Ethics of a relaxed antidoping rule accompanied by harm-reduction measures

Harm-reduction approaches are used to reduce the burden of risky human behaviour without necessarily aiming to stop the behaviour. We discuss what an introduction of harm reduction for doping in sports would mean in parallel with a relaxation of the antidoping rule. We analyse what is ethically at stake in the following five levels: (1) What would it mean for the athlete (the self)? (2) How would it impact other athletes (the other)? (3) How would it affect the phenomenon of sport as a game and its fair play basis (the play)? (4) What would be the consequences for the spectator and the role of sports in society (the display)? and (5) What would it mean for what some consider as essential to being human (humanity)? For each level, we present arguments for and against doping and then discuss what a harm-reduction approach, within a dynamic regime of a partially relaxed antidoping rule, could imply. We find that a harm-reduction approach is morally defensible and potentially provides a viable escape out of the impasse resulting from the impossibility of attaining the eradication of doping. The following question remains to be answered: Would a more relaxed position, when combined with harm-reduction measures, indeed have less negative consequences for society than today's all-out antidoping efforts that aim for abstinence? We provide an outline of an alternative policy, allowing a cautious step-wise change to answer this question and then discuss the ethical aspects of such a policy change

Impact of two-phase region rolling on the microstructure and properties distribution in heavy gauge structural steel plate (INCROHSS).

Heavy gauge line-pipe and structural steel plates are often rolled in the two-phase region for strength reasons. However, strength and toughness show opposite trends and the exact effect of each rolling process parameter remains unclear. A stable process window can only be achieved by a more profound understanding of the microstructure development during the intercritical rolling and its relationship with final microstructures and mechanical properties. By means of recently developed microstructure investigation techniques and modeling, the relationship between the temperature gradient, α-γ phase balance at high temperature, strain partitioning between phases and subsequent transformation was studied in detail to allow for wider process windows