Bioethics: performance enhancement
Open your materials, follow the steps, then turn in your work.
Debate whether muscle-enhancing drugs should be allowed in sports, then post a CER.
1. Open your materials
Use the materials named in the first step below. Open lesson resources.
2. Start the work
Read the prompt: should athletes be permitted to use drugs that build muscle faster?
Show all 5 required steps
- Read the prompt: should athletes be permitted to use drugs that build muscle faster?
- List two arguments for allowing enhancement and two for banning it.
- Choose a side and write a one-sentence claim with your reasoning.
- Debate in your John Carroll bioethics group and note the strongest opposing point.
- Post a CER response on fairness and health in enhancement.
Lost your place? Lost your place? You are on the enhancement debate. Go back to step 2, list two arguments for allowing muscle-building drugs and two for banning them, then pick a side (step 3) before you post your CER.
Check your work before submitting
- You can defend a position on muscle-enhancing drugs.
- You can weigh fairness against health risk.
3. Turn in your work
DueCheck Schoology- Hand in
- One-paragraph CER taking a position on whether performance-enhancing drugs should be permitted in competitive sport.
How to submit and name your file
Post to class board and screenshot for your evidence packet.
In Schoology, open your course and the assignment for this lesson. Attach your file, select Submit, and check that it appears in the submission.
PDF upload helpYou get two school days for every day you were absent, so this deadline moves with you.
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Check the section number beside Human Anatomy and Physiology in Schoology.
Assignment: Wk5 CER: Bioethics: performance enhancement
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How this lesson connects
Keep using what you learned last class: Because bone repair runs through a fixed four-stage sequence driven by osteoblasts and osteoclasts, doctors choose a repair technology by matching it to the stage and severity that need support, so fracture care follows the biology. Today: Performance-enhancing drugs change muscle physiology through real hormone pathways, so they create health risks and fairness problems at the same time and cannot be judged on winning alone.
Unit 1 guide: what to keep and use nextOptional: listen or watch a unit review▸
Need help? Warm-up, timing, and directions▸
💡 Big idea: Performance-enhancing drugs change muscle physiology through real pathways, so they create health risks and fairness problems at the same time and cannot be judged on winning alone.
- 0-5Intro: how performance drugs change muscle physiology
- 5-20Independent reading and two-column pro/con list
- 20-40John Carroll bioethics debate
- 40-55Draft claim and evidence
- 55-75Write and post CER
- 75-80Class share: strongest health vs fairness arguments
- • This week we study the muscular system from the to the full muscle. Before we do that, we have a question this system raises directly.
- • Drugs that force muscles to grow faster are real, available, and banned in most sports. Should they be?
- • Your CER today must take a specific position. Not just that drugs are bad. A position on the fairness and health trade-off.
- • Listen for the term anabolic in the reading. That word connects to the muscle biology we start tomorrow.
- • Anabolic steroids mimic testosterone and increase muscle synthesis, but side effects include cardiovascular damage, hormonal disruption, and liver toxicity.
- • The fairness argument against enhancement centers on coercion: if some athletes use drugs, others feel forced to do so to compete.
- • Bioethical reasoning requires weighing physical autonomy (right to use) against health harm and competitive equity.
PLTW connection and today's work
Open Activity 1.2.1 Causes of Contraction (Lesson 1.2 Muscles and Motion) in myPLTW and complete the introductory task for this lesson; connect one fact about how muscle tissue is built and repaired to your performance-enhancement CER.
Today's stopping point: You finished Lesson 1.1 bone content; this begins Lesson 1.2, and the introductory task should be checked off today.
PLTW activity titles identify the course connection. If your account will not open, use the posted materials for today and tell Mr. Mendoza. Do not mark an online activity complete unless you completed it.
Course connection
- Activity 1.2.1 Causes of Contraction
Use the turn-in directions at the top of this page. Do not create a second submission unless your teacher asks for one.
Show another explanation or a smaller first step
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Lesson resources: reading, slides, and vocabulary▸
The deck carries the prior idea forward, lets you inspect an analogy, maps the rule to biology, and ends with the same evidence decision and exit ticket used on this page.
Generated from this lesson's canonical data with a red-team citation check.
Because bone repair runs through a fixed four-stage sequence driven by osteoblasts and osteoclasts, doctors choose a repair technology by matching it to the stage and severity that need support, so care follows the biology.
Performance-enhancing drugs change muscle physiology through real pathways, so they create health risks and fairness problems at the same time and cannot be judged on winning alone.
A review board sorts scientific evidence, stakeholder needs, possible benefits, possible burdens, and uncertainty before choosing a policy.
- Which statements are scientific evidence?
- Which statements express a value or priority?
- Who receives the benefit and who carries the burden?
Use science to estimate consequences, then state the value judgment and tradeoff that determine the decision.
A review-board model organizes reasoning but does not make one ethical principle automatically outweigh every other principle.
- • Evidence cards map to source-backed findings.
- • Stakeholder cards map to affected people and priorities.
- • The recommendation maps to an explicit tradeoff with a named uncertainty.
Driving question: Should an athlete be allowed to take a drug that builds muscle faster, even if that same drug can damage the heart and forces clean competitors to dope just to keep up?
What you already know: Because bone repair runs through a fixed four-stage sequence driven by osteoblasts and osteoclasts, doctors choose a repair technology by matching it to the stage and severity that need support, so care follows the biology.
New idea: Performance-enhancing drugs change muscle physiology through real pathways, so they create health risks and fairness problems at the same time and cannot be judged on winning alone.
Visual or model: F1. F1. A lesson illustration or teaching diagram for Bioethics: performance enhancement. Use it with E1-E3; it is a model or context image, not experimental or patient data. What to notice: Trace the labeled structure, movement, or system relationship that connects form to function.
- Observe or measure the relevant feature in today's lesson.
- Organize the observation with a stable evidence ID.
- Apply this rule: Use science to estimate consequences, then state the value judgment and tradeoff that determine the decision.
- Choose the option the evidence supports and state the limit of the conclusion.
Real biomedical example: Should an athlete be allowed to take a drug that builds muscle faster, even if that same drug can damage the heart and forces clean competitors to dope just to keep up?
What the evidence supports: E1-E3 and F1 support the daily take-home when the response meets the stated success criteria.
What it cannot prove: The package does not support claims beyond this lesson's or any real patient diagnosis.
- • : The basic contracting unit of a muscle fiber, made of overlapping and filaments that slide past each other to shorten the muscle.
- • : A that forms thin filaments inside cells and slides past to produce muscle and cell movement.
- • : A motor in muscle whose heads grab and pull on filaments, producing the sliding motion that contracts the muscle.
- • : The shortening of a muscle as its fibers pull together, generating force to move bones, pump blood, or squeeze organs.
- • : A tough band of that anchors a muscle to a bone, transferring the muscle's pull so the bone can move.
- • origin: The fixed, anchoring attachment point of a muscle on a bone, which stays still while the muscle pulls on its other end.
- • : The end of a skeletal muscle attached to the bone that moves when the muscle contracts, as opposed to the more fixed origin end.
- • lever: A rigid bar that pivots at a fixed point to move a load, the simple machine that bones, joints, and muscles form to create movement.
Use it now: Choose one decision option. Cite E1 and E3, then explain how the rule connects the evidence to your choice.
Go further, optional: The source links below are optional enrichment. Every fact required for today's local evidence decision appears in this lesson package.
A defensible biomedical decision separates scientific evidence from value judgments, identifies who may benefit or be burdened, and states the uncertainty and tradeoffs that remain.
Limit: Scientific evidence can inform the options and likely consequences, but it cannot choose a single value-neutral answer.
Use science to estimate consequences, then state the value judgment and tradeoff that determine the decision.
Limit: A review-board model organizes reasoning but does not make one ethical principle automatically outweigh every other principle.
You can defend a position on muscle-enhancing drugs.
Limit: E3 defines the classroom product or success criterion. It is not independent scientific evidence and cannot justify a clinical or causal claim.
PLTW-HAP-2027-02-19 · Simulated classroom evidence scenario
Your role: anatomy and physiology consultant
Decision: Your team must decide what the evidence from today's lesson supports before submitting the claim-evidence-reasoning response named on today's page.
- • Allow the drug if it is made legal, because the real problem with steroids is cheating.
- • Ask how much harm the drug causes at the doses athletes actually use before taking a side.
- • Judge the drug on heart and harm as well as fairness, not on winning alone.
Response: State one choice, cite at least two evidence IDs, explain the rule that connects them, and add one limitation. Submit it as the claim-evidence-reasoning response.
Claim ceiling: Today's evidence supports a classroom claim about today's lesson. It cannot prove causation, diagnose a real patient, or justify action outside this room.
Reason for review: Your team must decide what the evidence from today's lesson supports before submitting the claim-evidence-reasoning response named on today's page.
Context: Anything that changes how muscle works also changes the whole body, so a choice that helps performance can harm health and fairness at the same time.
- • T1: Read the prompt: should athletes be permitted to use drugs that build muscle faster?
- • T2: List two arguments for allowing enhancement and two for banning it.
- • T3: Choose a side and write a one-sentence claim with your reasoning.
- • T4: Debate in your John Carroll bioethics group and note the strongest opposing point.
- • T5: Post a CER response on fairness and health in enhancement.
- • E1: A defensible biomedical decision separates scientific evidence from value judgments, identifies who may benefit or be burdened, and states the uncertainty and tradeoffs that remain.
- • E2: Use science to estimate consequences, then state the value judgment and tradeoff that determine the decision.
- • E3: You can defend a position on muscle-enhancing drugs.
Measurements: Use only the measurements, units, graph, or counts supplied in today's task. No additional patient measurement is implied.
Figure finding: Teaching diagram for Bioethics: performance enhancement. Trace the labeled structure, movement, or system relationship that connects form to function. This is a teaching model, not patient or experimental data.
Uncertainty: This is a composite classroom scenario. Missing history, measurements, or confirmation tests remain unknown and limit the conclusion.
Mean = sum of values / number of values. Median = middle ordered value. Range = maximum - minimum.
For 2, 4, 4, and 10: mean = 20 / 4 = 5, median = 4, and range = 10 - 2 = 8.
Mean, median, and range keep the measurement unit. Order the values before finding the median.
Calculate the requested summary for today's supplied values, then write what it reveals and what it hides.
Students often think Students often think steroids are dangerous only because they are cheating, so a 'clean' or legal version would be safe.. The trap: The danger is biological, not just legal. Anabolic steroids mimic testosterone and push muscle synthesis, but the same signal also thickens the heart and disrupts the body's own hormone production, so making them legal would not remove the cardiovascular and liver harm.
Claim: Students without a medical diagnosis should not be permitted to use prescription stimulants such as amphetamine drugs to boost their performance on exams.\nEvidence: Prescription stimulants raise the level of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, which can increase short-term alertness and focus. In people without a condition like ADHD, though, they also carry documented risks including raised heart rate and blood pressure, disrupted sleep, anxiety, and the potential for dependence. On top of the health risks, if some students take a pill to stay sharp during a high-stakes test, other students feel pressure to do the same just to keep their scores competitive.\nReasoning: Allowing non-medical stimulant use creates a coercion problem that looks a lot like other enhancement debates: students who would rather not take a drug are pushed to risk their health so they are not left behind. Because these stimulants cause real physical and psychological harm in people who do not need them, and because they turn a test of preparation into a test of who is willing to medicate, restricting non-medical use protects both student health and the fairness of the assessment. That combined harm outweighs an individual student's claim to use whatever they want to get an edge.\nCounter-argument I heard and my response: A classmate argued that students are old enough to make their own choices about their own bodies. I agree that personal autonomy matters, but in a shared, graded setting one student's choice raises the bar for everyone else and forces a health risk onto peers who never wanted it. Because the harm spills over onto others and the drug carries real dangers, the fairness and safety concerns justify the restriction.
This model shows the level of evidence and organization needed to complete: A short claim-evidence-reasoning post that models the format on a parallel bioethics case, whether students without a prescription should be allowed to use stimulant drugs to boost test performance, so students can see the depth and structure without seeing an answer to today's own sports-doping question.
- Write one defensible claim.
- Choose specific evidence that supports the claim.
- Explain the scientific rule that connects the evidence to the claim.
Keep the structure. Replace the question, facts, measurements, and evidence. Then recheck units, vocabulary, and whether the conclusion goes beyond the evidence.
Also due today: Post to the class board and screenshot for your evidence packet.
- CER:
- Claim, Evidence, Reasoning: make a claim, back it with evidence, explain your reasoning.
- SOP:
- Standard Operating Procedure, the exact steps to follow (especially in a lab).
- Tracker:
- Your PLTW progress log where you record completed evidence.
- myPLTW:
- The PLTW course site where you do the online activities. Find it in Clever with your Microsoft sign-in, right next to Schoology.
Tap the speaker to hear a term. Add two of these to your notebook glossary with a definition and an example in your own words.
Pick just 2 or 3 words from today and make them yours: write what each one means in your own words, name the context clue or evidence that helped, then give one example from what you actually did in Bioethics: performance enhancement. Try your own words first; the glossary is there if you get stuck. This is voluntary and counts as extra credit, so keep it short.
Saved on this device. Show Mr. Mendoza or add these to your notebook glossary to claim the extra credit.
Hand-picked readings, videos, and interactives for this lesson, all free and from authoritative open organizations (NIH, CDC, OpenStax, Khan Academy, PhET, HHMI, and more).
A fillable, Cornell-style notebook for Unit 1: Road to Rehabilitation. Type your notes, cues, and summaries right in the PDF, or print it and write by hand. Each lesson page has a cue column, a notes column, and a summary box, plus dated lab-record pages you can turn in.
HBS Unit 1 notebook: Road to Rehabilitation Fillable PDFCornell notes + lab recordsOpenVetted readings and references for this unit. Use them to prepare, to catch up if you were absent, or to go deeper on today's target.
Practice: try a question, then check your answer▸
Claim ceiling for this check: Today's evidence supports a classroom claim about today's lesson. It cannot prove causation, diagnose a real patient, or justify action outside this room.
Give one health reason and one fairness reason that anabolic steroids are banned in sports. They must be different kinds of reasons.
Write an answer and pick a confidence to unlock the key.
Fast retrieval with instant answers, not the commit-then-reveal check above. Try each from memory first: write what you remember about the earlier units, then check yourself here.
Missed class or ready for more?▸
Run this before you touch the bench. It is built from the real lab procedure, so the decisions you make here are the ones you will make with the equipment in your hands. This lesson has more than one, and they cover different skills.
What today's skills lead to. These are real health-science careers this course builds toward. Tap one to see, on the US Department of Labor's O*NET site, what the job actually involves, what it pays, and how fast it is growing.
Read the linked overview on anabolic steroids, then post a written CER on whether muscle enhancement should be allowed in sport, citing one fact from the resource.
MedlinePlus: Anabolic steroidsPost to class board and screenshot for your evidence packet.
Class still runs. Complete the online activity above (it's self-guided). Need the concept taught without a teacher? Use this authoritative explainer:
Khan Academy: Muscular System- CompleteEvery required part of the artifact is present, nothing left blank.
- AccurateThe science and the data are correct and match the evidence.
- Scientific reasoningYou explain your claim with evidence and reasoning (CER), not just an answer.
- Professional communicationClear, organized, labeled, and written the way a clinician or scientist would.
- SubmittedGo to Schoology to turn this in. Submit one PDF. Put your first and last name in the document header. Name the file: FirstName LastName - Assignment Title - YYYY-MM-DD.pdf. If you cannot get in, see Mr. Mendoza. Do not skip the work.
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