Columnist: Banning performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) from sports will not stop their use. They provide too big a com...

shunhe on October 6, 2020

Hi @jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com,

Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look at what the stimulus is telling us. We’re told that banning PEDs won’t stop their use. Why? They provide too big a competitive advantage, and top athletes d whatever it takes to get a big competitive advantage. So, the argument continues, PEDs should be allowed, but only if administered under a doctor’s care to ensure they’re taken in safe doses. Then, the health risks will disappear.

We’re now asked for an assumption required by the columnist’s argument. We can use the negation technique here. First, what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is that PEDs should be allowed, but only if administered under a doctor’s care. Now, what does the argument assume? One thing we might think it assumes is that athletes will actually listen to their doctors.

So now take a look at (E), which tells us that the argument assumes that using PEDs at unsafe levels does not create a big competitive advantage over using them at safe levels. Let’s say that this is false, that using PEDs at unsafe levels does create a big competitive advantage over using them at safe levels. Then it seems likely that the athletes would just take the PEDs at unsafe levels anyway (since they’ll do whatever it takes), and then it doesn’t matter if doctors are administering them. So that destroys the argument, and makes (E) the correct answer.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.