David Jones

Dr. Leslie Bruce

Eng 301
Where the Line Should Be Drawn
When it comes to entertainment, professional sports are a massive industry. The number
of athletes that are in college compared to how many are in professional leagues, show that only
a small percentage of collegiate athletes will move on to become athletes at the professional
level. With the stakes so high, and the mounting pressure from the media and family/friends,
these athletes attempt to gain any advantage which might sometimes mean break rules and
regulations with hopes as to not let anyone down. There are many forms of performance
enhancing drugs available to these athletes, but I want to discuss the methods of blood doping,
and platelet-rich plasma therapy. Although many will debate whether these methods should be
prohibited within professional sports, I hope to enlighten those who may be unaware, or
misinformed, about these procedures, and where the line must be drawn.
Around the turn of the 21
th
century, the term doping became current according to the
World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) (2010). Essentially it was the use of performance
enhancing substances from any artificial or foreign means that would give an edge over the
competition (WADA, 2010). This in itself has been dated as far back as time, but didnt get its
coined name until not long ago. Before the methods of Blood Doping and Platelet-rich Plasma
Therapy had ever been discovered, athletes tried various combinations of supplementation in
hope to boost their performance, like Thomas Hicks here:
Thomas Hicks ran to victory in the marathon at the 1904 Olympic Games, in Saint
Louis, with the help of raw egg, injections of strychnine and doses of brandy
administered to him during the race... (WADA, 2010)
Now, whether or not those substances truly helped Hicks win that race, or he was too inebriated
to realize that his legs were full of lactic acid, we will never know. This was clearly a sign that
restrictions had to be made regarding drug use in sports, and that there was plenty more of this to
come (WADA, 2010).
Since professional sporting events have become invented, athletes were taking any
measure possible to gain an advantage over other, even if it was detrimental to their health.
There were athletes in all sports using substances to gain a competitive edge (WADA, 2010). As
science and technology continued to move forward, more methods were becoming available in
order to push individuals to the next level. Through the late 1960s and 1970s is when steroids
really began to make a name for themselves within sports, and in professional bodybuilding
(WADA, 2010). Steroids did come a little before blood doping, but for WADA they viewed
blood doping as more of a problem because the methods for testing were not nearly as developed
(2010).
Blood doping has been practiced since the 1970s and continues to be used today
despite its ban by the IOC in 1986 (WADA, 2010). Blood doping is one of the most common
methods for athletes to push themselves beyond their normal thresholds. Blood Doping is the
process in which blood is extracted from an individual, or a close relative that shares the same
blood type (Eichner, 2007). The blood is then put into a centrifuge where the blood plasma and
red blood cells are separated from one another (Eichner, 2007). The red blood cells are then
stored in a refrigerator or freezer and can be re-administered into the individuals blood stream
so as to increase their red blood cell count (Eichner, 2007). When this occurs more oxygen is
now capable of being delivered to all parts of the body, theoretically allowing the performance of
the individual to be increased (Eichner, 2007). The problem with this is that these individuals
are putting the body in a state which is not natural and potentially very harmful to them.
The process of Blood Doping puts individuals bodies in an unnatural state. When the
amount of red blood cells is increased it causes the blood to have a higher viscosity, meaning that
the thicker the blood is, the easier it is to get blood clots, which has lead to many deaths among
athletes (Eichner, 2007). As the popularity of Blood Doping increased, the death toll amongst
athletes increased as well (WADA, 2010). But, when athletes are competing against one another
and some are using these methods to cheat and increase their physical performance, it drives
other players to do so as well so that they can keep up (Am J Sports Med, 2013).
Although there are methods that are considered cheating, that allows athletes to push
themselves past normal thresholds. There are other uses that are derived from the same method
which can be very advantageous to these professional athletes that does not increase their
physical abilities, and can actually help athletes have a more prosperous career.
On the contrary to Blood Doping, is a method called Platelet-Rich Plasma Therapy.
Platelet-Rich Plasma Therapy (PRP) goes through the same process as Blood Doping, where the
red blood cells are separated from the plasma in the centrifuge (Eichner, 2007). Instead of the
red blood cells being re-administered into the athletes to increase their physical performance, the
plasma is used instead (Cronin, 2013). Where Blood Doping methods require the red blood cells
to be injected intravenously, PRP Therapy is injected into the soft tissue at the site of an injury
(Cronin, 2013). These methods greatly decrease the amount of time in which is required for
athletes to recover from certain injuries (Cronin, 2013). This would mean that using PRP,
athletes can greatly decrease the amount of time required to recover from certain injuries.
In a medical journal written by Michael Cronin, studies have shown that after multiple
treatments of Platelet-Rich Plasma Therapy (supplemented with physical therapy), caused soft
tissue injuries to repair at a much more rapid pace (2013). Cronin recognized that injuries which
would normally take weeks to heal could potentially have their rehabilitation times decreased to
mere days when still supplemented with physical therapy (2013). With athletes, their physical
abilities are being put to the test on a daily basis, whether it is during practice or competing in
their sporting event. If they could have the healing time of injuries, which are bound to occur,
reduced by that significant of a time frame, they would be able to compete more often.
This isnt just a big factor for the athletes themselves, but for the leagues which they play
for as well. Depending on the sport, athletes make varying salaries that are in the millions of
dollars. When an athlete of a superstar caliber gets injured, it costs these leagues millions of
dollars since these athletes are unable to perform. It also affects us as fans of these sports. I
know I can speak for all sports aficionados who want to see athletes on their favorite teams
recover as quickly as possible so that they can get back into the game.
With all of that being said, you it shows how PRP without the use of other substances
does not give any physical competitive edge over athletes on the playing field. Therefore, it goes
to show that athletes should be allowed to use PRP. WADA put a ban on PRP in 2010 because
they felt that research showed that there were growth factors within PRP that allowed athletes to
have a competitive edge over one another (2010). After WADA had conducted more research,
The ban on PRP was removed in 2011 because of limited evidence for a systemic ergogenic
effect of PRP, but the growth factors within PRP remain prohibited (Am J Sports Med, 2013).
That means that WADA recognized that PRP itself is not a performance enhancing drug, but that
there are components which can be added to the PRP that are still prohibited and remain that way
(2010).
This debate will continue to go on about whether or not PRP should be prohibited for
athletes. WADA has done an excellent job thus far to help prevent the use of performance
enhancing drugs within professional sports. These drugs will always be used by athletes because
they want to be the best they can be. Although it will be impossible to catch everyone who is
using blood doping methods to improve themselves, the testing for it will become better over
time and hopefully weed out as many cheaters as possible.


References
Cronin, M. (2013), Combining Prolotherapy and Platelet-rich Plasma Therapy for Join
Repair in a Case of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Distuption. Integrative Medicine: A Clinicians
Journal, 12(2), 46-50.
Chayanin, A., Anuwat, K., & Wirana, A. (2013). Outcomes and Quality of Life after
Platelet-rich Plasma Therapy in Patients with Recalcitrant Hindfoot and Ankle Diseases: A
Preliminary Report of 12 Patients. Journal Of Foot & Ankle Surgery, 52(4), 475-480.
doi:10.1053/jfas.2013.03.005
Am J Sports Med. 2013 Jan;41(1):186-93. doi: 10.1177/0363546512466383. Epub
2012 Dec 4.
E. Randy Eichner Sports Med 2007; Blood Doping Infusions, Erythropoietin and
Artificial Blood 37 (4-5): 389-39! 0112-1642/07/0004-0389/S44.95/0