What exactly is the moral/ethical problem with a professional athlete taking performance enhancing drugs? I'm talking about a talented professional who carefully weighs the known risks and side effects of such drugs and decides their use is necessary for him/her in order to be competitive in their sport. Shouldn't this just be a personal decision? Aspiring beauty queens are allowed to get plastic surgery, and athletes are allowed to get "corrective" laser eye surgery (significantly improving their perfectly normal distance vision)...

Given the rules in place in most professional and amateur sports, anathlete who takes performance enhancing drugs will be typically beguilty of some form of deception. But I think you're asking whether thereis a moral justification for the putting those rules into place. Ithink there is. Many performance enhancing drugs are dangerous (e.g.,EPO), and a policy that prohibits their use looks likely to reduce thesignificant harms that their use may produce to the user and to others.This seems to provide a moral basis for such policies. Whatabout concerns for the individual liberty of adult athletes? In somecases our concern for harm overrides the presumption in favor of suchliberty. Consider that the use of performance enhancing drugs bytalented professionals may have a tendency to promote the use of suchdrugs in others. And if the use of steroids were allowed, there wouldlikely be (even more) pressure on all athletes to use them so as tocompete with users. What about a performance enhancing drug...