**1. Introduction**

From the moment when there is written news, man has always sought the aid of substances, whether natural or chemical, to seek support in the face of activities that he had to carry out.

Wanting to provide a historical excursus, the first information on doping date back to 2700 BC: the source is a Chinese text in which reference is made to a plant defined almost miraculous and containing the alkaloid Machmane.

In addition to this, in 300 B.C. athletes used to take an alkaloid during sports activities, namely ephedrine. Also during the same period, Greek Olympic athletes took decoctions prepared with mushrooms and herbs while Macedonian athletes used donkey nails boiled in oil and accompanied by rose petals. In Rome, however, more horses than athletes were the recipients of doping substances with the exception of gladiators. The latter to increase their resistance to fatigue took plant stimulants such as betel nuts and ephedrine.

The first evidence of condemnation of the use of these substances is found only in 200 A.D. in a written by the philosopher Flavio Filostrato who in his work "Gymnastikos" argues that athletes should not take mud or other dangerous medicines.

Despite this first act of denunciation the practice of providing empowering, energizing substances to athletes continues to be the constant: In 1800, to increase sports performance, more elaborate and sophisticated substances were used than

those used by Greek and Roman athletes. The new methods of strengthening favor the intake of opium, morphine, caffeine, nitroglycerin, sugar cubes dissolved in diethyl ether as well as strychnine. Unlike in the past, attempts are made to identify the exact substance to be taken by a certain athlete, thus arriving at a differentiation between substances based on the activity that is carried out [1].

The high point in the use of doping throughout the world of sport is only reached during the decade 1950–1960: these are years characterized by the taking of stimulants especially in the performance of those activities that require great effort and great durability as cycling, marathon, football, basketball and American football.

During the '80s the substances that impose themselves most as enhancers the use of cocaine and anabolic; The 1990s were characterized by the spread of peptide hormones (in particular hgh and EPO) and blood doping carried out through the autologous and heterologous blood transfusion process. In contemporary times, the danger comes from what has been defined as genetic doping, that is, from the applications of genetic research consisting in the partial activation or inhibition or suppression of human genes for sports enhancement and therefore doping [2].

The last frontier of doping, genetic doping, poses problems not only in relation to sports ethics and fair play but also integrates unpredictable risks for the same athlete. They are closely related to the difficulty of controlling the expression of the gene that is inserted as well as to the method that is adopted to implement genetic transfer. Side effects include possible morbidity, inflammation stages and immune responses that can be defined as uncontrolled.

To this must be added how the current methods of analysis that are used to detect the presence of any doping substances have been defined as totally inadequate and ineffective to detect those that are defined as "doping genes" as impossible to distinguish from end1ogenous ones.

The advantage of genetic doping, in other words, is that it is not detectable with the survey tools currently in use [3].

If these are the origins and the problems that have always characterized the relationship man/physical performance and man/sports performance, the focus of this work concerns the classification of doping as a method of human enhancement.

In order to pursue this objective, it was decided to start from a definition of the concept of human empowerment and then to address one of the aspects in which the very concept of empowerment is developed, namely doping.

Following this premise, the reflection focused on the problem that doping poses within the sports world not only from a strictly legal point of view but also from an ethical point of view. In other words, the question has been raised as to whether the definition of a particular practice has an impact on its acceptance or not.

The conclusions, on the basis of this line of interpretation, arrive at analyzing the hypothesis of athletes who, due to a genetic pathology, are possessing an empowerment that could be defined "natural". In this hypothesis is it right that they are excluded from the competition or not because of their genetic structure?
