Morality in surgical enhancement

Morality in surgical enhancement

Pierre-Alexandre Morin

Thinking science

Professor: Lisa Schmidt

By:

Pierre-Alexandre Morin

December 19th

Department of Humanities

Champlain Regional College

Lennoxville, Quebec, Canada

Morality in surgical enhancement

It is simply not fair that some athletes get surgical procedures to enhance their performances. Some people argue that a sport is never totally fair but there is a limit of accepting unfairness and unneeded surgical. It is simply crossing the line. Athletes are not all equals, some already have a lot of money and they can have easier access to specialists for their nutrition or better trainers or even a better medical team to treat them when they are injured. Although those advantages are considered normal for some athletes, it does not guarantee success. Whether athletes have money for the best of everything, they are at the same level of competition of those without money. Abilities come from training, perseverance and desired for success. Eventually those advantages will become available for performing athletes as they will attract sponsors, publicity and maybe grants.

It is important to start with the basics. What is a surgery? According to word reference, a surgery is ‘’any major repair or change produced as if by a surgical operation’’. That means changing or altering physical or anatomical part of the body is considered surgery. For this paper, modifying genes of an individual will also be considered surgery even if it is on the very limits of this simple definition.

Traditionally surgery was used to repair injury but with time surgery became a way to change appearances as wished by the patient. Nowadays, some athletes have decided to go through some expensive surgeries to increase their abilities in the disciple in which they perform. One of the well-known examples is the Tommy John surgery that is offered to baseball pitchers. As Erickson et al. (2014) explains a high-level pitcher can suffer medial ulnar collateral ligament injury (elbow injury) due to an extensive amount of pitching (pp. 536-537). Melinda Ratini (2014) explains that the only way to recover from that type of injury is the Tommy John surgery. This procedure consists of taking tendon from another place in the body such as the hamstring or the knee. In some cases it can be taken from the body of a person recently dead. The tendon that is used for this procedure is stronger than the original one to make sure that the patient won't have to go through this surgery again. Once the new tendon is attached to the bones and the remaining of the original tendon, the patient then has a long recovery of approximately one to two years before recovering the same abilities prior to the injury as demonstrated by Erickson et al.’s (2014).The problem is that some players are willing to go through this type of surgery simply to enhance their abilities as in some cases the athlete has dramatically gained strength and speed on his pitch (pp. 536-543).

One other type of surgery that can improve performance is the use of prosthesis. In the discipline of the Paralympic, prosthesis are very common because they give a chance to the disabled athletes to  near equality to each other but not so much with non-disabled athletes. Some athletes, such as Oscar Pistorius, have been able to reach the level of competition of non-disabled athletes. Oscar Pistorius is often called the fastest man on no legs or the Blade Runner because he has two prosthetic limbs that replace his legs from the knees down as McKnight describes (2008, p.1). These prosthetic legs are made of thin J-shaped carbon fiber that looks like blades. When he started competing in non-disabled competitions, question was raised on the fairness of these advantageous prosthetic legs. Studies have shown that with his prosthetic legs, Oscar Pistorius needed 25% less energy to run than a runner with normal legs. Some people think, with the continuous progress, athletes will use prosthetic limbs to increase their performance and compete with athletes that use only their body.

The last type of surgery that will be covered is the genetic enhancement. Genetic enhancement plays with the genes of an individual to achieve a certain phenotype. A phenotype is what we can observe on their person. As an example, the hair color of an individual is his phenotype. The phenotype is determined by the arrangement of the genes which are found in the DNA as nucleotide sequence as explained by Audesirk et al.’s (2010, p.178). For quite a long time, man has played with those genes in plant and later in animals but now they can arrange the genes of an individual. This has opened a lot of possibilities to treat genetic diseases. There are different procedures possible when we talk about genetic enhancements. One of them is the gene transfer. Audesirk et al.’s (2010) explains that this procedure consists of taking the wanted genes that will counter the effects of a bad gene possessed by the patient (p.260). Then the gene is inserted into a vector, an organism that will transport the gene. Lastly, the vector is inserted into a stem cell of the patient so the new gene is multiplied and the phenotype appears. Like surgery and the use of prosthetic limbs, some athletes have gone on the way of genetic enhancement to get better performance in their specific sport. Instead of treating a disease they try to get the best gene possible to get an advantage in their sport or discipline.

A good example of surgery often used to enhance performances is the Tommy John surgery for baseball players. It is totally understandable that an athlete that has UCL damage will undergo this kind surgery to enable him to continue to play and sometimes only to have a normal lifestyle. The rehabilitation can take up to two years and considering it is a long period of time, he might not be able to play again after the surgery as another athlete may have replaced him within the team. The surgery can improve his abilities from prior to the injury as the new ligament is stronger than the original one. I find it understandable that an injured athlete chooses surgery. It is ethically and morally debatable. The problem is that some athletes undergo the Tommy John surgery with the only purpose to enhance their capabilities, gain more strength and speed that training could ever give them since now their articulation is stronger than it could become through training. I think that enhancement in capabilities should only be obtained through work and training. The only advantages that an athlete with more money should have over another with less money are better therapy or access to better equipment. Sampedro (2016) explains the difference in the concept of healing therapy versus enhancement is not big but the difference is still very important. He explains that ‘’the difference is […] mainly related to the consequence that any of the interventions have on individual lives’’ (p.415). Therefore therapy consists of repairing something that is wrong with the body of the patient, something that diminishes his quality of life. On the other hand, enhancement consists of taking something that already works well and to improve it for greater capacity than originally meant to be for a specific purpose. I think like Sampedro(2016, pp.413-425) that surgical procedure should not have any negative effects on the abilities neither it should increase abilities more than the patient had before his injury. It is just a question of fairness and equality.

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