First, we are essentially conditioned, Pavlovian conditioned reflex, by a verbal world of words and a non-verbal world of objects, events, observable phenomena and so on. Words are used as symbols to represent the non-verbal world of things. But words are not the things symbolised and violations of the non-identity principle (reification) are conspicuous by the negative consequences it produces.

The first element is personal, converging logically to group, jurisprudence. Here we have a particular mindset, of a group of people, who say a cheat must never be forgiven and must pay for life.

In this context, Dwain Chambers is the victim of three basic affective elements, which Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum described as a signal reaction to words, consisting of evaluation, potency and activity. In their abstraction, the 'ban for life" supporters are not making a statement of fact but a statement of value, of belief, culminating in personal judgment. This private judgment, as opposed to the judgment in law (courts), seeks to overthrow and supplant the law of the land, where, when punishment has been paid in full for a misdemeanour, the slate is clean and no further punishment or penalty is lawful.

The second, is that of ethic. The 'ban for life" people's mindset is that to take drugs to enhance performance (transgressing nature) is cheating and, in continuity, performance must be natural.

Let us analyse.

If performance chemicals are cheating, we must logically, extend them to all aspects of our lives. Chemicals (drugs) by connotation become unnatural and cannot be used to cure. Corneas, hearts, kidneys, livers, cannot be transplanted because they also are unnatural, in the sense of transplanting from one body to another foreign body. Drugs to combat 'senility" caused by reversible viral infections, to help increase the performance of memory and thought are by definition also unnatural and subject to cheating.

We cannot have double standards where we are not cheating by using drugs to cure or ameliorate suffering and simultaneously cheat when we use them for increasing performance. The pivot around which the 'life ban" polemic revolves is not 'cure" or 'performance". It is natural and unnatural. It is about, to run faster with the booster of a chemical, or to run as fast as one can (naturally) without it. We have to look at it impartially. It can be argued that talent must be natural. This again is how we see talent. If it is immutable then why do we fly when nature (or God, if you prefer) gave us no wings? We are bucking nature.

We fly to London or Los Angeles because we have the talent to build aircraft. Whether the talent resides in our discovery of chemicals used directly into our bodies, to enhance health or performance, or indirectly (engineering) into the aircraft, they both infract nature. The evaluative or judgmental factor must be whether there is harm in the equation. If a drug does not harm in general and boosts performance there should be no objection. The operative word is harm. Planes do crash, ships do sink, cars and trains do cause deaths, but in general they are safe. After all, nature gave us two legs to walk, not to sit in cars.

The paramount factor must be the impartial evaluative component. The next time anyone is constipated, a doctor cannot prescribe medicine (chemicals) to cure the ailment. To talk of natural is to open doors against what we take for granted and enjoy now. The crucial factor is embedded in 'harm".

If a performance drug causes cancer, or is dangerous to health, in some way or another, it must be banned because performance in sport, in this context, must not rise before well-being. The sine qua non must be well-being and it does not matter whether it is an antibiotic or a performance booster because they both are in a sense unnatural. There is no harm in wearing spectacles just because nature gave us eyes and not spectacles.

Leave Dwain Chambers alone, he has paid his dues according to law and has the right granted by constitution to stand as an equal before the law and before the country.

Dudley Au