Dr David Hamilton Home Page

Performance Enhancing Placebos
(www.drdavidhamilton.com)

In a recent scientific study, published in the latest edition of the Journal of Neuroscience by Professor Fabrizio Benedetti and his team at the University of Turin Medical School, questions have arisen over the ethics of the placebo effect in sports.

Athletes were repeatedly administered morphine during training prior to a competition. But on the day of competition the morphine was secretly swapped for a placebo. Yet the athletes experienced the same considerable increase in pain endurance and physical performance as if they had taken morphine.

Thus they experienced the effects of morphine without having it in their system on the day of competition.

Morphine is an opiate substance. The body produces it’s own natural opiates (opioids) - like endorphin, for instance. In this experiment, the body produced natural opioids, substances that produced the same effect as morphine, on the day of competition. Now the question has arisen that: can an opioid-mediated placebo response be considered ethically acceptable in sports competitions.....or does it have to be considered a doping offence?

In other words, if an athlete has high levels of opioids in his or her system on the day of competition – something that is sure to occur naturally depending on the intensity of their effort, or the emotions they are experiencing – will it arise suspicion of doping?