The recent Enhanced Games in Las Vegas, where elite athletes attempted to break world records by pumping their bodies full of performance-enhancing drugs that are banned in competition, has already received plenty of criticism for perverting the spirit of sports. It was also emblematic of a broader cultural shift in the concept of wellness — away from preventing illness through exercise and nutrition and toward using supplements and potentially dangerous peptide injections to become fitter, younger and supposedly “better” versions of ourselves.
For those unfamiliar, the Enhanced Games — colloquially dubbed the “Steroid Olympics” — featured 42 elite athletes competed in weightlifting, track and swimming. Unlike in traditional competitions where athletes are extensively drug tested, participants were encouraged to use performance enhancers, and most were assisted by medical teams that designed individualized regimens for them.
Among the most popular drugs taken were testosterone (91 percent of athletes) and human growth hormone (79 percent). Also on the list were five anabolic steroids, stimulants such as Adderall and EPO (erythropoietin), the drug notoriously associated with cyclist Lance Armstrong that increases red blood cell production.
Enhanced, the company that sponsored the event and conveniently sells these products online to the public, said it intends to collect data on the athletes and publish it as “research.” But we already know a lot about these drugs. EPO can damage the heart and increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Anabolic steroids have been linked to liver and kidney damage, dangerous blood clots and sudden cardiac death. Human growth hormone can lead to cancer, diabetes and severe joint problems. Some of these compounds may also affect fertility, so much so that one female competitor chose to freeze her eggs before beginning her doping regimen — a procedure she said the company paid for.
Major sports organizations warned that the spectacle sent a troubling message to impressionable young athletes, in addition to undermining sporting integrity. But influencing the culture is precisely what the event was trying to do: normalize chemically enhanced living not just for elite competitors, but for everyday people. The sporting competition itself was a giant infomercial for the company’s online pharmacy. As Max Martin, CEO of the company behind the games, put it at the event, “Now the people at home can also get enhanced and be the best they’ve ever been.”
There are two major flaws in this logic. First, we have no idea whether this is truly “optimization.” Looking at the superhuman-size weightlifters, it certainly appears that the muscle growth regimen worked. One competitors said his body changed so dramatically that their drug cocktails had to be scaled back. It’s also probable that certain drugs increased endurance and allowed athletes to train harder and longer. But while these substances may produce short-term results in competition, they also come with very real long-term side effects that most people would want to avoid.
And in any case, the weightlifters failed to break records despite being given multiple attempts. The runners fell short, too. The only athlete to surpass a world record was a swimmer who, in addition to using banned drugs, competed in a specialized polyurethane full-body suit banned from competition since 2010 because it provided an unfair advantage.
It’s hard to fault individual athletes for choosing to participate. Virtually all said their primary motivation was financial. Winners received $250,000, and world-record bonuses reached $1 million. Athletes got paid more just to show up than they might otherwise earn in years. I don’t begrudge them for taking the money, though I wish this kind of investment, which included $20 million to build a temporary venue in Las Vegas, were directed toward promoting healthier fitness activities instead.
And that brings me to the second problem with all of this: Is chemical enhancement really how we want to pursue wellness? A glance at Enhanced’s website makes clear that its business is pharmacological self-optimization. Visitors who don’t have any medical issues can buy GLP-1 drugs to become a little thinner, testosterone to gain more “vitality” and supplement blends purportedly to defy aging. This is all too common in the booming industry of “biohacking,” in which entrepreneurs and longevity clinics peddle products not to treat diseases, but to help healthy people gain a supposed edge.
How far we’ve come from the wellness culture of the past, which emphasized fresh air, exercise and a healthy diet. Eliminating pesticides and limiting chemicals were once central tenets. That’s no longer true, it seems, if there is money to be made persuading people to experiment on themselves in the name of “optimization.”
It shouldn’t escape anyone’s attention that among the investors in Enhanced is Donald Trump Jr. and that the son of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the event. Welcome, ladies and gentleman, to the new era of “medical freedom.”
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