JOURNAL OF SPORTS SCIENCE & MEDICINE
http://www.jssm.org
  

Book review  

A HISTORY OF DRUG USE IN SPORT 1876-1976: BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Editor: Paul Dimeo
Bibliographic Data: ISBN-10: 0415357721, ISBN-13: 978-0415357722, Routledge Publishing, 2007, £22.79, 160 pages, hardcover.
Subjects: Drug use and abuse in sport.
Reviewed by: Fadil Özyener, MD, PhD, Uludag University Medical School, Bursa, Turkey.

© Journal of Sports Science and Medicine (2007) 6, 382
DESCRIPTION
The book explains how the usage of drugs in sport came to be considered in terms of "abuse" contrary to be thought of being ethical and supportive to the athletes in the early days of modern sport.

PURPOSE
The aim of this book is to question of using and abusing drugs in sport at length from a historical perspective. It proposes to discuss the issue as a dilemma of 'good anti-doping' versus 'evil doping'.

FEATURES

The issues addressed in this book are as following: 1.Sport, drugs and society; 2.Doping and the rise of modern sport, 1876-1918; 3.The science gets serious, 1920-1945; 4. Amphetamines and post-war sport, 1945-1976; 5.The steroids epidemic, 1945-1976; 6.Dealing with the scandal: anti-doping and the new ethics of sport, 1945-1965; 7. Science, morality and policy: the modernisation of anti-doping, 1965-1976; 8.Doping, anti-doping and the changing values of sport.

ASSESSMENT
This book will be great interest to the sportsmen as well as students, researchers and practitioners in the sport and exercise disciplines whether they work in the laboratory or in the field since it is about a popular topic in sport. It could also be valued as a reference book, because it targets to avoid easy answers to difficult questions in the controversial subject of drug use in sport.

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