{"id":1631,"date":"2013-01-22T14:42:12","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T19:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/?p=1631"},"modified":"2013-01-22T14:42:12","modified_gmt":"2013-01-22T19:42:12","slug":"guest-post-on-lance-armstrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2013\/01\/22\/guest-post-on-lance-armstrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post: On Lance Armstrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

[I am pleased to present a guest post from my friend Ann Velenchik<\/a>, professor of economics at Wellesley College, director of their writing program, and expert monologist<\/a>. This post is reproduced from her private blog, which I am privileged to have access to, in which she has chronicled her experience with her leukemia diagnosis and treatment over the last three years.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Oprah<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
…one of my idols…<\/span>
“Oprah Winfrey speaks at the launch of the Born This Way Foundation<\/a>” image by flickr user HarvardEducation<\/a>.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

January 18, 2013 \u2014 Despite living with Bicycle Boy, I take no interest in competitive cycling. We were in Paris for the end of the Tour de France in 2008, and while Tom, Becca and Nate all stood on benches to see the riders circle the Arc de Triomphe, I was happily drinking an orangina at a table far from the crowds. Tom has assured me, for years, that Armstrong has clearly been doping, and I frankly didn’t think much more about it.<\/p>\n

But I obviously couldn’t escape the news that Oprah would be interviewing Armstrong on TV last night and, because Oprah is one of my idols, I did a little web surfing this morning to find out what was said. And I found something that made me so angry that I had to respond.<\/p>\n

In a part of the conversation about why<\/em> he had started doping, and how he justified it to himself, Armstrong lay some of the blame on the “fighting spirit” he developed during his “battle” with testicular cancer from October 1996 to February 1997.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat process turned me into a person \u2014 it was truly win at all costs,\u201d Armstrong said. \u201cWhen I was diagnosed, I said, \u2018I will do anything I need to do to survive,\u2019 and that\u2019s good. And I took that attitude, that ruthless and relentless and win-at-all-costs attitude into cycling, and that\u2019s bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let’s leave aside the fact that there’s evidence that he started doping before he got cancer, and that it’s possible that taking a lot of testosterone might have made that cancer worse. Let’s just talk about the idea that the attitude that helped him “win” the cancer battle justifies, or even explains, what the evidence indicates he has done since.<\/p>\n

I think it is highly possible that cancer diagnosis and treatment in the prime of his life was a deep and abiding trauma that warped his moral compass. As I have said before, I don’t think cancer is a blessing in disguise, and I don’t think all the lessons we learn there are good ones, let alone worth the price. So I am not even pissed off that he has the audacity to use his status as a cancer patient to explain the appalling way he has treated people.<\/p>\n

What pisses me off is his description of the attitude he brought to treatment itself. When he says “I will do anything I need to do to survive…ruthless and relentless and win-at-all-costs…,” as though lying and cheating and doing terrible things to other people<\/em>\u00a0were part of the cancer process, that’s when my head starts to explode.<\/p>\n

Because, here’s the thing. There isn’t much in cancer treatment that requires lying or cheating, that requires you to sue for libel the people who are actually telling the truth, or that allows you to threaten and bully and defame other people. Yes, there’s a lot of win-at-all costs to be found there, but those aren’t costs you get to impose on other people.<\/p>\n

Lance Armstrong misspoke. Cancer treatment isn’t about being willing to do anything to anyone<\/em>\u00a0in order to win. It’s about being willing to endure anything<\/em>\u00a0onesself. Here’s my guess. Lance Armstrong is a very bad guy who was a bad guy before he got cancer and perhaps a worse one afterward. He doped because he was getting away with it and getting richer and more famous every minute. He lied and intimidated and threatened and bullied because, as I heard one person say, when he got cornered his strategy was to double down. And maybe his experience as a cancer patient was part of the list of things that made him so broken. But that’s about him, not about cancer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[I am pleased to present a guest post from my friend Ann Velenchik, professor of economics at Wellesley College, director of their writing program, and expert monologist. This post is reproduced from her private blog, which I am privileged to have access to, in which she has chronicled her experience with her leukemia diagnosis and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62105,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-post","category-other"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pLfN-qj","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2009\/06\/09\/are-the-harvard-open-access-policies-unfair\/","url_meta":{"origin":1631,"position":0},"title":"Are the Harvard open-access policies unfair to publishers?","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Tuesday, June 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently, the representative of a major scientific journal publisher expressed to me the sentiment that the position that Harvard faculty have taken through our open-access policies \u2014 setting the default for rights retention to retain rights by default rather than to eschew rights by default \u2014 is in some sense\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1552,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2012\/10\/17\/guide-released-on-good-practices-for-university-open-access-policies\/","url_meta":{"origin":1631,"position":1},"title":"Guide released on good practices for university open-access policies","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Wednesday, October 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm pleased to forward on the announcement that the Harvard Open Access Project has just released an initial version of a guide on \"good practices for university open-access policies\". It was put together by Peter Suber and myself with help from many, including Ellen Finnie Duranceau, Ada Emmett, Heather Joseph,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1533,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2012\/10\/08\/open-access-week-2012-at-harvard\/","url_meta":{"origin":1631,"position":2},"title":"Open Access Week 2012 at Harvard","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Monday, October 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"...set the default... Here's what's on deck at Harvard for Open Access Week 2012 (reproduced from the OSC announcement). From October 22 through October 28, Harvard University is joining hundreds of other institutions of higher learning\u00a0to celebrate\u00a0Open Access Week, a global event for the promotion of free, immediate online access\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":797,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2011\/04\/13\/letters-in-recognition-of-the-nih-public-access-policy-anniversary\/","url_meta":{"origin":1631,"position":3},"title":"Letters in recognition of the NIH Public Access Policy anniversary","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Wednesday, April 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In recognition of the third anniversary of the establishment of the NIH Public Access Policy on April 7, 2008, I've sent letters to John Holdren, Director of the\u00a0Office of Science and Technology Policy;\u00a0Francis Collins., Director of the National Institutes of Health; and Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":896,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2011\/07\/28\/on-guerrilla-open-access\/","url_meta":{"origin":1631,"position":4},"title":"On guerrilla open access","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Thursday, July 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"William G. Bowen, founder of JSTOR [Update January 13, 2013: See my post following Aaron Swartz's tragic suicide.] Aaron Swartz has been indicted for wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. The alleged activities that led to this indictment were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2202,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2014\/09\/29\/inaccessible-writing-in-both-senses-of-the-term\/","url_meta":{"origin":1631,"position":5},"title":"Inaccessible writing, in both senses of the term","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Monday, September 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"My colleague Steven Pinker has a nice piece up at the Chronicle of Higher Education on \u201cWhy Academics Stink at Writing\u201d, accompanying the recent release of his new book The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person\u2019s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, which I\u2019m awaiting my pre-ordered copy of.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "language"","block_context":{"text":"language","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/linguistics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1694,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions\/1694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}