Malcolm Gladwell

About the author: Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine.

Performance-enhancing drugs allow athletes to train harder and improve their athletic performance over a short period of time. Many of today's athletes take the drugs willingly and have grown increasingly uncertain about what is wrong with doing so. Drug testing by sports authorities is unreliable, and athletes are constantly taking new drugs for which no test has been devised. The attempt to ban certain drugs gives an advantage to those athletes with the means to take newer drugs. Instead of prohibiting performance-enhancing drugs, testing authorities should set acceptable limits for drug use. Regulating aggressive drug use will restore parity to sports, ensuring that no athlete can cheat more than another.

At the age of twelve, Christiane Knacke-Sommer was...