Arthur Caplan,
Mitty Professor (retired)
NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Like them or not and I really don’t, the Enhanced Games were available last Memorial Day on TV screens and many social media sites around the world. The games, backed by a sleazy gang of crypto bros and shady investors promoting their consumer health and longevity pharmaceuticals companies deliberately and enthusiastically ignored nearly every rule in the traditional anti-doping sports book.

The Enhanced Games celebrated performance-enhancement whatever it took. This festival of 40 drug-laden humans engaged in swimming, track, field, and weightlifting at a special, purpose-built complex inside Resorts World Las Vegas did not draw the attention its sponsors had hoped. Despite the promise of up to $1 million for breaking world records, no major mainstream athletics records were broken. And the games were a total financial disaster. So why pay attention to them?

Many of today’s billionaires, who increasingly control sports, love the idea of bodily enhancement. Some like Elon Musk are entranced by the idea of both bodily and genetic enhancement of future generations. Worse many men in the obscenely rich bro-culture have a thing for superhumans. Peter Thiel, the multi-billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of PayPal, is a prominent backer of transhumanism, investing heavily in technologies aimed at radically enhancing human capabilities as well as, he hopes, extending his lifespan in order to achieve “superhuman” status. The Enhanced Games was his and his pals coming out party.

In addition to eugenics and perfectionism the new masters of sports have little regard for athletes. Those promoting the enhanced games ignored the health of the poor chumps on display trying to win millions in prize money. Some poor yutz wants to bench press a ton jacked up on steroids, growth hormones, and peptides, tearing his body apart in the effort, who are we to stop them? Shouldn’t we? Yes. Freedom to dope doesn’t make it safe or even reasonable to do so. And sports which disrespects the athlete becomes a circus, a freak show or a bizarre exhibition but not competition. Babbling on about freedom doesn’t turn a drug rave into a legitimate sport.

Consider what we already know about the risks of drug abuse in the loosely regulated world of body building another canary in the sports future cave.

In bodybuilding top athletes, who are often poor or from difficult upbringings, can earn over $1 million annually through contest winnings and sponsorships. That kind of money lets them ‘choose’ to ignore the deadly risks of all out enhancement to win. And there are risks galore.

Bodybuilding is rife with death both at young ages and prematurely among middle-aged, post- retirement men and women. As many 56 bodybuilders are described online as having died in 2025 due to using many performance enhancing drugs, huge doses of steroids, risky, sketchy supplements, diuretics and training involving severe dehydration. Countless others suffer tendon tears, chronic tendinitis, sprains, and back issues involving ruptured discs that can lead to terrible chronic pain and the inability to walk. That is what is in store for many of those lured by rich men’s money to abuse their bodies in future enhanced games.

Sports relies on respect for the dignity of the participants. The object of enhanced ‘sport’ seems to be for people to hurt each other enough so they can’t function, as in ultimate fighting or power slapping. The human price of Olympic boxing and American football is brain damage and broken bones but injury and incapacitation aren’t the point of either. In the disrespectful, indifferent world of emerging and enhanced sports injury often is the point.

Dueling to the death with swords used to be something young men engaged in and it is easy to see it returning in the future. Is MMA just real world version of Squid Games and, if people will pay to watch then it is just fine?

Are the activities of games with no rules or restrictions even a sport? Only if you are curious as to who has the best pharmacist. What they are is an exhibition more akin to carnival sideshow. When there are no rules then there is no competition. Real competition requires a somewhat level playing field. That is why weight classes and sex restrictions exist in so many sports Lifting more than anyone else when doped to the gills is not a world record as much as it is an odditorium far removed from human athletic achievement.

Sport needs basic rules and values to be tolerable, enjoyable as competition and non-exploitative. But that notion of sport is starting to fade into overhyped theatricality.

Short biography

Arthur Caplan is Mitty Professor (retired) at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He is one of the world’s most influential bioethicists, with extensive work in medical ethics, research integrity, biotechnology, public health, transplantation, human enhancement and the ethics of emerging science. At NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Dr. Caplan was the founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics in the Department of Population Health. Earlier in his career, he held senior academic positions at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Minnesota, the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University. He has authored or edited 35 books and published more than 880 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Caplan has also served on numerous national and international advisory bodies, including committees on human cloning, blood safety, genetics and gene therapy, vulnerable subjects in research, humanitarian crises, organ trafficking, transplantation ethics, and sports and recreation during the Covid-19 pandemic. He is widely recognised for his public engagement on bioethics and health policy and has been named among the most influential figures in science, biotechnology and American health care.

IPSEI publishes Expert Voices contributions to encourage independent discussion on sport ethics and integrity. This Expert Voices contribution reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily represent the views, position, or editorial opinion of IPSEI.

 

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Caplan, A. (2026). The ‘Enhanced Games’ – the likely bleak future of sport. IPSEI Expert Voices.
https://ipsei.org/the-enhanced-games-the-likely-bleak-future-of-sport/