Enhanced Games – food for thought
Introduction
Following Enhanced’s Las Vegas launch, I have no issue with people forming their own opinion about utilising science to improve performance. What annoys me is influencers who distort that decision-making process by peddling guff.
I was invited by Enhanced to participate at their December 2024 conference in London. While there, I also signed Enhanced’s Declaration on Human Enhancement. Just to be clear: I do not speak for Enhanced, instead I speak about the concept.
At the conference, what struck me was the financial, intellectual and (perhaps most crucial) organisational smarts behind Enhanced.
I encountered individuals with soaring intellects (and CVs to match) who see Enhanced as a vehicle to pursue perhaps the strongest incentive that humans have - to help their families live longer and better lives. That combination of intellect and incentive seems truly formidable.
But it will take time for Enhanced’s ethos to pierce the signal-jamming chaff thrown up by monopolies and vested interests. It will also require arguments to be heard, both for and against Enhanced.
So with all the optimism of a butterfly flapping its wings to generate a gust of wind, here goes.
The ski test
Let’s begin by skiing in the backcountry.
There’s been a surge in popularity as backcountry skiers are drawn to pristine snow and peaceful isolation. Retailers profit from supplying the venturesome with poles, shovels and avalanche beacons in case disaster strikes. Which it does frequently. The Times reports that at least 245 people have been killed in the US by avalanches in the past decade, already eight this year.1
Stop and ponder that for a moment. Backcountry skiers are putting their lives at risk. They set an example to impressionable youth. Profits flow from their risk taking. They could remain within the rules, but they choose not to. All are criticisms levelled at Enhanced.
But these skiers represent a different level, because they also put rescuers’ lives at risk as well as innocents in the avalanche path too.
Now, imagine you’re speaking to a backcountry skier. Do you tell them they can’t go? Think carefully. Keep thinking until you’ve identified the basis on which you tell them not to go. What rationale do you rely on?
If instead you decide to let the skier go (“I’ve tried to tell you, so whatever happens is on you”), then on what basis would you tell an athlete they cannot compete at Enhanced?
If you are pro-skier but condemn Enhanced ‘because drugs are dangerous’ please read the next few paragraphs then run the test again.
Enhanced is not a drug free-for-all
Many influencers have jumped to the conclusion that anything goes at Enhanced. That is simply not true.
Instead, athletes who join Enhanced can use only legally available products or therapeutics prescribed by their doctor. No illegal drugs. No black-market drugs. No drugs still undergoing clinical trials.
The athletes can choose who they work with and what they take, but only as long as it is lawful.
Health concerns associated with using enhancements
Without fail, influencers all raise health concerns but then conveniently omit to mention Enhanced’s medical monitoring, which even the most zealous influencer would admit alters the risk profile.
Specifically, athletes who join Enhanced:
Will be screened before they take any enhancements;
Will be monitored by their doctors while they are taking enhancements; and
Must pass a final medical screen before they are allowed to compete.
WADA has already called on government and law enforcement agencies to assess whether physicians would be in breach of professional rules and I consider that to be a sensible ‘check and balance’.
That also means every doctor will know their regulatory body will be breathing down their necks and waiting for the slightest misstep in order to pounce. Lit by an international media spotlight, scrutinised by regulators and judged by peers, it seems incomprehensible that a doctor would run the gauntlet and step outside their medical obligations (i.e., we are not talking about a medico operating in the shadows, a la Tour de France).
I also predict that athletes will be contractually obliged to return all earnings should it be established they used illegal or non-FDA approved products.
Subsequently, both the doctor (threatened by medical malpractice) and the athlete (threatened with losing their rewards) are strongly incentivised to comply with Enhanced’s policy.
So the appropriate health concern that influencers should ponder is along the lines of:
“What risks to their health am I willing to allow a fully informed person to take, if their heavily scrutinised doctor prescribes licensed therapeutics to that healthy individual then monitors their well-being throughout?”
I invite you to re-run the ski test.
What about athletes who don’t join Enhanced’s team?
Attentive readers will have identified a gap in my argument - namely that Enhanced’s launch indicates that ‘non-team’ athletes will also be able to compete for appearance fees and bonus pools.
From what I understand, those ‘non-team’ athletes will make their own decision on what enhancements to use.
It seems inevitable that some ‘non-team’ athletes will behave identically to athletes who cheat in the Olympic Movement - they will deliberately steer around the requirement to use only lawful products, knowing there is no testing to deter them.
Those ‘non-team’ athletes would meet my definition of cheating - since they would be deliberately breaking Enhanced’s rule in order to seek an advantage.2 I would feel no differently toward them than I do toward cheats in the Olympic Movement.
But if Enhanced demand that ‘non-team’ athletes undergo a medical screen before they compete, then there is a substantial deterrent – I would argue a more pragmatic deterrent than drug testing.
Here we begin to see the distinction between Enhanced and the Olympic Movement.
In the Olympic Movement all athletes may compete provided there is no trace of banned substance in their system, regardless of their medical status. At Enhanced, athletes may compete with traces of banned substances but only if there are no medical concerns.
So the appropriate question that health-oriented influencers should ask concerning ‘non-team’ participants is along the lines of:
“On what basis do I stop a person with no medically discernible contraindications from competing at the Enhanced Games?”.
As far as I can tell, ultimately it boils down to whether or not influencers agree with the first principle enunciated in the Declaration on Human Enhancement - the right to bodily sovereignty.
Please re-run the ski test.
Influencer overreach
Some influencers seem especially eager to be heard, adopting health stances that seem difficult to reconcile with their track record.
For example, WADA’s statement adopted the catchy phrase that “The health and well-being of athletes is WADA’s number-one priority”.3
This is an eye-catching statement, not least because WADA’s actual core responsibility is instead to monitor compliance with the Code and to report on such compliance by all stakeholders. In 2012 its own Working Group berated WADA for straying from their core role and it seems the lessons have not been learned.4
WADA’s roles and responsibilities are buried on page 133 of the Code. I cannot find a mention of athlete’s health in WADA’s responsibilities. At a stretch, coming in at number 20.7.8 on WADA’s list of responsibilities is “To promote, conduct, commission, fund and coordinate anti-doping research and to promote anti-doping Education”. ‘Education’ is then defined on page 168 of the Code as being “The process of learning to instill values and develop behaviours that foster and protect the spirit of sport, and to prevent intentional and unintentional doping”.
With the best intentions in the world, that is not a number-one priority.
Of course, one purpose of the Code itself is to promote athlete’s health. But the Code is enacted by signatories – and WADA is not a signatory. WADA’s priority is to monitor compliance with the Code, not to enact it. Just as a shepherd’s role is to mind the flock, not to grow the wool.
But let’s suppose I am wrong.
Suspending disbelief for a moment, what if WADA was required to account for how they had exercised their supposed “number-one priority” to ensure the health and well-being of athletes? Certainly that would be reflected in their budgets.
Relying on WADA’s own figures which are found in their current form only since the year of the 2012 London Olympics until 2022, there have been 18,774 athletes found to have used anabolic steroids during that period.5
Were health WADA’s number-one priority, it would be expected that a significant portion of the USD$364 million that has been contributed to WADA during that period would have been spent medically monitoring those positive athletes - who WADA knew had taken supposedly life-threatening steroids. It is not as if those athletes were beyond reach or outside care, as sanctioned athletes remain available for out-of-competition testing during their ineligibility and submit whereabouts information.
Of course, no budget line exists.
Either the vast majority of those 18,774 athletes continue to live in good health, or WADA has abdicated its “number-one priority” by allowing an enormous number of athletes supposedly at risk to go unmonitored and unassisted. Neither scenario is consistent with WADA’s statement.
Spirit of sport
Influencers with particularly unbecoming backstories have condemned Enhanced as being against the spirit of sport. Pot kettle black.
For example, I cannot fathom how athletics6 and swimming7 - both organisations stained by bribery and corruption scandals who then hid behind a change of name - would hold themselves out as being bastions of the spirt of sport.
In my opinion, the spirit of sport can be found in community clubs run by volunteers, in parents driving children to their weekend sport, and in the bonds formed between teammates. Not in an administrator’s boardroom.
Fundamental differences between Enhanced and the Olympic Movement
Influencers have (deliberately or unwittingly) so far failed to distinguish between the vastly different aspirations of the Olympic Movement and Enhanced. Put simply, the Olympic Movement seek to smother while Enhanced seek to expand.
The Olympic Movement smothers change - they don’t want to disrupt the sponsorships and broadcasting rights that are rivers of gold.
To put those deliberately provocative statements in context, consider the following.
Crucial to the Olympic Movement’s maintenance of their rivers of gold is for them to cynically broadcast the hologram of an effective WADA to their sponsors, broadcasters and the public. But make no mistake – the one thing the Olympic Movement does not want to change is how many athletes are caught for doping. For example:
Testing has not proven to be particularly effective in detecting dopers/cheats.
Less than 1% of tests produce positive results.
There has been no apparent statistical improvement in the number of positive results since about 1985.
There is no general appetite to undertake the effort and expense of a successful effort to deliver doping-free sport.
International federations like athletics and swimming have no incentive to catch dopers in the sport - anti-doping is not regarded as their core business (except perhaps for IFs facing a crisis).
Lack of interest on the part of many stakeholders in actually catching doping athletes.
I have italicised not to be dramatic, but to advise the reader those quotes are taken verbatim from WADA’s own Working Group chaired by its ex-president Dick Pound…
I sympathise with WADA, who were conceived in 1999 from the arranged marriage of ill-suited parents who bore mutual mistrust but were forced together by crisis: Governments married Sport (nee Sponsors).
During its first few years, WADA’s parents clucked and cooed, with Ministers of Sport too eager to squeeze into family photos. Less enamoured were they by their troubled teenager who initially refused to follow instructions to ban athletes for life, then demonstrated some glaring lapses of judgment epitomised by Sochi. Difficult to persuade into the same room during WADA’s rebellious late teens and early twenties, the parents now attend WADA’s birthdays by proxy and this year baulked for the first time at WADA’s relentless requests for more pocket money. Onlookers wonder where it all went wrong for a child that promised so much but now teeters on the brink of illegitimacy.
And it is getting harder, not easier, for WADA to fulfil its destiny. Nowadays governments, amid intense and growing national rivalries, see sport as a political resource. It seems naive to believe that a nation who launches missiles to kill civilians would morally baulk at conspiring to dope their athletes to win national pride.
Consequently, WADA is terminally undermined by governments who collude with their own sporting organisations and/or deliberately ignore their antidoping responsibilities.
But the rivers of gold would run dry without WADA’s hologram to appease sponsors, broadcasters and the public. So the Olympic Movement sees itself with no option but to smother change and continue to broadcast their problem child’s hologram (then sit back while antidoping federations fed up with the status quo are sued for defamation).
Contrast that with Enhanced
Enhanced want to expand – they want to explore how science can benefit longevity and healthspan.
Below I will deliberately paraphrase their ethos, if only to re-emphasise that I do not speak for Enhanced. But as far as I understand it, Enhanced seek to:
a) Extend the limits of performance
The Olympic Movement showcases how Human Physiology + Training can yield remarkable performances.
Enhanced showcase how Human Physiology + Science can yield remarkable performances.
I can think of no simpler formula to demonstrate their fundamental difference. Unfortunately, influencers have (deliberately or unwittingly) failed to grasp the distinction and consequently bemoan that Enhanced does not comply with Olympic ideals about how performance should be accomplished.
Enhanced should not be judged by the Olympic ideal - it is built around a different ethos.
b) Yield trickle-down benefits to society
After 25 years of WADA I cannot identify a single medical, scientific or technological benefit to society that has been created under the yolk placed on sport by antidoping rules.8
By comparison, the First Declaration on Human Enhancement locks in Enhanced’s commitment to benefit society in the first paragraph:
“We, the pioneers of human enhancement, in order to unlock the full potential of human ability, promote fairness and opportunity, protect the right of individuals to become extraordinary, extend healthy human lifespans, and secure the benefits of science, innovation and freedom for ourselves and future generations …”.
I make this point not as a criticism of WADA but to bring into sharp relief the different ethos of the Olympic Movement and Enhanced.
Enhanced should not be judged by the Olympic ideal - it is built around a different ethos.
c) Make money
The Olympic Movement makes enormous amounts of money from their model, which is based on selling broadcasting rights and sponsorships. With more than $USD 6 billion in assets according to its 2023 financial reports, the IOC is self-evidently adept at harvesting money from its model.
From what I understand, Enhanced proposes to make money using a different model, including (but not limited to) selling access to wellness programs and supplements.
With seasoned, international-calibre entrepreneurial and investor savvy at its disposal, it seems reasonable to presume Enhanced will also prove adept at generating money from their model.
Both models deliberately set out to make money. Influencers who imply that selling wellness and supplements is less noble than selling broadcasting rights and sponsorships should justify how one model, but not the other, is symbiotic with sport.
Enhanced should not be judged by the Olympic ideal - it is built around a different ethos.
d) Pay athletes.
The Olympic Movement is infamous for instilling the virtues of amateurism into Olympic athletes, but not so much into Olympic administrators. I give short shrift to administrators who earn twenty times more than they dollop into the outstretched porridge pannikin of athletes who dare to ask for more.
Enhanced’s calling card has always been to pay its participants. Over time the Olympic Movement and Enhanced will converge in this respect – and I am confident which one will be forced to shift its attitude toward their athletes.
Enhanced should not be judged by the Olympic ideal - it is built around a different ethos.
Benefits to an aging population
As set out in their Declaration, Enhanced seek to extend healthy human lifespans.
Although the concept of yin and yang does not fit perfectly, I do see a duality between the approaches utilised to enhance athletic performance on the one hand, and the potential approaches that might enhance the vitality (not just longevity) of an aging population on the other hand.
Broadly speaking, enhancing athletic performance is about three things:
faster recovery;
stronger muscles; and
more red blood cells.
Currently it is considered a normal part of aging to experience a progressive decline in strength and physical activity, i.e., to have weaker muscles and less red blood cells. Indeed, walking speed, which is strongly correlated with maximal aerobic capacity in older people, has been described as the ‘sixth vital sign’.9
Although weaker muscles in the elderly are obvious, a decline in red blood cells is not obvious despite the anemia of aging affecting 1 in 6 people over 60 years and 1 in 3 over 90 years.
Anemia in the elderly is strongly associated with increases in the risk of falling, death, hospitalisation, quality of life and depression. Crucially, the risks are present even for the elderly whose red blood cell levels are above the clinical threshold of anemia.
Despite data demonstrating that patients over the age of 65 years are responsive to EPO treatment, clinical intervention is rarely used and only then for the most severe anemia.
Although influencers may contort themselves at the thought of science helping young athletes increase strength and speed, I hope that few would begrudge science helping the elderly achieve the same.
Yet despite extensive databanks that characterise EPO’s safety, readers would be surprised at how little we understand about how healthy people (let alone the elderly) respond to EPO treatment. For example, most would believe that all healthy people respond to EPO injections - they don’t. Similarly, anyone who has watched Enhanced’s documentary now realise there is still much to learn about how to optimise testosterone treatment to improve performance.
As far as I can see, shedding light on how the elderly might be made stronger and more physically active would be beneficial to a society currently wrestling with spiralling health and medical costs associated with an aging population.
After Enhanced’s first documentary there is already a more sophisticated public understanding of how testosterone affects each individual differently (i.e., compare Magnussen vs Gkolomeev). Enhanced’s future research outcomes might just be the prod that an ossified medical community needs to revisit their current approach to aging.
Accountability
I once viewed the Olympic Movement + WADA with optimism and enthusiasm about what that combination could achieve.
With hindsight, I have a nagging sense that a failure to measure WADA’s effectiveness - a flaw that was flagged by WADA’s Working Group back in 2012 – contributed to their eventual stumble. Briefly, WADA was criticised for doing a number of core and non-core jobs “rather poorly”. Without performance metrics to guide the Board, WADA was not accountable and their missteps were allowed to fester.
I would not like a similar fate to befall Enhanced, since I have even higher expectations of them. Given that I have advocated for Enhanced to be given an opportunity to deliver on its aspirational goals, what outcome would constitute ‘success’ in my eyes?
Obviously, this is barely a scaffold, much less a scorecard. It is not my place to set agendas nor nominate milestones. Instead, the table is intended to illustrate that Enhanced’s ethos is – from what I can discern – comprised of interdependent layers. The first event in Las Vegas is merely the foundation.
Rather than influencer’s buckshot-fired-from-the-hip criticisms of Enhanced, I invite them to take a considered approach and appraise whether any of those outcomes would justify Enhanced’s existence.
Conclusion
Reasonable minds may differ as to its merit. I hope that fewer now reach their conclusions about Enhanced on an uninformed basis. Let the market decide its place in a society that tolerates backcountry skiing.
In the meantime, parents can swivel their child’s head toward the Olympic broadcast, explaining how Coca-Cola fits neatly into the spirit of Olympism while lying to them that their Olympian role models never, ever cheat.
Or parents could spend the time explaining the subtleties - including why they disagree with Enhanced’s goals, or instead why they take issue with how Enhanced go about achieving their goals. I suggest that conversation would benefit parent and child.
Sport and Science. I don’t see why not.
Footnotes
Test numbers are elusive to locate, go to https://www.wada-ama.org/en/resources/anti-doping-stats/anti-doping-testing-figures-report and ensure you search under Archives tab for ‘Anti-doping Testing Figures Report’. Separately, contributions can be gleaned from each Annual Report.
Several breakthroughs (e.g., better understanding of exercise physiology, energy gels, aerodynamic bikes and super shoes) have arisen. But those come from sponsors (not antidoping) who have a positive incentive to instigate change in order to sell products to the weekend warrior.
Middleton, A.; Fritz, S. and Lusardi, M. ‘Walking Speed: the Functional Vital Sign’. J Aging Phys Act. 2014 May 2;23(2):314–322.