Recently, we talked with bioethicist Art Caplan about the Olympics and how they affect the health of the competitors. (Art was especially concerned about the e-coli floating in the Seine, something the swimmers seemed to have overcome.) Here's that episode:
The Musical Innertube - Volume 2, Number 147 - Art Caplan on the 2024 Olympics
Recently, Art followed up with a commentary about allowing American sprinter Noah Lyles to compete after he tested positive for COVID:
It is absurd to leave the final decision to compete to the athlete. They will all say yes.
The whole point of having health and medical expertise at any event including the Olympics is to insure the health, short and long term, of the athletes, staff, coaches and officials. Anyone with Covid should be isolating, not competing and not mingling with others. Anyone at high risk from complications due to Covid infection should not be sanctioned to compete or coach. The athlete may disagree, fans may hate it, the media carrying the event may object behind the scenes, advertisers may threaten clawbacks but none of this matters—doctors must have the final say on health and who competes—whether it is swimming in polluted water, playing with a damaged knee, competing with a contagious disease, playing with a concussion, jumping on a broken ankle or playing with a dangerous underlying medical condition—serious heart murmur, asthma, diabetes, bad burn, Marfan’s etc.
It is a complete ethical farce for any sports oprganiation to leave competition decisions to young athletes who have been training for years and will ignore anything that might prevent them fulfilling their dreams. That simply shows indifference to the health and well-being of those the sports officials say they care about. Medical paternalism has a justifiable role in sports—it is often ignored but that is not right.
Arthur Caplan
Mitty Professor of Bioethics
NYU Grossman School of Medicine
