The ethics of sports medicine is an important emerging area within biomedical ethics. The professionalization of medical support services in sport and continuing debates around issues such as performance-enhancing technologies or the health and welfare of athletes mean that all practitioners in sport, as well as researchers with an interest in sports ethics, need to develop a clear understanding of the ethical aspects of the sport–medicine nexus.
This timely collection of articles explores the conceptual and practical issues that shape and define ethics in sports medicine. Examining central topics such as consent, confidentiality, pain, doping and genetic technology, this book establishes an important baseline for future academic and professional work in this area.
1. Locating the Ethics in Sport Medicine Ethics SECTION I: Sports Medicine as an Ethical Practice 1. Why Sports Medicine is not Medicine 2. Whose Prometheus?: Transhumanism, Biotechnology and the Moral Topography of Sports Medicine 3. Ethical Practice and Sports Physician Protection: A Proposal SECTION II: Professional Ethics and Sports Medicine 1. On the Duty of the Doctor not to Disclose Athlete Doping Data Without Consent 2. Sports medicine, Confidentiality and the Press 3. Sports Physicians and Anti Doping Governance: Between Collusion and Negligence SECTION III: Ethically Significant Concepts in Sports Medicine: Health, Wellbeing and Harm 1. Suffering in and for Sport: Some Philosophical Remarks on a Painful Emotion 2. Sport, Physical Activity and Well Being: An Objectivist Proposal 3. Investigating Eating Disorders in Elite Gymnasts: Conceptual, Ethical and Methodological Issues SECTION IIV: Doping and the Ethics of Performance Enhancement 1. Ethical and Juridical Peculiarities of Anti-Doping Legislation 2. Beyond Consent: The Ethics of Pediatric Doping 2. The Spirit of Sport and the Medicalization of Anti-Doping: Empirical and Normative Ethics SECTION V: Genetics and the Future of Sports Medicine 1. Genetic Testing and Sports Medicine Ethics 2. What’s Wrong with Genetic Enhancement in Sport? 3. Gene Transfer for Pain Tolerance: A Tool to Cope with the Intractable, or an Unethical Endurance-Enhancing Technology?
Biography
Mike McNamee is Professor of Applied Ethics in the College of Engineering at Swansea University, UK. He is editor of the international journal Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, co-editor of Routledge’s landmark book series Ethics and Sports and a former President of the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport.
"Sport physicians are mostly dedicated practitioners doing everything possible to either keep their patients healthy or able to return to their sport or physical activity following injuries. However the zeal to heal and to assist patients/athletes may lead the sport physician into the realm of performance enhancement. Mike McNamee brings an enlightened, occasionally provocative and necessary debate to this arena. This book delves into many topics that particularly resonate in sport, such as confidentiality, doping and genetic enhancements. Elite sport is often the testing grounds for these important and complex ethical issues that will increasingly permeate through many facets of society."
Dr Alan Vernec, Medical Director, WADA
