Review by Choice Review
As its jacket states, this book "brings together an interdisciplinary group of experts in bioethics, sports, law, and philosophy to examine the need for regulating such athletic performance-enhancing technologies as steroids and gene doping." These experts provide a thorough description of the history and present use of many such technologies, offering clear, acceptable explanations for why technologies might be employed, e.g., how blood doping enhances oxygen delivery. The book's fundamental contribution is its evenhanded presentation of the social, ethical, medical, and political arguments for and against use of various practices and of regulation of these practices. None of the contributors is overbearing or dictatorial about choices; rather, each explains why one might make a particular choice and defend or rationalize what one finds acceptable or unacceptable. Every contribution seems to have been subjected to considerable peer review, and the presentation is coherent. A fascinating book for those interested in sport studies, for athletes and other sport professionals, and even for armchair quarterbacks. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers. D. W. Hill University of North Texas
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review