community as to which
performance enhancing activities are tolerated in that sector? Or
should sports medicine rather direct what is to be accepted within the
world of sports? Both lines of reasoning are to be found in
debates about, e.g., doping, controversial training methods and the
potential use of gene technology in sports. The paper will address
these issues and analyse them from a philosophical point of view.
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