Chris Graham of the Augusta Free Press has an excellent article on whether Congress should conduct new hearings on performance-enhancing drugs in the wake of the Floyd Landis and Justin Gatlin doping scandals ("The Politics of Steroids," Aug. 20, 2006). As you know, Landis is an American cyclist who won the 2006 Tour de France and who was recently fired from the Phonak team after a positive doping was confirmed, while Gatlin is an American sprinter who holds the world record in the 100 meter sprint and who also recently tested positive for doping. Graham wonders if Congress might consider holding hearings on doping in sports, much like it did in 2005 in the wake of the baseball steroids scandal.
Graham interviews several people for the story, including me:
"I would be surprised if Congress acted again on this issue in the near future," said Michael McCann, a professor at the Mississippi College School of Law and a regular contributor to The Sports Law Blog. "This certainly has garnered the attention of the sports world. But with elections coming up, with the war in Iraq, with Israel, it doesn't seem as if there is a window of time to address this," McCann told The Augusta Free Press.Check out the story for more. Do you think Congress should get involved at this time, or ever?
Bob Thompson, the director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, points to another issue that could be serving to hold back congressional action. "I don't feel yet like we've really reached that point of total public outrage all united together in one sort of voice," Thompson said . . .
Arthur Caplan, the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks it is wise of Congress to steer clear of getting involved in the issue any more than it has. "The issue here is that there really isn't any right or wrong about what to ban or prohibit in sports once you get past risk," Caplan said . . .
Paul Haagen, the co-director of Center for Sports Law and Policy at Duke University, offers two other reasons for Congress to keep its nose out of the regulatory end of things. "With the international sports, I think there is a really strong case that this ought to be left to the World Anti-Doping Agency - and the reason for that is when you're dealing with international competitions, there's a lot of suspicion from country to country that individual countries are protecting their athletes, that they're not interested in rooting this out . . ."
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