The Role of Drugs

MetroNews Talkline
Morgantown, Monongalia County // Professor John Hoberman: The Use of Drugs

"This is, I think, one of the momentous issues that the human race is going to be facing in the 21st Century." That's how Doctor John Hoberman, Chair of the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, describes the question of what role drugs will play in our society.
It's a question, he says, for everyone from scientists to athletes.
"What I claim is that you cannot really understand an elite athlete's use of drugs and the regulation of an elite athlete's use of performance enhancing drugs unless....you situate it within a much larger context of drug use," Hoberman said on Wednesday's MetroNews Talkline.
He says there are any number of ways 'performance enhancing' could be defined and, he says, that could include any number of drugs with drugs being used these days to treat everything from anxiety to erectile dysfunction. It could be argued treating those conditions and any number of other conditions will enhance performance.
Hoberman spoke Wednesday at West Virginia University's Coliseum as part of a lecture series from the International Center for Performance Excellence in WVU's College of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences.
He talked about "The Myth of Olympic Purity: Political Games from Berlin to Beijing." Hoberman has done extensive research on the ways sports, politics, science, public opinion, the Olympics and doping in sports intersect.

Hoberman has written a number of books including "Testosterone Dreams: Rejuvenation, Aphrodisia, Doping" and "The Olympic Crisis: Sport, Politics and the Moral Order."