Shouldn't professional athletes benefit from medical advances? Today's professional sports society is full of hypocrisy. We want “superstars”, super performances and elite games. We're always looking for the next Michael Jordan or Babe Ruth or Joe Montana or someone to do something we've never done before. Millions of people turn on the TV to watch the Olympics to see if someone will run faster, jump higher, swim faster, or do countless other incredible feats. Fans pack stadiums that hold over 100,000 people, just to have fun and hopefully see something dramatic or incredible. The pressure on professional athletes to perform at extremely high levels is astronomical. So why do society and professional sports fans want to punish professional athletes who try to take their performances to another level, while they want these same athletes to achieve the impossible? The benefits to professional athletes using a performance enhancer under the care of medical professionals outweigh any risks; it is not cheating and does not violate the spirit of the sport. Therefore, it is high time that performance-enhancing drugs are made legal for professional athletes under the proper care of medical professionals. So, what exactly is a performance-enhancing drug? Most people hear the words performance-enhancing drugs and quickly associate them with “steroids.” This is not exactly true. A performance-enhancing drug is defined as “any substance or drug that people take to make them more successful in sporting competition” (Oxford). The World Anti-Doping Agency has a list of around 200 different substances that it considers performance enhancers (WADA). Some of these banned substances are used every day by normal people, but for a prof...... half of article ......t-md/Jenkins, S. (2007, August 3). Winning and cheating have ancient roots. Washington Post.Mayo Clinic Staff. (2012, December 12). Performance-enhancing drugs: Know the risks. Retrieved April 10, 2014, from Mayoclinic.org: http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/fitness/in-depth/performance-enhancing-drugs/art-20046134Oxford. (n.d.). Oxford Student Dictionaries. Retrieved April 3, 2014, from Oxford Learners Dictionaries: http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/performance-enhancingSavulescu, J., Foddy, B., & Clayton, M. (2004). Why we should allow the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports. Br. J Sports Med, 666-670.USADA. (2014). United States Anti-Doping Agency. Retrieved from http://www.usada.org/WADA. (2014). 2014 list of prohibited substances and methods. Retrieved April 10, 2014, from World Anti-Doping Agency: http://list.wada-ama.org/