I am interested in this topic because watching sports is a daily routine for me and I would say that I enjoy it a lot. I thought it would be interesting to learn about the effects of performance enhancing drugs on athletes and sports, and with this topic I will be able to do that. I value honesty and fairness so this topic does not affect my values. If anything, this topic defends my values because I do not think they should be allowed to use performance enhancing drugs for a numerous of reasons, including health risk, unfairness, and how unnecessary they are. I have never witnessed any performance enhancing drugs in person, but I have seen that they can be throughout sports, mostly baseball and Olympic sports. The few examples that have affected me the most would be the New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez, All- time career home runs leader Barry Bonds, cyclist Lance Armstrong, Roger Clemens who is one of the most dominant pitchers to ever play, and 2011 National League MLB most valuable player Ryan Braun. I think that the fact that I invest my time and emotions into these sports gives me the right to have my own opinion on the matter, and since I will be finding credible sources to help back up my argument, I consider myself to be qualified to write about this. 

In the article "Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports Fast Facts" by CNN, the main claim is that doping in sports has been a problem for around five decades and that this issue has more recently gained attention because of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative investigation. This article then proceeds to inform you of the types of performance enhancing drugs, followed by important dates that are relevant to PEDs. This article does not really put any values in to question, but instead gives the reader enough information to understand that these athletes value money, fame, and success more than they value their own health or the integrity of the sport. This information then allows the reader to question why you would risk that when health should be more important. I find this article and source to be creditable because this article is strictly stating facts about what types of performance enhancing drugs there are and specific dates in which important PEDs related events happened. This article was not biased in anyway because it did not choose a side in which to argue or defend. 

The article "Effects of Androgenic-Anabolic Steroids in Athletes" in the Sports Medicine journals main topic is what androgenic-anabolic steroids are and how they affect athletes. The main evidence is the fact that AAS are synthetic derivatives of the hormone testosterone, which is the male hormone. The articles next use of evidence is how it causes athletes to grow muscle at an alarming rate and increases their performance. The third use of evidence is how its long term effects can cause serious health issues, including cardiovascular and kidney problems. This article uses facts to allow one to question why they would think taking anabolic steroids is worth seriously damaging their health in the long run. It also allows you to question why people would want to allow them in sports since it obviously causes an unfair advantage for the user. I find this article to be credible because its facts are all research based and it comes from a series of journals labeled Sports Medicine. The authors are also credible because one of them, Harm Kuipers, is affiliated with the department of movement science at Maastricht University, while the other one, Fred Hartgens, is affiliated with the Department of Surgery. Therefore there are no biased arguments anywhere in this article

The article "Why we should allow performance enhancing drugs in sports" by the British Journal of Sports Medicine is an article that argues the opposite side of my views. This articles central claim is that the legalization of drugs in sports may be fairer and can be safe if regulated correctly. The author's first piece of evidence is that if everyone is using performance enhancing drugs, then it is not unfair because everyone is using them. The second is that if they allow PEDs in sports, then it is not cheating any more, and the third main piece of evidence is that if they get routine checkups and the drugs are regulated, then it will not be as unhealthy as one would think. The values at stake for this article are the values of clean and enjoyable sports. This article brings to question whether allowing these drugs in sports would still allow the games to be about spirit, courage, fun, and joy. After all, sports are supposed to be for fun and enjoyment. Considering this source is from the British Journal of Sports Medicine, I would consider the authors, and this source credible; but this article is biased because the authors clearly choose a side and argue it based off opinions and some facts to back up why they belief their argument is correct. 

This research question is arguable because I have already ran in to a couple of articles that argue the side of unbanning performance enhancing drugs. It is also arguable because sports are a huge part of the world's entertainment and that means there must be a large amount of people on both sides of this argument. Both sides of this argument generally agree that performance enhancing drugs are not good for your health, in the long run or the short run. Disagreements would be that PEDs are unfair because of the increase in performances and unfair because not everyone would be able to have access to them. The perspectives of others can sometimes convince me to change my mind depending on how solid their argument is. Multiple times I have contemplated if maybe I should change my argument to being pro PEDs. I might have to change my research question to a more specific sport.

