There are three questions about improvement that I will discuss. The first has to do with the improvement to policy in relation to sport. The second involves the way in which an improvement to performance might or might not constitute an improvement to sport. Finally, the third kind of improvement can be seen in relation to the improvement to sport ethics. I intend to tackle each of these separately, though collectively they will reveal important insights in relation to scientific trends in Olympic sport and the ethical issues arising from them.

Improvement to Policy
There is a need for policy about doping to be re-constituted and to question the conceptual priority of ‘anti’ doping. It is argued that policy discussions about science in sport must recognise the broader context of sport technology and seek to develop a policy about ‘performance’, rather than ‘doping.

Improvement to Performance
It is argued that a quantitative enhancement to a sporting performance has no value and is, thus, unethical, unless the motivation behind using it implies something meaningful about being human. Unless the use of the technology is constitutive of our transhuman identity, then it is not a justifiable method of altering (rather than enhancing) performance

Improvement to Ethics
It is argued that sport ethics has had only a limited discourse and has failed to recognise broader theoretical ideas in relation to performance modification, which might be found in the philosophy of technology and bioethics.

A subsequent version of this paper is published as follows:

Miah, A. (2005) From Anti-Doping to a ‘Performance Policy’ Sport Technology, Being Human, and Doing Ethics, European Journal of Sport Science, in press.