Source: The Conversation – France
The “Enhanced Games”, which took place in Las Vegas from May 21–24, 2026, allow the use of performance-enhancing substances and technological equipment that are normally banned. They have been unanimously condemned by anti-doping authorities and have been the subject of fierce criticism, particularly in the media.
As part of the (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) Inserm’s publication of a review of the current state of knowledge on doping, the scientists behind the project examined the Enhanced Games: where do they come from, and what do they entail?
Beyond the prophecies of doom issued by the Cassandras, what consequences do they generate or could they produce? In what ways do they raise ethical issues, and if so, what kind of ethics are we talking about?
Where do the Enhanced Games come from?
The Enhanced Games draw inspiration from the arguments of Julian Savulescu, a professor of bioethics at the University of Oxford, who asserts that legalising doping would lead to fairer sport and better health for athletes (Savulescu et al., 2004).
They are promoted by Aron D’Souza, an Australian lawyer and venture capitalist. He takes up and updates Savulescu’s arguments while criticising Olympic sport.
He asserts that the fight against doping amounts to failure and that regulatory bodies, particularly the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), act in contradiction to the values they claim to uphold.
Athletes, including those who are using performance-enhancing drugs, are portrayed as victims of an unjust and ineffective system. To lend credibility to his cause, D’Souza reappropriates several values associated with the Olympic movement. In particular, he echoes the IOC’s rhetoric on the links between sport and health.
Instead of depriving athletes of scientific and technological advances due to anti-doping regulations, he clearly states his intention to make them serve human enhancement. The latest medical advances would be used under the supervision of a “world-class” medical and scientific committee (Hoberman, 2026).
Through this disruptive mobilisation of science and technology, D’Souza asserts that he will not only improve athletes’ performance but also make sports safer for everyone. This strategy, which consists of neutralising critics by appropriating the values espoused by his detractors, can create some confusion and blur the lines.
The narrative is structured around promises of progress and a better world through technoscience to serve performance and conquer new markets. The purported support of science, however, does not stand up to scrutiny. D’Souza draws on Savulescu’s (2004) arguments to assert that most athletes are given an incentive to engage in doping within the context of Olympic sports.
He fails, however, to mention that Savulescu relies on models developed by economists for an argument that lacks empirical foundation. To further support the idea that the fight against doping has failed, he selects a few studies on the prevalence of doping and claims that 40 to 99% of athletes are doped.
To this end, he cites a controversial study (Ulrich et al. 2018), conducted in 2011 against the backdrop of state-sponsored doping in Russia and an athletics federation led by a corrupt president (Ohl et al. 2021), to draw general conclusions, and does so by distorting certain figures in a manner that amounts to intellectual dishonesty.
A political project According to D’Souza, the mobilisation of so-called “disruptive” sciences in the service of athletic performance aims “to build a superhumanity” and thus “change the world”. The political ambitions are clearly on display, as are their ties to the MAGA movement.
Among the early investors is Peter Thiel, one of Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters among the billionaire financiers of the MAGA movement. He is joined by others close to the president, such as his son Donald Trump Jr.
The promoters of the Enhanced Games also highlight their ties to Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a proponent of disruptive programs, such as testosterone replacement therapy, as part of an anti-aging program (AP News, February 13, 2025).
The strategy to discredit the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the IOC, key players in the fight against doping, is driven by the MAGA movement and its aversion to any regulation. Libertarian values align with the idea that participation in technoscientific experiments is a matter of individual choice and responsibility, which must not be curtailed by regulations from scientific institutions and their ethics committees.
For these apostles of the market and transactions, making the Enhanced Games a leading sporting event is first and foremost a strategic lever. The goal is to occupy a central position in the highly promising market for products designed to enhance human performance across an ever-longer lifespan.
Viewing the body as the finest object of consumption (Baudrillard, 1970) lies at the heart of a renewal in health strategies. Healthcare no longer aims to combat disease, but rather seeks individualised improvement of physical performance, viewed as a key factor in health.
The ambition is to develop a new segment of the health economy that escapes regulatory constraints. D’Souza and his associates hope to capitalise on images of record-breaking athletes to legitimise the use of substances and methods intended to “enhance” human beings.
They have, in fact, quickly positioned themselves in this market by offering, for example, a range of testosterone treatments and touting their potential. Inspired by transhumanism, these performance alchemists hope to use sports as a testing ground to provide “proof” of the beneficial effects of the substances and methods they promote.
Are authorities giving in to moral panic? This vision of health, the body, and sport advances a critique of regulation.
Those involved in the fight against doping base it on a health issue (even if, in its implementation, the invocation of this rationale remains debatable) and on the need to preserve the integrity of sporting competition.
Pierre de Coubertin’s ideal of “surpassing oneself” comes with certain limits.
Questions such as “What can be done with the human body?” or “How far can it go?” lead to others: “How far can performance preparation go?” In this regard, one might consider that the “debate” proposed by D’Souza, while certainly provocative, is not unrelated to the regulation of doping.
We can question the limits of high-level performance by examining its reality. The development of a young high-potential athlete within the federated sport system has an impact on their emotional, cognitive, and social growth.
The training load, biological and scientific preparation, the constraints that sporting schedules place on school, university, or vocational training, as well as the obligations imposed by anti-doping authorities (biological passport, geolocation, etc.) are all issues that sports institutions certainly address, but which raise questions about the limits of Citius, Altius, Fortius.
The organisation of these “enhanced” games therefore aims to reopen this discussion. This could open the door for sports and anti-doping institutions to defend the foundation of the ideal of “clean sport”, the WADA slogan.
But instead of debating the vision and the political and social project underpinning sports competition, one might be surprised by the institutional public statements.
They generally follow this pattern: these Enhanced Games are condemned because they would create a rupture, they would be contrary to the “spirit of sport” and sanctions are envisaged for any athlete who participates in the event.
Statements from anti-doping bodies may appear to fall under the category of “moral panic”, a concept used by certain sociologists who write about doping (Critcher, 2014) to describe reactions that are often disproportionate to what is considered deviant behaviour.
These statements are striking for their predictive nature. It seems that whatever happens, these games will prove something. Whether the anti-doping fight is effective or not. Whether traditional sport must be defended or the opposite.
Whether we are entering a new era of spectator sport or not.
The process of moral panic relies on the ability to perpetuate the problem: by demonising these Enhanced Games, actors often from sports institutions emphasise the need to combat doping and tend to view the impact of these games as greater than it actually is.
Preserving athletes’ health The position defended by D’Souza draws on arguments similar to those put forward by the scholar Andy Miah. In his provocatively titled book (Genetically Modified Athletes, 2004), this bioethicist criticises the lack of debate surrounding the fight against doping.
Sports institutions choose to shut down the debate, believing they can avoid engaging in ethical reasoning by taking refuge behind the spectre of doping’s effects on athletes’ health. A clinical study aims to be reassuring on this point, but the study’s conditions, methodology, and funding disqualify it, as French radio station FranceInfo pointed out in a recent broadcast.
In their review on doping, the Inserm expert panel cannot rule on the health consequences for athletes participating in this sporting competition, as the doping protocols are unknown (and we will likely never know them).
This obviously does not mean that such consequences do not exist or are not serious.
Given this uncertainty, is there cause for concern about a “trickle-down” effect that could encourage young athletes, envious of the glory (and money) earned by champions not bound by anti-doping regulations, to dope, regardless of the subsequent consequences for their health?
A study often cited to answer this question is that of Goldman et al. (1984).
Following a survey of elite athletes, these researchers claimed that half of those surveyed would agree to take a drug guaranteeing athletic success, even though they had been informed that it would also lead to their death within five years.
However, other authors revisiting the question found much lower rates, as only 1% of the athletes in their sample would accept this Faustian bargain (Connor et al., 2013). It will be interesting to investigate these supposed spillover effects, now that the Enhanced Games competition has come to an end.
The ethical argument While invoking ethical concerns is a tempting way to criticise the Enhanced Games, it is not certain that this argument is conclusive, at least based on traditional arguments.
Generally speaking, the conditions under which high-level and competitive sports are practised are indeed dominated by the systematic pursuit of performance in the training of bodies and minds, the material resources employed, and the conduct of competitions.
While not explicitly as “enhanced” as the organisers of the Enhanced Games claim, high-level and competitive sports are nonetheless heavily subject to the implementation of innovations of all kinds.
Under these conditions, it is genuinely difficult to label the Enhanced Games as unethical, unless one adopts a naturalistic conception to describe ordinary sport, whereas the classic focus on performance (the principle of competitive and high-level sport) leads to viewing athletes’ bodies as something shaped, constructed, or even as a site for experimentation.
Strictly speaking, ethical discourse is essentially evaluative in nature, and its scope is intended to be normative, that is, it aims to transform the actions of those who claim it. The aim of ethics, for a human being, is to strive to live in a dignified and just manner.
From this perspective, ethical evaluation may take three forms of reasoning.
These are deontological reasoning, which appeals to a sense of duty and the rights of individual conscience; utilitarian reasoning, which is based on weighing the costs of an action against its benefits for existence; and finally, aretaic (also known as perfectionist) reasoning, namely, a type of evaluation based on the pursuit of personal excellence or carried out according to values regarded as superior.
What, then, of the Enhanced Games according to these criteria? One might consider that participating in them amounts to a form of utilitarian reasoning that is apparently more economic than ethical, or even contrary to the spirit of ethics.
However, this line of reasoning also applies to the standard approach of athletes (and their professional environment) in their pursuit of performance.
Paradoxically, this type of reasoning may even serve as a form of justification by actors in the world of high-level and competitive sports for the acceptance of Enhanced Games: enhanced athletes can be viewed as the rational maximisers of their actions.
Furthermore, do the Enhanced Games violate the rights of conscience, according to deontological ethics?
This is by no means certain, since the participants, who are under no obligation, appear to be fully willing to take part in these events and must be held responsible for the consequences of their actions, for example, on their own health.
Finally, the spirit of competition and the pursuit of excellence through performance can be invoked by athletes, organisers, or any stakeholders interested in the games.
In this sense, by interpreting the inherently athletic nature of this line of reasoning (which originated in ancient Greece, an ethical stance inspired by perfectionism seems entirely plausible when it comes to the Enhanced Games.
Traditional forms of ethical argumentation therefore do not seem capable of disqualifying the Enhanced Games. However, two types of arguments may qualify this observation. First, what is being called into question from an ethical standpoint is the notion of the spirit of sport.
These “enhanced” games can be described as elitist in that they concentrate considerable resources (material, financial, and human) to achieve feats that are literally superhuman, since they are beyond the reach both of ordinary individuals and of most athletes.
In any case, this is what their organisers claim and hoped for.
Yet this clearly runs counter to the spirit of sport, an ethically rich concept that embodies values such as fairness, generosity, and fair play, and is characterised by a strong, exemplary value in democratic society, far beyond the world of professional sports.
Viewed through the lens of the sporting spirit, even taking into account the flaws in its competitive form mentioned above, sport is not essentially something selfish, nor is it strictly tied to an ideal of quantified performance.
This is, in fact, what the World Anti-Doping Code intends by considering the spirit of sport a core value.
Reserved for an elite group of privileged athletes, the Enhanced Games, on the contrary, appear to be underpinned by an ideology advocating neoliberal elitism that mobilises athletes viewed as “entrepreneurs of themselves”, all driven by a capitalist logic that is highly questionable in ethical terms.
Furthermore, moral questions are currently being reshaped by environmental imperatives, which provide ethics with a much broader framework of application compared to traditionally defined moral issues.
Strongly driven by entrepreneurial logic and aspiring to global expansion that is extremely costly in terms of material resources, the Enhanced Games seem completely indifferent to these transformations, even though environmental responsibility can no longer be regarded today as something ethically neutral.
A problem that is not ethical, but political From our perspective, the Enhanced Games could provide an opportunity to revisit certain realities in sport as well as the vision of its promoters. These are questions that fall not under ethics, but politics.
Perhaps anti-doping officials should have opted for a strategy of avoidance: by ignoring these games and taking care not to contribute to their media coverage, they would have avoided getting caught up in a debate for which they did not seem sufficiently prepared.
Having chosen to seize this opportunity to reaffirm the values of sport, they now have no choice but to truly engage with the political issues by deconstructing the event promoters’ “vision” and by taking an unflinching look at the issues that reveal a certain similarity between the current state of competitive sport and these games, which they deem problematic.
And these issues are numerous, whether they concern the realities of the production of performance or the health of high-level athletes, the foundations of the fight against doping (and its related issues: athletes’ participation in rulemaking, individual autonomy, respect for privacy), the commodification of sport, or environmental considerations linked to high-level sports and the organisation of sporting events.
This article was co-written with the help of Inserm’s Doping and Doping Practices in Sport collective expert group François Carré, Laboratoire Traitement du signal et de l’image (LTSI), UMR 1099 Inserm – Rennes 1 University.
Louise Carton, Inserm U 1172 – Lille Neuroscience & Cognition, Cognitive, degenerative and vascular disorders team; Department of Medical Pharamacology, Lille Faculty of Medicine, Lille-Nord-de-France University. Katia Collomp, Laboratoire Complexité, innovation, activités motrices et sportives (CIAMS), Department of Science and Technology of Physical and Sports Activities, Faculty of Science and Technology, Orléans.
Aymery Constant, École des hautes études en santé publique (EHESP), Department of Human and Social Sciences, Rennes.
Karine Corrion, Laboratoire Motricité humaine, expertise, sport, santé (LAMHESS, UPR 6312), Science and Technology of Physical and Sports Activities Campus – Sports Science, Université Côte d’Azur, Nice. Éric Janssen, DATA unit, Observatoire français des drogues et des tendances addictives (OFDT), Paris.
Maryse Lapeyre-Mestre, Department of Medicine, Medical and Clinical Pharamcology department at Toulouse University; UMR 1295 CERPOP (Centre d’épidémiologie et de recherche en santé des populations) Inserm – Toulouse University; Guillaume Martinent, Laboratoire sur les vulnérabilités et l’innovation dans le sport (L-VIS) (EA 7428), STAPS, Claude-Bernard Lyon I University, Villeurbanne.
Mathias Poussel, Centre universitaire de médecine du sport et activité physique adaptée (CUMSAPA) in Nancy, Medical Doping Prevention unit (AMPD), Respiratory Function Medical Imaging, Nancy Brabois University Hospital; UR 3450 DevAH (Development, adaptation and disability), Cardio-respiratory and motor regulation, Lorraine University, Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy.
Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/07/enhanced-games-whats-the-issue/