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Sports

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Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics

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Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between bioethics and sport ethics, which changed dramatically in the early 2000 when the genetics era generated a series of new questions about the ends of sport and how they would interface more widely with a range of bioethical principles. Focused largely on the nontherapeutic application of genetics to persons, the entry situates these debates within the context of discussions about the use of human enhancement and wider debates about transhumanism. It argues that concerns about the ethics of performance enhancement in sport have become more closely aligned with wider public health concerns, where doping should be seen as more than just a problem for elite sport. It also examines the overlap between technologies, which have further expanded the field of bioethics into such areas as disability studies, where the case of Oscar Pistorius – as the first prosthetically enabled Paralympian to compete within the Olympic Games – has been a prominent example of the overlap between biotechnology and biomechanical prosthesis.

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Further Readings

  • McNamee, M. (2007). Whose prometheus? Transhumanism, biotechnology and the moral topography of sports medicine. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 1(2), 181–194. doi:10.1080/17511320701425173.

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  • Miah, A. (2003). Be very afraid: Cyborg athletes, transhuman ideals, and posthumanity. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 13(2). http://www.jetpress.org/volume13/miah.html. Last Accessed 22 May 2015.

  • Miah, A. (2004). Genetically modified athletes: Biomedical ethics, gene doping and sport. London/New York: Routledge.

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  • Schneider, A. J., & Friedmann, T. (2006). Gene doping in sports: The science and ethics of genetically modified athletes. New York: Academic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environment & Life Sciences, University of Salford, Manchester, UK

    Andy Miah

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  1. Andy Miah
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Correspondence to Andy Miah .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Duquesne University Center for Healthcare Ethics, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Henk ten Have

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Miah, A. (2015). Sports. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_399-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_399-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-05544-2

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