While the sports industry and the Olympics are working hard to eliminate performance-enhancing drugs, a new organization backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel is trying to allow athletes to use them.
Enhances Games was founded by attorney Dr. Thiel, who is credited with leading Peter Thiel’s lawsuit against Gawker Media in 2013. This game was created by Aron D’Souza.
“We want to end the oppression of science in sport and ensure that human potential is reached to its full potential,” D’Souza said. decryption In an interview. “Science has been used throughout our society to improve our skills, productivity and abilities, but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has excluded science from sport. So let’s see what humanity can really do.”
Others who have joined Thiel to support Enhanced Games include the founder of Apeiron Investment Group; Christian Angermeyer He is the former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Balaji Srinivasan.
“We are very focused right now on pharmacological enhancements,” D’Souza said. “Whether it’s steroids, testosterone, or any other supplement or treatment regimen, we want to ensure that athletes can expand their abilities using any medical technology that can be provided through clinical supervision in a safe and effective manner.”
In addition to what is in the report new york post Only partial information about the event will be available on Thursday. D’Souza said he plans to reveal more details about Enhanced Games later this year.
“The launch of (Enhanced Games) will take place in July of this year at the Paris Olympics, where we will support enhanced athletes,” D’Souza said.
According to D’Souza, 44% of elite track and field athletes admitted to using banned performance-enhancing devices, and only 1% were caught.
According to a December 2022 report from online health clinic Invigor Medical, the proportion of adult elite athletes ranges from 14% to 39%, and there are between 3 and 4 million performance-enhancing drug users in the United States.
The first strengthening games include swimming, gymnastics, weightlifting, track and field, as well as boxing and MMA.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) first banned performance-enhancing drugs in 1968. Following the IOC, other sports organizations began conducting tests and issuing suspensions for banned substances, including steroids. The National Football League (NFL) began suspending players for steroid use in 1989.
But D’Souza said he doesn’t want to be an opponent of the IOC, but rather a progressive force toward a science-based future for sports.
“The Olympics are all about the past. It’s about ancient Greece,” D’Souza said. “They are stuck in the past, pursuing their natural sporting spirit. We pursue the future, science and progress. We’re about acceleration.”
Critics may say allowing athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs gives them an unfair advantage, but D’Souza says the Enhanced Games are a test of safety, not fairness.
“(Athletes) can take whatever they want as long as it’s clinically supervised,” D’Souza said. For example, if you do not have an enlarged heart or irregular arrhythmia, you may do so as long as your health limits allow you to do so. Alerts you to the risk of heart attack.
D’Souza pointed to the group’s clinical advisory board, which includes Professor George Church, chair of genetics at Harvard University, Dr Michael Stagner of King’s College London, and biotechnology and life sciences expert Julia Conney, PhD.
“These are some of the world’s leading clinicians and scientists, and they are supporting this project because they see this as a way to unlock human potential.”
D’Souza said Enhanced Games aims to give athletes the option to compete on their natural or ‘enhanced’ side, while also giving consumers an option to see or want to see something interesting, bold, unique and different. It’s a version of wrestling practice like the ancient equivalent of college wrestling.
D’Souza explained that the Enhanced Games will be open to players from all over the world, regardless of the political environment surrounding their country.
“Every athlete has the right to be political and not be politicized,” he said. “So we decided that, at least in the first Enhanced Games, athletes would compete on their own.”
D’Souza said he wanted to make qualifying for the enhanced game as seamless as possible. Athletes who want to participate can upload a video of themselves running on a treadmill or doing box work and qualify for the games as regional qualifiers approach, he said. The first match will be held at the end of 2024 or 2025.
D’Souza emphasized that advances in technologies such as generative AI continue to push the boundaries of what we perceive, and how this could be applied to other fields in the future, including sports, longevity, and gaming.
“Imagine a world record in track and field at age 60 or a world record in swimming at age 60,” D’Souza said. “The moment this record is broken, what happens next, the world will be watching and everyone will be saying, “How does he know what he’s doing?” It will create a Sputnik moment.”
D’Souza acknowledged that this hypothesis may sound like science fiction or the fountain of youth. He added that it wasn’t that long ago when artificial intelligence was also considered science fiction.
“AI was science fiction just five years ago. One moment, ChatGPT, and it all becomes reality.”
Longevity experiments may still seem like science fiction, but D’Souza said Enhanced Games and continued experimentation and investment in space will make longevity a reality.
The quest for immortality has led to a number of extreme experiments, including chemical cocktails to reverse aging, biohacking clubs, and penile botox injections to enhance virility.
Last summer, billionaire Bryan Johnson shocked social media after posting on Twitter that he was undergoing shock wave therapy on his genitals. Little did the world know. This was the first of many biohacking experiments the entrepreneur would present.
Johnson spent more than $4 million in pursuit of a long, healthy, and hopefully younger life. Other experiments included plasma exchanges between fathers and sons, as well as the aforementioned Botox injections.
Longevity experiments may grab the headlines, but D’Souza said he wants to dispel the misconception that performance-enhancing drugs themselves are dangerous.
“Performance enhancements can be used safely and have the potential to unlock a positive future for humanity,” he said. “The compounds used to make athletes run faster and jump higher are the same compounds that make us younger, faster and stronger.”
The opportunity, D’Souza continued, is that the disease he calls aging can be treated, cured and eventually resolved.
“The field of performance medicine is essential to that exploration,” he said.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
