I've always found the discussion of doping and human enhancement to be fairly fascinating, in large part because it begs the question of what constitutes "legitimate" growth. The discussion takes a still more interesting turn when the discussion shifts from such "idle" activities like sports to "professional" activities like journalism, or academia, or students. In both cases, we have some fairly hard limits on how quickly any individual can improve their performance; they hit a wall. At a very basic level, the drive to transcend merely human limits may be one of the more fundamental drives out there. We want to touch the stars.
Already, "normal" enhancements like availability to better food or the time to exercise have started to delineate some clear class differences. While I was in China, it was fascinating to note how much taller younger generations were than those that had preceded them. They came from families with enough money to afford meat and basic protein when they were children, which meant that their growth wasn't stunted in the way it had been in earlier generations. Here in the States, the dialectic of skinny vs. fat or the differences of longevity relative to income levels hits the exact same notes.
So, it all begs the question of how icky these enhancers are. I don't really have a lot of problems with their use, in whatever context, even if I acknowledge there is a clear purity issue. But, just as a part of maturity is accepting the hard walls that constrain your life, maybe it's the sign of our time that we can tear down those walls. And, as precursors to things like cybernetics or transcending the mind/machine interface, we have a chance to both better define and better understand the human condition. (And go watch Ghost in the Shell.)
