patron002:

Ok, but a person with naturally long legs, and a naturally thin body might have a huge advanatage over me, they are built differently and likely use their muscles differently. Also, Americans get every advantage in the technology bracket anyway, we have better treadmills, better supplements, better coaches, better education, better everything (as does China) Do you really want to pretend that the guys from poor nations are on equal footing with us rich nations? If you really want a fair olympics, you'd need to eliminate all of that, Americans using technology to create monster legs is not the same discipline as natural running, without the advantage of special technology and knowledge. I say let the guy run, I only have on reservation, I don't want to encourage nut cases to mutilate their bodies in an attempt to win, or worst, nut case leaders cutting up their citizens in an attempt to make the perfect running/ boxing/ jumping/ ect machine. That is the only real reason that I would have any concern about it. Otherwise let the guy race, if the Olympics really want to make sure that its fair, it should be their responsibility to create artificial limbs that meet their criteria. I would have more sympathy for Olympic athletes if they weren't cheating to get every advantage that they can get, as it stands I have zero sympathy for them, the ones that do it the right way aren't in the olympics anyway....

Seems to me that nationaly popularity of the sport, population size and genetic physical characteristics have more to do with medal count at the Olympics and any sporting competition for that matter than has access to scientific research. I mean the Kenyans and the Ethiopians do quite well too. The Olympics has always been interesting to me, and has implications for all fields of human endeavour because it provides answers to a range of questions about individual effort and the adaptability of the human body, across the ethnic diversity of the human race.

The problem with prosthetics and doping is that they change the parameters of our comparisons, making nonsense of our records over the years. It's the same thing as the issues in baseball, how can we make comparisons between Bonds and Ruth for example if not only have the ball and the bats changed so much over the years but so has the chemistry of the players' bodies? It's not just a morality or fairness issue it is a also question of consistent comparisons. How can we be sure that Pete Rose didn't throw any games if he was betting on them?

You raised the question of healt issues. No one remembers, but doping only became a concern for the Olympics back in the 50's when a cy

Finally, if a guy with no legs can run with artificial limbs, why shouldn't a guy with weak ankles have special braces of spring steel fitted? Now what about a one-armed boxer? Couldn't we have a special arm made of cork or some synthetic material that wouldn't cut the flesh fitted to him? Where do we draw the line? No, prosthetics have to be banned across the board because we need to make consistent comparisons over the years. It's not just a question of national prestiege, it's important to the science of the human body, for the good of mankind.