my i'm lisa fletcher, and you are in the stream. aztec knowledge advances it is time to rewrite the play book when it comes to using performance enhancers in sports? >> when does looking for an edge over the competition cross the line and become cheating? allegations of steroid use have plagued professional sports for decades. sport governing bodies are cracking down on the use of performance-enhancing drugs by

conducting random drug tests. athletes who have tested positive have faced suspension, been stripped of awards, and even been banned. while drug use is illegal, advances in technology have opened up other new avenues for athletes looking for a competitive edge. surgery and specialized equipment have made it possible to train the human body to perform at higher levels. so are we moving toward a future with leagues of unnaturally extrordanai extraordinary athletes? and is it time to change the rules? wajahat ali is here bringing your voice into the show for the next half hour. it's a fans dream this time of year. the other thing they are really

into is the debate. >> yeah, and believe it or not, there are some athletes [ inaudible ] amy a loyal streamer works with them, she says . . . and we just got this tweet from angel who is a wrestler. loyal streamers you the third host of the show. throughout the show tweet at us, and we will try our best to get your tweet on the air. >> to help us tackle this topic, a little pun intended we're joined by a sports journalist and the "new york times" best selling author of the sports gene. in our google plus angout, the

managing editor for boston review, and editor for the online site grand land, and a man who explores the intersection of emerging technology and culture at institute for the future. simon we're talking about perform-enhancing drugs as well aztec knowledge, but let's start with the drugs. what defines a perform enhancer? >> there is probably a variety of definitiodefinitions, but ul it's some kind of chemical that you could consume or inject that would improve your abilities beyond what you would naturally be able to produce. >> that's a good jointing off point. andrew is there any sense within the sports industry as to the percentage of athletes that are using them? >> i think by that definition a lot of athletes -- probably all

athletes are using them. so i would add that -- among sports fans, the definition is probably -- a perform enhancer is probably something that is illegal and something you shouldn't be taking, and i think that's the way fans today look at it, and -- yeah, i think -- personally, i -- growing up, i -- i grew up in the middle of the steroid crisis in baseball, and i have sort of accepted that it is part of all sports now. there's always a nagging question as to who -- what people are taking and how much it is affecting what we're seeing. >> but you get the sense that -- it's quite prevalent across the board? >> yeah, i mean there's nothing -- at this point there's nothing that would surprise me in the nfl, the nba, certainly various olympic sports and -- and baseball. it's -- that's just sort of

where we are now. there's always new technologies that aren't being tested for, and various drugs that people can take and the testing programs can only do so much. >> our community is chiming in here. and he uses the hashtag, keep sports natural. that intrigued me david. talk about this notion that fans have that sports and athletes are reducing the purity of the game by using these enhancers what is your take on that? >> so that first question, athletes don't even have to clean their system if they are careful about how they do it. but the issue about whether sports are pure, it's a little arbitrary. there are some substances like dhea, which is banned for olympic at let's, but allowed

for major league baseball players and football players, so there is no question that some of the purity is just sort of a contrivance. you have these agreed upon rules and the line of where performance-enhancing drugs are really shifts back and forth. and some fans feel the core values of sport emanate from abiding by agreed-opinion rules, and whether they think they are good or not, that's is the foundation. >> david i want to get back to that a little later in the show. in term of these performance-enhancing drugs, do they work? >> oh, yeah. there are things on the ban list that i think will come off of the list because they don't work well. but steroids are chemical analogs of testosterone. and testosterone works like

rocket fuel. by age 14 boys are in a different universe in sports than girls. so any sport where men are better than women, steroid -- testosterone analogs help a lot. >> do you think they work so well that it's naive to think we'll ever get to a place where these drugs aren't part of the landscape? >> yes, because we're seeing the emergence of various kinds of treatments. drugs -- gene doping -- we'll talk about that in a little bit -- but the variety of techniques to improve capability is getting greater and become more subtle, harder to detect, and ultimately there's a question of how does it differ to take a pharmacological intervention very really advanced really expensive training facilities, you are still altering the body. >> the tweets keep rolling in.

howard says . . . so we have the -- we have lance armstrong, right, suppose you are competing in a home run derby with barry bonds what incentive to you have not to use performance-enhancing drugs? >> the tweets that you just read and those perspectives, this is why the panic over peds has always annoyed me because it turns fans into -- it stokes this self righteous rage in fans. where they say these guys -- like they are selling out their game. they are selling out themselves,

and it basically -- it works -- everyone into this frenzy that distracted from the actual sports, and i don't know if we're ever going to get to a place where we can pursue pedusers and actually catch them. so what is the point of focusing so much energy average at this problem? honestly we don't want to be in a situation where you feel like you have to take a performance enhancer to play, but i just don't know if we are spending the energy in a smart way. >> simon is there an argument to be made for legalizing and regulating the use of these drugs? >> absolutely. i think that is absolutely the best way forward, because we're in a situation where you have,

you know -- as has been pointed out, different drugs that are legal in different sports, and there's no sort of common legal system that makes any sense across the different sports nationally and internationally, and i think given that there is so much incentive to take these drugs, it makes sense for the leagues working with scientists to try to devise a list of the drugs that are actually safe so that if players decide that they want -- want to take them in order to gain a competitive edge, they will take the ones that they won't be hurting themselves with, and won't be putting other players in a position where they feel pressures to take drugs that could hurt them. so it's having a regulated system where you understand the science and medical issues behind these drugs will help improve the player's health while preventing them from

falling behind the competition. >> simon you raise an issue that i want to get in to more after the break, and that is when it comes to what is and is not allowed, where do you draw the line? send us your thoughts on that. we're going to share them on the other side of the break. position where they feel i want to get in to more after

♪ i mountain climb, i trail run, i play tennis. i do everything i want to do. if you remove the technology from my body, all i can do is crawl. i'm completely crippled, but with the technology, i'm not disabled. >> reporter: this is the documentary joshgs fixed the sign fiction of human enhancement. and so waj before the break we asked our viewers if they think

perform enhancement via technology should be regulated just like technology? >> yeah, we did a poll. and valerie says . . . >> well, the first thing that comes to mind for me here is olympic runner oscar psi torres's leg. what are some of the things being tried to boost athletes beyond their natural ability? >> i think one of the most important developments when it comes to these kind of technologies is in the realm of

genetics. and it's important for couple of reasons. one they are apt to be -- they are likely to be less harmful than some of the pharmaceutical interventions, because they are directly effecting the kinds of precursors in the body for the production of testosterone, for example. but they are going to be very difficult to detect, very difficult if not impossible to detect. unless you take biopsies of people's muscle cells before they actually begin to compete in athletics. and unless it's something as obvious as carbon fiber legs, at some point it's going to be close to impossible to tell whether someone has been altered. >> i disagree with both of these statements. because when you alter a gene, it changes the expression of

other genes. and they already have gene expression signatures that shows when someone uses a transgene for one, and pharmaceutical companies are tagging them. >> true. true. >> and i would also disagree with the safety. there's a famous trial in france that cured a dozen boys of double boy syndrome, basically they have no immune system and it cured them of it, and then half of them developed leukemia. so we really don't know. it's neither safe nor will it be undetectable in my opinion. >> simon whether it's detectable or not what is the difference between using performance enhancing drugs and performance enhancing technologies in terms of upping an athlete's ability? >> one thing i would point out is that there are already -- not exactly prosthetic, but

procedures that athletes undergo that do enhance their performance without any kind of drugs involved, and they are elective procedures sometimes. famously thomas john's surgery is a surgery that a lot of pitchers in baseball undergo as a repairtive surgery. but there are young player s who are getting the surgery because it improves their condition, improves their throwing arm. so -- and you can't see that, you know? i mean you could potential learn about a player's medical history, but we can't see that. so we are already in that world in some way, and i don't think there are too many people who are excessively concerned about elective tommy john's surgery. so when it comes to the other technologies apart from doping, i'm not sure in a sort of

metaphysical sense there is that much of a difference. i think the fact that potentially you can see it might make a difference in the eyes of some fans. it's pretty hard to ignore if you are looking at a highly modified arm or leg, and you can see all of the wires popping off of them or something like that, so i think in some cases where you have people who can easily ignore -- who can easily ignore doping because you can't see that happening on the field in front of you, if you see someone who is clearly modified, id think that might effect their ability to enjoy the competition. >> simon our community is really engaging in the topic.

andrew i want to go with you with this. are we really concerned about the effects this technology is having on the athletes themselveses? or do you think we're just pushing forward for the competition, the performance and the money? >> well, i think david would probably more about the actual side effects, but i think what has been interesting is that a lot of these drugs -- a lot of the drugs that are banned currently, we don't really know exactly how much they can hurt you later, and then a lot of the drugs that are legal are not healthy either. so there's -- there's a lot of gray area with the way leagues have handled -- have handled this stuff at this point. the only thing i would add is that the technology is out there, and it's really hard to -- to ask people to pretend that it's just not there, like it's sort of hard to unwind that clock. do you know what i mean? >> yeah. >> if i may jump in here. >> yeah, go ahead.

>> my brother joe is the director of athletics at a city college in southern california, and he raised a very important point with me in a conversation earlier today, and that is that even if you take away the direct safety aspects of the drugs themselves, even if you come up with a perfect intervention, it doesn't necessarily change the ability of the body to withstand the effects of having increased strength, et cetera, so you end up with the potential for example more head injuries. running into other people faster and harder. >> yeah, and some people's bodies are not meant to carry an extra 30 pounds of muscle, and they are far more injury prone and that's definitely a problem. >> waj it raises the point that a lot of our viewers brought up, which was maybe the measures to use or not to use, regulate or

not to regulate is whether it effects the health of the athlete in a negative way. >> yeah, and the community is saying people aren't taking that into account. >> yeah, for the most part we are talking about elite athletes, so why push past their extraordinary natural ability? have fans come to expect enhanced greatness? think about that. we'll be right back.

♪ hi, i'm a high school biology and environmental science teacher, and i'm in the stream. >> welcome back we're talking about the role of performance enhancer in the form of drugs and technology in sports. fans are really invested in the games. athletes are praised when they break records and condemned when they use perform enhancers. have fans been conditioned to

expect something that is only attainable through performance enhancers? >> i do to a degree, but i don't think that it's sort of -- they can't be unconditioned. you look at baseball, and there are a lot fewer home runs now, and the game has still been pretty compelling. the biggest damage i think that has been done -- i'm a big track and field fan, and if you look at women's sprinting, for example, the records are totally basically ruined by the 1980s. so women can never attempt to set a word record anymore. but i think fans get used to it, but they can go back the other way too. >> i think company it is most difficult is when you are dealing with sports like baseball or track and field where the record books are sort of sacred, but in something like football, for example, like the training techniques have evolved as we have gone on. so adrian petersen can come back

from a torn acl in six or seven months and have an unbelievable season, whereas gayle sayers had his career basically ended by a knee injury, but that doesn't make me think that gayle is not as good as adrian. >> but what about the fairness of the game? >> you sort of have to accept that we can't really know at this point, and i mean -- even baseball which has gone above and beyond to try to prosecute pedusers and do everything. there are guys who hit a punch of home runs and come out of nowhere, and in the back of everyone's mind is is he juicing? so that suspicious is there.

>> our commune see the a bit cynical. give this a listen. >> it really depends on whether or not you want to look at sporting represents as entertainment or as pure sporting events. if you want to look at them as entertainment for the fans, then steroids upon honestly add a got to the game. but it's pure competition, that's when steroids have no place. >> and this viewer says . . . simon have we transformed sports into the gladiator arena? >> maybe. but it probably was as well before we were thinking about performance-enhancing drugs. fans are very aware of the

incredibly damaging nature of the game and the significance of the injuries, and just how much suffering some of the athletes go through while they are playing and later in their careers, so i think it's indisputable that that game particularly is extremely violent, but i don't think it necessarily has much to do with performance-enhancing drugs, and i want to back up to the question of whether fans expect or are particularly entertained by players who are doping or using some kind of enhancement. and to some degree yes, but on the other hand i think there are athletes who gain greater admiration as a result of not taking performance-enhancing drugs. i think of pedro martinez who was an incredible pitcher for the red sox for years, and that was during, you know, baseball's -- the height of baseball's performance enhancing drug era, and his e.r.a.s were

2, 2.0 or even less. which is incredible even at that time. >> several things that come to mind. the way -- as the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports -- performance enhancing technologies in sports continues -- and it will continue, we may end up seeing a demand for a split of some kind where you have explicitly developed games and entire leagues of whichever sport that are meant to be based on the technology, and at the same time you have sports and leagues and athletic industries that are meant for the, quote unquote, pure at t -- athletics. >> but who is going to show up for that, because they will be at such a disadvantage, because

ultimately it comesback down to money. >> but they are competing with each other. and as we have seen from the twitter feed there are those who want the pure game. it would be an very interesting ex-peer meant to see which would attract a greater audience. >> david we have about 30 seconds left. give me a 20-second wrap-up. >> we have some of that. we have the wwe for example which is basically theaters of guys on massive amounts of drugs, and it has a huge fan base. so i think there is some of that split and it seems like it -- to some degree both endeavors can draw fans. >> all right. got to go guys. thanks for a great conversation. see you online. ♪

good evening over one welcome to al jazeera i'm john siegenthaler in new york. no deal on the government shutdown but the two sides talk and are expected to talk again tonight. >> plus, stock optimism even the mention of a deal had the stocks soring today. we'll look at whether the traders optimism was premature. the ki kidnapping. the prime minister was abducted at gun point. one. mercury 7 astronauts has died.