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The Civilisation Games

By Toby Ralph - posted Tuesday, 5 February 2013


We could even call it The Civilisation Games.

It’s all about humanity and what, collectively, we can achieve, not a gormless celebration of the muscle mass of a minority.

Chemical corporations would wrestle one another to sponsor the event and redeem their public images, so funding concerns would evaporate.

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And why stop with drugs? Too many exciting projects in genetic engineering are starved of funding: how better to raise those vital monies than promoting the benefits of cross breeding through sport?

In weightlifting the strongest man might lift five times his own weight, yet cross breed him with a Rhinoceros Beetle and that will be magnified by one hundred and seventy, so he’ll be bench pressing Boeings.

A human might leap five times the length of their height, but the right dash of DNA from a flea would see them covering three football fields.

Long distance runners may stagger through the marathon tape in two hours, but mix in some American Antelope and the event will be over in a half hour show, still leaving time for commercials and the National Anthem.

This is sport I’d actually watch on TV, finding it far more compelling than the supposedly drug-free Olympic drear we’re struggling to control.And I imagine I’d be no orphan.

There would be no cheating, for there would be no rules. No need to test, just straight from lab to podium. It makes such sense.

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Banning drugs in sport is more than an attempt at coercive conformation: it's an attack on science and progress itself.

 Science, the Scientific Revolution, the gains we've made over the past four-hundred years in understanding the natural world, were all premised on the question: what next? If we do this - if this experiment works, if this scientific premise leads to that scientific conclusion - where will it take us? What new knowledge can be learned? What new data can we gain? What next?

The Armstrong haters, the anti-dopers, are effectively arguing: nothing next. 

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Article edited by Jo Coghlan.
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About the Author

Toby Ralph is a practitioner of the dark arts of persuasion and is a not infrequent member of the panel on The Gruen Planet. He is also the author of Bullets, Ballots and Kabulshit: An Afghan Election.

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