This paper traces the establishment and development of anabolic steroids (hereafter steroids) doping regulatory regime with the focus on doping regulation research conducted during that time. By doing that, it shows that scientific knowledge and racia...
This paper traces the establishment and development of anabolic steroids (hereafter steroids) doping regulatory regime with the focus on doping regulation research conducted during that time. By doing that, it shows that scientific knowledge and racialized body is made in the doping regulation area. Since several anabolic steroids were invented in the 1950s, steroids had used to be 'legal' drugs among athletes before the IOC Medical Commission banned and made it illegal. However, steroids became an object of the IOC's regulatory concern as the social perceptions toward the 'doping' changed in the 1960-1970s. In the socio-political context of the 1960-1970s, the regulatory logic of steroids maintained that 'equality' should be defended as a social value. As the characteristics of steroids changed, hierarchized body of race - the dominant racial representation before World War Ⅱ-also changed. Before the war, the Nazi German athlete's masculine body and the athletic performance at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 was the evidence of the Aryan racial superiority. After the war, the evidence of the Aryan racial superiority turned out to be a testimony of Nazi's moral deficiency that Nazi's performance in the Olympics ‘was proved’ to be due to cheating, i.e. doping. The changing perception of racialized body was also related to the experience of Genocide during the war which led to the refusal of the ‘race’ as a scientific category.
After this, steroids doping regulatory regime was formed during the 1970s, and the first governance was the IOC Medical Commission regime (hereafter IOC MC). IOC MC could not endure the requirements argued that IOC MC should make and standardize new doping test procedure. Furthermore, the body faced a fundamental limit inherent in the regime such as accuracy of the test and legal impotence, however. To solve these problems, the World Anti-Doping Agency (the independent non-governmental international organization of anti-doping, hereafter WADA) was established in 1999. WADA, based upon its own strengthened legal capacity, had taken the lead in the development of the Athlete Biological Passport Program (hereafter ABP) to solve the problem of accuracy of the test in the era of IOC MC. ABP was designed on 'indirect' detection of doping on a longitudinal basis by monitoring of athlete individual's selected biological variables. But, unlike the case of the hematological doping test, ABP could not show much higher positive detection ratio than traditional 'direct' detection method in the area of steroids doping test and thus introducing ABP in the area faced difficulty. To breakthrough this difficulty, steroids doping researchers drew on genomics research of the UGT2B17 genotype polymorphism, and investigated that. Then, the researchers could show superior detection ratio of ABP than that of traditional detection method- measure of testosterone/epitestosterone ratio in urine, by obtaining the correlation result between testosterone ratio in the urine sample and UGT2B17 polymorphism. This genomics research allowed ABP to enter the steroid doping regulatory area and it also became the significant resources for clinical medical research.
However, the works of steroids doping researchers were not just making scientific knowledge become resources for research/academic science such as clinical medicine. They also created a scientific fact on racial differences. Doping researchers used a parameter that explicates genetic differences among subjects. The scientific fact on racial differences was not solid, because results on racial differences tended to be inconsistent and fluid among the researches associated with steroids and UGT2B17. This 'fluid' scientific fact became 'solid' scientific fact and it was mobilized to make new raciailized body by moving out to public areas such as the media and the virtual community. In the media, the scientific argument that "Genetic variation like UGT2B17 deficiency could help the doped to pass doping test" was rewritten as the sentence "Racial variation like UGT2B17 deficit genotype helps the doped to pass doping test." Spreading these lines to sports online communities, several concepts such as "doping-friendly race" had been made and the socio-historical ideas about the race and the scientific fact on 'UGT2B17 and racial differences' had been mixed in the process. The UGT2B17 genotype research mobilized to construct the 'doping-friendly Asian body' on the molecular level as well as scientific knowledge. A debate on professional boxer Manny Pacquiao’ use of steroids is the case to the point. In the debate, UGT2B17 genotype research was used to re-inscribe him as an 'Asian body' , the UGT2B17 deficit.
This empirical study makes several contributions. First, this study shows that the perception of racialized body has been complicatedly entangling with making scientific knowledge, the idea of the specific substance 'steroids,' and the change of regulatory institutions and structures of steroids and has been transforming with them. This study shows that the argument insisted by STS researchers, that is the social institutions, natural objects, and scientific knowledge are co-produced, is well-founded. Second, this paper, by showing the transformation of racialized body with steroids doping regulatory system, draws that newly appeared differentiated body in the era of genomics and the past hirerachized body are closely related to each other, suggesting modifying the existing view that the two bodies are completely disconnected. The part of practices, which constructs 'differences' among race and ethnicity, has an effect that essentializes the concept of race and removes social aspects- making differences such as health disparities. It shares common mechanism of practices that created 'hierarchy' among race. Lastly, although this study is about the racialized body in the era of post-genomics era, it also well shows that there is significant interaction between regulatory science and research/academic science in the context of a study about regulatory science, another important topic of STS.