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The First United Front (FUF) in China, from 1923 through 1927, combined Communists and Nationalists into a singular Guomindang (KMT) organization. Its initial intent was to eliminate Imperialist and Warlord influences residing in the country that had persisted since the 1911 Nationalist Revolution that rejected Imperial rule. The alliance served as an incubator for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), asserted KMT political dominance, and also satisfied Soviet goals. This essay will discuss the ideological context of what a United Front is, and then discuss its deployment in the FUF as it represents one of the first examples of the technique applied at a geopolitical scale. Focus will be given
to the specific reasons that the FUF was largely a catastrophic event for the CCP, as the implementation demonstrated that the technique was effective for the Soviets who continued work toward refining it.

A United Front was formally described by the Communist International (Comintern) in 1922 where they declared that groups of disorganized workers must unite into larger groups with a common aim of eliminating the influence of any organization that had mislead the working class (Comintern 1). Later in that document, more details are discussed as to the extension of this concept as it applies to both Political & Industrial United Fronts. The framework was meant to offer a tool to promote Communist success against Capitalism and Western Ideologies by using the tactic in the context presented. The timing of the presentation of this document against the formation of the FUF suggests that there was a dispute in Communist leadership, which may have perceived that the technique wouldn’t be suitable for obtaining Communist goals. This was a major motivation for the Soviet influence in the formation of the FUF, as building the smaller communist party in China was considered to be a good opportunity to enact the newer ideological pursuit.

The alliance between the CCP and the KMT precipitated from a Soviet directive delivered by Henk Sneevliet (Maring) to the CCP that it should join the KMT. Maring was the Comintern representative who was overseeing the CCP relations. As Ah Xiang writes in a paper regarding USSR / Comintern relations, “On August 17th, 1922, at the Second West Lake Meeting … Maring forced through the July 18th Comintern presidium’s directive [instructions from the Executive Committee of the Communist International to its Representatives in South China], which was brought to China on a shirt he wore, for the CCP to join the KMT…” (Xiang 6, courtesy Google Translate). This indicates that the motivations for the CCP to join the KMT was a Soviet initiative. This process was completed in 1923, where Xiang continues by writing that, “Maring … pushed through the Comintern’s May 1923 directives to have the CCP collectively … enter the KMT as a bloc-within at the CCP’s third congress that was held in June 1923.” (Xiang 8). This is the formal moment in which the alliance was created.

The initiative to accept the CCP members into the KMT was suggested to KMT leadership by Maring beginning in 1921. As David Barrett writes in a discussion about Hu Hanmin, a political advisor to Sun Yatsen, “In December 1921 Maring … may have made suggestions to Sun about the need to reorganize his party, and may have proposed some form of co-operation between it and the CCP.” (Barrett 35). Barrett later indicated that the Soviets offered numerous incentives to the KMT in exchange for doing this. These incentives included weapons, money and the signing of the Sino-Soviet agreement, which would have been highly beneficial to KMT economic interests and will be discussed later. From these references, it can be understood that the First United Front began as a Political United Front between the KMT and the CCP under Soviet direction. The Soviet selection process for uniting these parties had lead to them identifying the KMT as a suitable incubator for the CCP which was only just formed in 1921. This satisfied the first objective of the United Front methodology, which was to combine smaller groups into larger groups. Their unified goal was then to eliminate the influence of various parties that had resisted GMT authority.

These target parties included competing Chinese factions which were vying for various forms of control over land, property or people. Domestically, this included warlords in the countryside and gangs in the cities. The KMT and CCP worked with the Soviets and the Japanese in order to secure various arms and goods needed to maintain their military advantage. The focus of KMT efforts at the time were to stabilize Shanghai, Guangzhou and Nanjing. In the cities, there was a secondary Industrial United Front (as it was described by the Comintern) that the CCP had enacted through Labor Unions established by the KMT. The importance of this Industrial United Front to the CCP can be derived from a new approach taken by Mikhail Borodin (Maring’s 1923 replacement advisor). This approach is discussed by An Xiang who writes that, “Borodin’s strategy was to have the CCP take control of all the local organizations of the KMT, develop a step by step plan to combat the KMT right-wing … and accelerate the inevitable split of the KMT left wing from the KMT right wing. (Xiang 14). These local organizations became the Farmers’ Bureau in the countryside, while the cities established Labor Unions. In both areas, this front struggled against gang and warlord control of the local labor markets.

Receiving Soviet support required the continued cooperation between the CCP and the KMT, in exchange for the weaponry that was used to consolidate power under the KMT leadership. This is explained where Barrett writes that, “Borodin must be assigned a role of some significance, since he was not only supreme adviser to the government, but the supplier of its arms.” (Barrett 49). It would be through a combination of this support and the formation of outlets discussed above that enabled the CCP to directly engage the Chinese population on more peaceful terms. This combination lead to the mass dissemination Communist ideology across the cities and countrysides as the warlords and gangs were defeated or incorporated into the KMT with a lot of popular support resulting for the CCP. This is supported where Xiang discusses the CCP initiative to control the Labor Unions in the cities in writing that, “The communist Labor Secretariat … in 1924 relocated to Shanghai from Peking, and in the cloak of the KMT-CCP collaboration and by means of hijacking the KMT’s Shanghai Executive Bureau, took
control of the KMT’s Shanghai Federation of Labor Unions.” (Xiang 7).

The control of these labor unions was in line with larger Communist ideology of a need to
secure the interests of the working class proletarians. Xiang later discusses the CCP initiatives in the countryside in writing that, “On July 3rd, 1924, communists pushed through their agenda to have the KMT organize the Farmers’ Bureau under the KMT central executive committee as well as launch the farmers’ Movement Training Institute.” (Xiang 14). This formed a two-pronged approach where CCP fronts were established in the major locations of unrest, and their ability to have control over training the peasants became a viable avenue to spread CCP ideology. With this organizational arrangement,
domestic affairs were more ordered. Geopolitical effects that arose from managing this alliance were to follow.

Xiang later discusses that regional politics lead to negotiations which included Japan, the
Soviets and China in jointly coordinating the maintenance and security for the Chinese Eastern Railway, which was considered to be critical infrastructure for trade as well as national defense (Xiang 17). The issue with this was that the railways and trains were paid for by the Soviets. The vested Soviet stake in the infrastructure and the issue of how they were to co-manage the Chinese railways lead to their actions in the Sino-Soviet agreement, which renegotiated previous agreements made by regimes which were no longer leading their respective countries. Xiang indicates that, “The Sino-Soviet Agreement nominally nullified all Conventions, Treaties, Agreements, Protocols, Contracts, etc …, concluded between the Government of China and Tsarist Government.” (Xiang 19). The removal of these restrictions were a major motivator for the KMT to agree to signing the agreement. There was a separate addendum to this agreement that was signed secretly by the Soviets and Japanese that effectively neutralized the part of the Sino-Soviet agreement that Chinese leadership had signed, which is mentioned in Bruce Elleman’s essay on Soviet diplomacy where he writes that, “a protocol counteracting this promise remained secret,” in referring to the addendum (Elleman 469).

In 1926, a political advisor to the late Sun Yatsen, Hu Hanmin, returned from Russia. Hu’s
experiences are summarized by Barrett: “Hu said his Moscow experience taught him how
extraordinarily secretive the Soviet leaders were about their plans, a characteristic which Borodin fully shared. As for the Chinese Communist Party, it had a dual nature on the one hand it lived as a parasite on the [KMT], while on the other hand it continually fomented social unrest.” (Barrett 60). Hu’s understanding solidified the approach that KMT leadership followed towards the CCP shortly after his return. It’s likely that if Chinese leadership became aware of the secret addendum to the Sino-Soviet agreement, it would have been a result Hu’s time in Moscow. The disclosure of this information to Hu would have revealed the contradiction to the drafted Sino-Soviet agreement that China had entered into, and is likely a reason for a lack of more direct Soviet intervention toward the actions that the KMT later took in initiating the White Terror movement.

The death of Sun Yatsen in 1925 lead to the CCP-KMT relationship deteriorating after his
replacement with Chiang Kai-shek. In Modernization and Revolution in China, Dr. Grasso writes that, “Sun Yatsen had been the unifying force within a party of disparate views. His death revealed a cleavage between two major factions that was never overcome” (Grasso 58). This point is important because it shows that without the previous leadership to drive the KMT to follow the expected course, much of the lingering KMT resentment toward the CCP came to the surface. The ensuing pivot in Nationalist politics to focus on the stalled Northward movement, along with the cities needing a consolidated power to stabilize them and the realization that foreign interests had more concern with the railroad than the CCP at the time were just a few of the major parts of what lead to the breakdown of the FUF, but the scope of this essay has been to consider these few key points. These events precluded the KMT dissolution of the KMT-CCP agreement, which was summarized by Dr. Grasso who again writes that, “The First United Front ended with the near annihilation of the CCP. During the next decade, although the foreign imperialists and several warlords remained unsubdued, Chiang Kai-shek and his party would dominate China.” (Grasso 60). This began with the White Terror movement
that drove the CCP from the country for the following decade.

In summary, the push to unite the KMT and the CCP by the Soviets was never meant to produce anything other than a strong Communist party with the CCP leading China, while testing a ideological tactic at a geopolitical scale. The FUF served to illustrate how wartime techniques, such as United Fronts, evolve in order to adapt to globalized efforts including multiple foreign sovereign nations. This hybrid war tactic enables a few major parties to engage in an ongoing civil war that’s fought covertly and with minimized outbreaks of violent repressions. It simultaneously leverages often violent efforts in repelling outside forces such as those that are uniformly identified by the major parties to be a threat. This tactic has been a common tool in many political parties to date and continues to be utilized to achieve new goals, but these approaches are outside the scope of this writing.

Works Cited

Barrett, David P. “The Role of Hu Hanmin in the ‘First United Front’: 1922-27 on JSTOR.” JSTOR, The China Quarterly, 1982, www.jstor.org/stable/653620. Accessed 20Oct2025.

Comintern, Communist International. “Theses on the United Front of Labor [1922].” Marxists.org, 29May1922, www.marxisthistory.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/1922/0529-cec-unitedfronttheses.pdf. Accessed 20Oct2025.

Deal, Jacqueline, and Eleanor Harvey. “CCP Weapons of Mass Persuasion.” Andrew Marshall Foundation, 2022, www.andrewwmarshallfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/CCP-Weapons-of-Mass-Persuasion-Advance-December-2022.pdf. Accessed 20Oct2025.

Elleman, Bruce A. “Soviet Diplomacy and the First United Front in China on JSTOR.” JSTOR, 1995, www.jstor.org/stable/189387. Accessed 20Oct2025.

Grasso, June M., et al. Modernization and Revolution in China. 6th ed., Routledge, 2024.
Xiang, Ah. “USSR / Comintern Alliance with the KMT & the CCP.” Republican China, 27Mar2012, www.republicanchina.org/USSR-Comintern-KMT-CCP.pdf. Accessed 20Oct2025.

Zhang Yimou’s film To Live (1994) portrays what typical life in China during the Chinese
Revolutionary years may have been like as folks adapted to sweeping policy changes. Yimou’s primary audience are English-speaking intellectuals who are looking for a larger exposure to modern Chinese culture. In adapting his film from the book, Yimou emphasized relatable aspects which ensured that an average viewer may more easily engage with the types of struggles that the Chinese people had been dealing with during the periods covered in the film. The film covers the time from the formation of the CCP until the middle of the Cultural Revolution. The film serves as an effective historical narrative due to its adherence to historical accuracy regarding events that took place that portray the effects of Chinese government policymaking on its constituents. It was on this historical narrative that Yimou directed the dramatic storytelling of the fictional, but relatable, Xu family.

While recovering from his past life as a gambling addict, Xu Fugui was conscripted into the Nationalist (Guomindang) counter-revolution. This policy of conscription lead to splitting families apart and in doing so he was abruptly separated from his mother, wife and children. This was discussed when he says, “But who will look after my wife, my kids, my old mother?” (To Live 29:00 – 29:05).

There was no solution for this known to him at the time, and the policy exposed individuals to the loss of their family support systems which left them vulnerable. During his conscription he was captured by the Communist forces and then once again conscripted, but this time as an entertainer where he would put on his shadow puppet shows for the army. He was eventually released and returned home. This policy of conscripting counter-revolutionary forces by the CCP, rather than killing them, was a direct result of Mao’s beliefs about thought reform. Dr. Grasso discusses the approach to this ideology in Modernization and Revolution in China by writing that, “The CCP learned that it was more efficacious to have the damned serve socialism through compulsory labor than as fertilizer. Those who were at least ready to work should be spared, said Mao…”. (Grasso 96). The realization of this idea lead to folks such as Xu Fugui staying alive after having been captured. It also enabled him to return home to his family. This policy was reflected in the film when Lao Quan says, “Better to wait and become a POW. The Reds send POWs home.” (To Live 33:40 – 33:45). The more humane approach toward human life garnered high levels of appeal in Mao’s constituents.

Xu Fugui’s return home revealed many political changes, which he quickly adapted to. One policy of the CCP that was immediately revealed to him was how his family was taken care of in his absence. In a conversation with him, his wife Jiazhen says, “The new government paid for mother’s burial, and gave me this job delivering water.” (To Live 44:45 – 44:52). The centrally planned structure that the CCP was following at the time mirrored the Soviet style which structured work by having bureaucrats dictate what kinds of jobs people would receive from the government. Centralized policies such as this wouldn’t be rejected until the Great Leap Forward (Grasso 117). This policy offered little
room for career mobility, but in exchange offered a more secure life for many people. The entire family, including the children and then later her husband, were assigned the job in the movie. Jiazhen stressed that the work had impacted the children’s lives leading to them not getting enough rest.

Another policy that affected the Xu family was the classifying of people into different classes such as working class or landowners. With Xu Fugui’s past as a wealthy landowner, the Xu family had to conceal, dismiss or denounce their history a few times in the film. This was shown in the scene where Xu Fugui witnessed that Long’er, whom Fugui had lost his home to through a gambling debt, had been shot five times due to resisting having his home taken away. The moment revealed to Xu Fugui that by losing his home, he was spared from being labeled as a landlord in the revolution. He describes the importance of this when he says, “If I hadn’t lost my house to him, that’d have been me.” (To Live 49:40 – 49:50). These classifications, and the organizations such as Red Guards and Peasant Organizations which enforced the policy, served to break down traditional life through societal upheaval that Mao Zedong had kept under control by rewarding folks through a process of land reallocation after the landowners were killed by CCP officials.

During the Great Leap Forward (GLF) scenes, the use of communal kitchens were included in the film. CCP policy leveraged communal kitchens in place of personal kitchens in an attempt to more efficiently feed people. The CCP also benefited from metal cookware donated by families, which was smelted for war efforts. This donation was a source of pride in the local community as per the scene where they all woke up from partying the night before to a lump of smelted metal being paraded through the street on its way to a foundry for processing (To Live 1:06:55 – 1:08:10). This smelting was often performed using child labor, where Fugui’s son was a worker at one of the factories.

During a work shift, his son was killed in an accident after having fallen asleep for having worked so many days in a row that he was too exhausted to stay awake. This policy was part of the Great Leap Forward, where the CCP had encouraged people to work extreme hours. This was summarized by Dr. Grasso who writes that, “The frantic pace of the work on these furnaces was matched in regular factories, where machines ran night and day as some workers vacated their homes and simply moved into the plants so they could labor around the clock.” (Grasso 118). The film scene served to show the impact that many
families had to endure, which often included injury and exhaustion in order to fulfill GLF expectations.

In conclusion, Zhang Yimou’s film portrays what typical life in China during the Chinese
Revolutionary years may have been like. Yimou accomplished this by emphasizing relatable aspects of normal life, a few of which were discussed in this essay. The story told was built on a historically accurate narrative in which many of the effects of policymaking by the Chinese government could be seen and understood. It stressed the effects which impacted every single person in China at the time.

Works Cited

Grasso, June M., et al. Modernization and Revolution in China. 6th ed., Routledge, 2024.

To Live [China: Huozhe, 1994]. Dir. Zhang Yimou. Wr. Yu Hua and Lu Wei. [Based on the novel Huozhe by Yu Hua.]. Perf. Ge You [Fugui] and Gong Li [Jiazhen]. Golden Frog Srls., 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HorOrml6hKg. Accessed 07Oct2025.

Mao’s policies appealed to the peasant class because from WW1 to the end of WW2, the Chinese people were subjected to severe economic oppression by an ex-imperial class, a nascent nationalist government and usurious warlords. Mao was able to channel a relatable narrative that focused around giving the peasants land and access to education in exchange for their loyalty and participation in the revolution that he lead. Mao’s narrative outlined numerous classes which all imposed their autocratic authority on the peasant class. In his Observations, He described this group as, “The patriarchal-feudal class of local tyrants, evil gentry and lawless landlords [which] has formed the
basis of autocratic government for thousands of years and is the cornerstone of imperialism, warlordism and corrupt officialdom. To overthrow these feudal forces is the real objective of the national revolution.” (Tse-tung para. 9). This quote is important because it clearly delineates classes of people that were at odds with each other through the revolution.

The ideology that Mao presented incorporated both nationalist and communist aspects and was very agreeable to the peasantry which was already rejecting Confucianism as a result of being exposed to other religions. Recognizing this ideological struggle, in speaking to the peasants Mao made the point on the gods that, “… if you had only Lord Kuan and the Goddess of Mercy and no peasant association, could you have overthrown the local tyrants and evil gentry? … You have worshiped them for centuries, and they have not overthrown a single one of the local tyrants or evil gentry for you!” (Tse-tung para. 43). His point here was that he was justifying the actions of the peasants in rejecting their past adherence to religious beliefs, and by extension their traditional culture. Further ideological reformations included convincing the peasants that the landlord class didn’t follow the Three Peoples Principles and this in part justified the redistribution of the land of absentee landlords to the people.

This process moved the power over the land from those classes to the peasant associations. Per Wm. Theodore de Bary in Sources of Chinese Tradition, the Three Peoples Principles were, “nationalism, democracy, and the people’s livelihood.” (de Bary Pages 358-397). These values formed the ideological core of Mao’s revolutionary peasant class whose livelihood was perceived to be at risk.

The Chinese peasants were faced with exorbitant taxation that lead many of them to assume usurious loans. It was often the case that they couldn’t pay the loans back and the peasants would then lose their properties. Mao indicated that the peasant associations reduced this burden on the peasants when he wrote, “the exorbitant levies imposed on the peasants when the local tyrants and evil gentry dominated rural administration, e.g., the surcharge on each mou of land, have been abolished or at least
reduced.” (Tse-tung para. 69). Further, the rejection of filial piety, new marriage laws, restructuring the family unit, changes in property ownership, and the erosion of patrilineal tendencies were all pursuits already being taken on by the peasantry – to Mao’s surprise which he recounted in his Observations.

Mao’s focus on individuals rather than classes showed that he believed that class reform was a natural consequence of thought reform. This was because he seemed to believe that individual circumstances would lead to an unavoidable association with a lower, middle and end of any societal structuring. Mao’s promises of individual peasants having access to land, food, education and more offered them hope in the midst of their being pillaged by warlords that the Nationalist government (Guomindang) could no longer maintain authority over. By molding individual values to a collectivist approach (through the peasant associations), all centered around the Three Peoples Principles, peasants came to exhort authoritative power of their own as a class. This was fundamental to Mao’s narrative which hinged on developing a national identity to base the CCP on. The peasants and CCP used this authoritative power to remove abusive landlords from power through various reforms. In a memo to President Truman, Edwin Locke summarized that these reforms, “include redistribution of land to eliminate absentee ownership; drastic lowering of farm rents; abolition of usury; abolition of tax extortion and official corruption; better wages, treatment, living conditions, and education for workers and peasants and their families.” (Locke Para. 7). These reforms were incredibly popular with the peasants and secured their support for Mao.

Once the countryside had been made to operate independently of Mao’s direct support, the CCP moved on to removing the Guomindang from leading China and installed a communist system of government. Here, Mao’s success was also largely due to the Guomindang no longer having the financial means to support itself after having lost much territory (and taxes) to the CCP. Additionally, as Dr. Grasso writes in Modernization and Revolution in China, “The Nationalists’ insistence on sacrificing all economic, social, and political reform to mount a military campaign that would eliminate the Communists as a political force was a price too high for China’s nascent bourgeoisie to pay.” (Grasso Page 91). Due to the resulting financial shortfalls, the Guomindang had no further ability to continue financing itself which lead to them fleeing to Taiwan. This error in selecting a correct approach, along with others discussed, resulted in the CCP winning the Chinese civil war.

In conclusion, the transition to socialized agriculture instead of landowners, the formation of cooperatives (communes & soviets), and the economic collectivization all lead to creating a new communist national identity in China. The blending in of communist ideological perspectives that focused on thought reform and land redistribution cast Mao’s approach as a different flavor of communism. Mao’s strategy of rewarding the country folk with the land from absentee landlords and many others lead to them not being dependent on the more distributed form of government that relied on the peasantry and its wishes. The costs of keeping the countryside safe were paid for collectively by the local peasant associations. Financial issues were major factors in the outcome of the Chinese civil war.

Works Cited

de Bary, Wm. Theodore, et al. Sources of Chinese Tradition : From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century, Columbia University Press, 2001. ProQuest Ebook Central,
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bu/detail.action?docID=908711. Accessed 23Sep2025.

Grasso, June M., et al. Modernization and Revolution in China. 6th ed., Routledge, 2024.

Locke, Edwin A. “Memorandum by Mr. Edwin A. Locke, Jr., Personal Representative of President Truman in Charge of the American Production Mission in China, to President Truman.” U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of State, 20 Aug. 1945,
https://www.history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v07/d307#fn:1.5.4.12.14.10.3. Accessed 23Sep2025.

Tse-tung, Mao. “REPORT ON AN INVESTIGATION OF THE PEASANT MOVEMENT IN
HUNAN.” Marxists.Org, Mar. 1927, www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm. Accessed 23Sep2025.

Mosley’s argument is that sports are harmful to black Americans due to exploitative effects on black people, and also that there is a racial issue in that it highlights issues with genetics being a basis for racial ideology. The argument is very agreeable, but Mosley’s process of coming to these conclusions is more what I have an issue with in that while Mosley makes a good point that sports can be leveraged as a tool used by one group in order to harm a cultural group, he doesn’t make a great point that sports are harmful to black Americans.

Mosley opens up with a discussion on attributing racial characteristics to sports in which he makes the point that racial differences based on genetics amount to endorsing racism by equivocating the line of reasoning with, “eugenic thinking in the early and middle nineteenth century,” in citing Entine (Mosley 297). Mosley discusses topics such as nazi ideology, eugenics and more having led to legislation that was race-based and caused more problems. He uses these examples to build his point that genetics and race have no real justification to be used to justify that a group of individuals had some basis by which they could “play sports better” than other groups. He frames his argument by citing that, “We are led to infer that just as the genetic makeup of Europeans predisposes them to have higher IQs, the genetic makeup of Africans and African Americans predisposes them to greater manual dexterity and athletic potential.” (Mosley 298). This frame, Mosley says, “undermines the importance of training, access, early exposure, social reinforcement and the like.” By making black youth believe that sport is their natural domain, this belief channels their energies and talents away from technical and academic areas.” (Mosley 299).

My issues begin where Mosley writes, “By diverting the energies of black youth to the least productive areas of modern culture, more lucrative opportunities are reserved for those who are not black.” (Mosley 300). This is no less racist of a consideration than his previous arguments against it, and even Mosley failed to make any substantiative point that athletics an an ‘unproductive area’ that results in less lucrative opportunities. Mosley only defends his position from an anti-genetics stance that relies on “hard work and training” as being more responsible for success. This is agreeable in itself, but it doesn’t really address the issue at the center of his argument because hard work and training can make people both athletic and intelligent.

He has not outlined the capacity of human talent in his argument and has needlessly confined his discussion to humans being either smart or athletic, but not both. Mosley’s argument that “sports are damaging” is more valid than his argument that “sports are damaging to black America”, because he didn’t select a specific educational opportunity that a Black American had missed out on due to sports. His rejection sports, because intelligence exists, suggests that physical talent is correlated with some pretentious dichotomy of human mental talent and athletics – two otherwise totally uncorrelated activities. That people may only have a physical talent, or only have a mental talent and most humans have no capacity for both is a confining thought. Mosley posits the general idea that some disambiguous white cultural group, through celebrating the physical capabilities of their peers, to somehow be a guise or front meant to keep the black American race of people in some ‘subservient’ place. This is inherently a racist thought in that the argument is built upon the solution that nobody ought to play sports and instead all people should be smart and pursue intelligent efforts.

Mosley avoids discussing the idea that Affirmative Action policies adopted by the US government ensured that black Americans were represented in sports, and this discussion is sorely missing in his section where he discusses the cherry picked data differentiating runners and jumpers from swimmers. Had he discussed that instead of concluding with the issue at hand being spectator sports then his argument may have been substantiated a bit. That being said, Mosley made a reasonable argument, with black people in mind, that the people being selected to represent a sports market, are being harmed by this sports market, but failed to make the case that sports harm “black America” specifically.

Mosley reveals a bias against science-based arguments in writing that science, “has not been an objective, value-free enterprise, and [that] the biological sciences have typically been more instrumental than descriptive.” (Mosley 301). The issue is that his argument should have differentiated between scientific applications and scientific studies. Whereas the studies are often instrumental and more accessible regarding readability, actual scientific applications themselves generally have not been turned into instruments. The problem here is that by lumping all of science into some class of “modern propaganda” he shows his own bias. This is evidenced when he writes, “The exploitation of Africans has been justified by reference to biblical texts, and now by measurements in laboratories and contests.” (301). The issue is that this point has not been substantiated or explained, further revealing the theological aspect of his argument here as he presumes the reader to know what this means, inherently, and is thus gauging his audience incorrectly. Then he says that scientists should be unbiased, as judges are, which shows how unfamiliar he is with what a scientist is. It’s the job of scientists, as inherently biased beings, to pursue the creation of unbiased scientific studies which addressing bias. His theological argument continues when he writes, “Yet one of the main contributions of the new wave in the philosophy of science…” (301). He is under the misconception that science is a pure belief-based system rather than a hybrid empirical-belief based system, here.

In conclusion, Mosley makes many points that constitute a good discussion on how sports can be leveraged as a tool to inflict harm on cultural groups. He shows that he retains a slight bias toward science, and doesn’t substantiate his argument in that sports itself isn’t really shown to harm black America. Mosley offers a false dichotomy that negates the discussion on human capacity for both intellectual and athletic talent that is abundantly perceived in many modern athletes today.

Works Cited

Mosley, Albert “Racial Differences in Sports:What’s Ethics Got to Do with It?” Sports Ethics an Anthology, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, 2006, pp. 297–303.

I think the shift to game reasoning is not problematic, so long as the society that the game reasoning is abstracted from is inherently an impositional society where individual nature is inhibited in favor of causing them to display exhibitional behaviors that are advantageous to a perceived higher moral authority that people share subservience to.

Let moral reasoning be the standard set of morals that one develops by living in a just society which is rule-governed, where people differentiate right actions from wrong actions and develop beliefs that guide what actions they take. Game reasoning, then, is described in Bredemeier’s article when quoting Erving Goffman who, “has described play activities as [being] enclosed within a unique “social membrane” or conceptual “frame,”” where Bredemeier says these activities ensure that, “Sport is set apart both cognitively and emotionally from the everyday world.” (Bredemeier 218). Bredemeier concludes that, “the fundamental structure of moral reasoning remains relatively stable in nearly all situations,” in the transition from standard moral reasoning to game reasoning (Bredemeier 220).

Bredemeier presents two descriptive viewpoints for the relationship between the two types of reasoning. The first Bredemeier summarizes as, “subordinating everyday morality to game reasoning. For him, an opponent is a player, not a person. This objectification of opponents reduces an athlete’s sense of personal responsibility for competitors.” (Bredemeier 219). For the second, Bredemeier says that, “The transformed morality that occurs in sport does not take the place of everyday morality; rather, it is embedded in the broader, more encompassing morality of daily life.” (Bredemeier 219). The latter is the focus of this discussion.

The reason that the transition isn’t problematic is because actions taken already don’t always track the absolute morals that guide one’s taken actions. There are instances where individual circumstances will yield different outcomes to different situations. This is due to different expectations of consequences of one’s actions. By following implied morals developed through interpreting authoritative law that was written in order to maintain peace in a functional moral society, one typically subscribes to interpretations in pursuit of perpetuating perceived advantageous outcomes. If individuals didn’t believe the authoritative body that they were subservient to was going to render punishment for taking immoral (often, illegal) actions that it would typically penalize an individual for, then an individual may tend to favor individually advantageous outcomes, instead. In these cases, the costs of one’s actions, which still carry some enhanced risk of aggravating the state, may lead one to perceive that the paying through surrogate punishment incurred is less than the cost of performing the action.

As Michael Smith says in a discussion on relating domestic violence to sports violence, “the severity of the penalties for violence provided by the law are widely regarded within the legal community, as well as the sports community, as out of proportion to the seriousness of the illegal acts.” (Smith 212). As Smith was discussing the proportionate costs of sports violence, what’s implied here is that instead of serving years in prison for aggravated assault and battery charges, the penalties incurred by athletes in sports for ‘illegal actions’ are instead similarly diminished (although the state is still justified in charging these people in many cases). This isn’t to imply that actions don’t have consequences, just that the typical realized consequences are reduced. Rather than serving jail time through what may otherwise be interpreted as aggravated assault by the municipality under which a crime took place, players are instead given a few minutes in a penalty box, or move back a few yards on a field, for accosting another player. Why this is, is a larger discussion that’s outside the scope of this abridged discussion of the human capacity to perform operations under the imposition of additional rule sets based on uniquely-tailored moral valuations in which there are reduced threats of penalties being imposed for otherwise immoral actions normally judged by the state. That these deviant actions taken still result in most involved being able to return to the larger order at the conclusion of the sports event generally satisfies the state’s criteria of maintaining an overall peaceful society is critical.

In support of this, Smith provides an example where he wrote, “because these aggressive urges must be vented, the argument goes, if not one way then another, prohibiting fist-fighting would result in an increase in the more vicious and dangerous illegal use of the stick.” (Smith 208). The ‘vent’ in the game is a societal value as the sports competitions mirror a vent for the spectators in that just as more violent acts may happen in different ways in the game; so too may more violent and less controlled acts happen in society, were it to be the case that each instance of a broken law in society external to it were rendered unto the offender. The point here is that it’s a societal value that the state doesn’t retain absolute control over individual lives, as it doesn’t have the requisite resources in order to impose such control (this, too, is a societal value). That sports athletes aren’t charged for the crimes they may be perceived to have committed during a competitive sports competition is an example of this value. This has implications, such as whether or not people transition into ‘alternative reasoning’ at their jobs, too.

In conclusion, the transition between alternative sets of reasoning by people isn’t unique to sports. This transition reflects individuals having additional sets of rules imposed on them, beyond the typical expectation of those expected in a normal situation. The particular nature of the transition results in outcomes that may be problematic, but these typically exhibit regard for societal values which may or may not be problematic.

Works Cited

Bredemeier, Brenda Jo, et al. “Values and Violence in Sports Today: The Moral Reasoning Athletes Use in Their Games and in Their Lives.” Sports Ethics an Anthology, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, 2006, pp. 217–220.

Smith, Michael. “What Is Sports Violence?” Sports Ethics an Anthology, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, 2006, pp. 199–216.

Randolph Feezell writes, “Celebrated athletes are role models, not moral exemplars.” (Feezell 32). He justifies them as being role models by indicating that they become lusory objects when playing sports, under his own criteria. Feezell defines a lusory object as, “…an object whose meaning or significance cannot be understood independent of the way in which the game is defined and interpreted in terms of its lusory means and lusory goals, that is, its rules and conventions.”(Feezell 31). He compares athletes to actors in a movie and suggests that their participation in sports includes more than an aesthetic appeal. Feezell discusses that these lusory objects, “whose meaning and significance are internal to the world of the sport in which they excel,” is due to them playing in an autotelic domain of the sports competition with its own rules and bounds. (Feezell 32).

Feezell says that the reason that athletes can be role models is because first, that there exists some threshold of knowledge that must be had in order to consider the athlete to be a moral exemplar where the knowledge creates the model to be modeled. Second, because he says, “… exemplarism wants celebrated athletes to recognize their moral influence on others, it cannot object to the notion that celebrated athletes have a special influence on how others, especially young athletes, understand the ethical aspects of sports participation.” (Feezell 33). Feezell concludes with discussing that because of these points, athletes are to be role models but not moral exemplars (Feezell 32).

While I do agree that athletes are role models, I disagree with Feezell’s rationale about that and absolving them of moral exemplar status. Anyone in pursuit of making any sound moral judgment cannot reduce a person to a lusory object; in the context of Feezell’s argument, the spectators can’t pass legitimate moral judgments on lusory athletes for the same reasons spectators can’t pass legitimate moral judgments on lusory baseball bats. By creating a special class of elite people and calling them ‘lusory objects’, Feezell doesn’t absolve them of the moral responsibility that all extant people carry equally at all times in any reasonable society to pursue actions that ought to be deemed morally exemplary. What I mean here is that the only kind of ‘Barry Bonds’ that can be a ‘lusory object’ is his likeness such as found on baseball cards or similar merchandise.

I vehemently disagree with Feezell when he writes that, “Our sports heroes should be thought of more as imagined objects or fictional characters in a drama, whose character and exploits we admire within this illusory domain, rather than persons whose life outside of sports is exemplary, noteworthy, or even interesting.”(Feezell 31). To suggest that it’s appropriate to ever consider that it’s morally appropriate to dehumanize any human being in this way is to install a level of unjustified control into a spectator which reduces their individual agency and free will. This mechanism enables spectators to view another person as an object, depending on the narrative into which they’re placed, onto which any moral or immoral action may then be justifiably be taken. This eerily resembles the same human flaw that Stanley Milgram identified in his book Obedience to Authority, where people engaged in normative situations that caused them to unknowingly take unethical actions. To limit one’s perception of the authenticity of another human being because of another human beings authority who perpetuates the behavior reveals that Feezell may have not fully considered the implications of his argument.

Because a spectator believes they can reduce a person into a lusory object suggests that it’s not because the other is a lusory object. It’s because they’re perceived as a lusory object by the spectators who are willing to live vicariously through another human being, or any other individual reason, that the behavior becomes normative and seems to exist to substantiate Feezell’s argument. Feezell compounds his error when he writes, “…the epistemological problem arises because we simply do not know enough about our sport heroes in order to believe that they are moral exemplars whose life or conduct in general is worthy of imitation.” (Feezell 32). Feezell thought this because his argument is posited on the dualistic paradigm of there only being “lusory”, and “not lusory” people as a normative case, on which his definition of role model is constructed. This lacks the requisite overlap of ipsative criteria held by individuals to which this purportedly compiled information is evaluated against. While there’s a threshold of knowledge that’s relevant to making such a decision, there’s not some singular threshold of acquired knowledge that causes someone to become a moral exemplar. Feezell’s argument makes the spectator a library of information, incapable of passing rational moral judgments. It’s important that both the knowledge and criteria overlap with spectators’ internal valuations in such a way that the evaluation leads to “TRUE” in the case of answering to whether or not the celebrated athlete is a, “moral exemplar whose life or conduct in general is worthy of imitation,” as Feezell writes (Feezell 32). Due to this disconnect, I’d say that Feezell’s argument is missing critical information that could possibly be better made by expanding his definition of ‘lusory’.

If there are more than the set of objects that are lusory or not lusory, what are both of these the respective subsets of that would include the subset of what all the players actually are, that may suggest some intermediary state between lusory and not lusory? In the case of professional wrestling like the the WWE, individual attitude becomes super-lusory, and this is called kayfabe. This word is not easily understood in the context of the English language due to constraints stemming from English thought and that may have actually been Feezell’s most overlooked point. Feezell’s suggestion that there’s a flaw rooted in the linguistic effects of the English language is quite astute when he wrote, “It is a failure of our language, or rather our linguistic sensitivities, that we refer to the person, qua father and husband, with the same name as the lusory object.” (Feezell 31). While objects may be lusory for various reasons, athletes don’t really fit into Feezell’s definition. This suggests that a more complicated process is happening which might be more aptly discussed in the context of a discussion that includes kayfabe and English linguistics. The discussion is outside the scope of this paper.

In conclusion, Feezell isn’t alone in his lapse in logic with his attempt to make the case that people can be objects in the same way baseball’s are objects. These flaws in logic have previously enabled people to egregiously conclude that it’s possible to depersonify a human being in such a way that moral actions may be taken against them such they’re somehow absolved of judgment. This appears to be rooted in the linguistic structure of the English language that facilitates this type of behavior. In being naive to this, Feezell bridged the gap in his own logic by discussing idea of athletes having “heightened responsibilities”. Further investigation into his salient argument on those grounds may reveal a link that may possibly better justify his argument.

Works Cited

Feezell, Randolph. “Celebrated Athletes, Moral Exemplars, and Lusory Objects.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, vol. 32, no. 1, May 2005, pp. 20–35, https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2005.9714668. Accessed 06Apr2025.

Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority. Harper, 1974.

I think that performance enhancing drugs are compatible with the ideal conception of sports. Simon’s idea of sports being a, “mutual quest for excellence through challenge,” implies that if all athletes had some sort of relative class where they could compete, then PED’s would still fit within the ideal concept of sports (Simon 179). Evaluating people as bodies rather than as persons through depersonifying economic valuation of them may further enable more precise valuations in the overall context that includes an ideal valuation which must address the idea that environmental toxins create harmful effects that limit the ability to reasonably evaluate athletes from an ideal perspective because all bodies react differently to the amount of environmental toxins they are exposed to over their lives. This may inhibit the talents of some athletes and have no affect on other athletes.

There are many ways that Simon discusses as to why PED’s may be incompatible which include that there’s no ideal definition of PED’s, that PED’s may harm their users and may have coercive effects to other players, informed consent cannot be obtained in their administration, relative efficiency of bodies varies greatly in response to usage and that it’s disrespectful to other persons to use them and doesn’t truly test the ability of one sports team against another. Simon rejects the idea that using PED’s are coercive, and in general chose to argue that PED’s are not compatible with the ideal conception of sports due to their relative effects on bodies not being consistent, and that their usage is disrespectful to other players. I do agree that their usage is disrespectful under most circumstances, and that they generally don’t inflict a level of harm that’s morally reprehensible, but disagree with his argument that PED’s aren’t compatible with the ideal conception of sports due to inequality of efficiency regarding efficacy of using PED’s.

Simon didn’t attempt to suggest an ideal definition of what a PED is and in doing so left out discussion regarding the temporal proximity of administration of the drug to the moment in which a player competes. While it would be breaking a rule to see someone taking PED’s a few days before a game, it may be a totally different moral discussion if they took the same drug years ago so that they could compete. There is an acceptable window of time that is specific to individual circumstances in which it’s morally justifiable for a person to use a PED with respect to the time in which themselves as a future athlete would compete. What that time frame is is outside the scope of this discussion.

Simon’s discussion on efficiency and efficacy of PED’s from one body to another neglects substantial performance-impeding effects that are imposed on all athletes from their environment. These effects reduce them from some baseline. The economically-driven facilitation of an environment that’s inherently inhibitory to human talent and acts as a negative selection force is essentially reverse-doping and reduces the overall capability of a population to produce individual talent sufficient to meet the ever-escalating ideal criteria that one must pass in order to enter these major leagues. What I mean is that it’s possible to produce better players now is through economically incentivizing further reductions in the quality of all environments capable of producing athletes. I don’t think anybody affected by this wants this to happen and therefore, to me, it makes sense to reduce this selective force on the population as a whole by creating multiple economic niches of professional sports rather than facilitate the extreme pressure to produce more competitive athletes in a single professional division.

My issue here is that in the same way Simon argues that doping results in a competition of how ones body responds to doping rather than how people compete against each other, this reverse-doping produces identical, but inhibitory, effects as there are people that are affected differently by hormone disruptions. Implications for would-be athletes to having disruptions to their bodies that may impede their athletic ability is implied in a CNN article that discusses that there’s about 0.2 ounces of plastic in peoples heads assuming a brain is about 3 pounds and, “That’s the equivalent of an entire standard plastic spoon.” (LaMotte para. 4). I measured a fork, it’s 0.2 ounces and so I can only imagine what it would be like without one of these things in my own. LaMotte continues in discussing effects on health in saying that, “plastics are associated with harms to human health at every single stage of the plastic lifecycle.” (LaMotte para. 17). This all implies that there are people who may otherwise have been athletes who arguably have had their chances denied to them! Is this fair to them, whom we will, can and may never know whom they are and were? Are they justified in using PED’s? I think so under certain rules and I think they very much deserve their chance in a different professional category as a result of societal values; not due to some sort of inherent disability or personal pursuit of their own fault.

In conclusion, PED’s are compatible with the ideal conception of sports. This may be done through introducing new classes in professional leagues in which mutually informed consent can be obtained such that the “mutual quest for excellence through challenge” can be pursued by competing on an equal playing field (Simon 179). There are many reasons to believe that the ideal conception of sports isn’t compatible with PED’s, but few of these arguments are logically sound, and the argument about it being against the rules to do so doesn’t address whether or not using them is morally acceptable.

Works Cited

LaMotte, Sandee. “Human Brain Samples Contain an Entire Spoon’s Worth of Nanoplastics, Study Says.” CNN, Cable News Network, 3 Feb. 2025, www.cnn.com/2025/02/03/health/plastics- inside-human-brain-wellness/index.html. Accessed 30Mar2025.

Simon, Robert L. “Good Competition and Drug-Enhanced Performance.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, vol. 11, no. 1, May 1984, pp. 6–13, https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.1984.9714408. Accessed 30Mar2025.

Fraleigh defines a good sports contest as, “meeting, together, standards supplied by the nature of the sports contest itself and the two cited standards”, where the first of those two standards is that a sports contest is a, “voluntary, agreed upon, human event … [with] socially approved tactics and strategy,” with the purpose to, “provide equal opportunity for the mutual contesting of the relative abilities of the participants … [from] the moral point of view (Fraleigh 53). Fraleigh defines economic interests to be constrained in cases where, “such a value depends upon things external to the contest as well as that internal-to-the-contest-necessity of known equally competent opponents.” (Fraleigh 58).

By arguing that the inherent value in the sports contest is the receipt of the knowledge of the relative abilities of the folks involved which may be more or less valuable based on individual priority, Fraleigh makes an assumption that poor performers and cheaters aren’t able to fully provide this knowledge (Fraleigh 54). Fraleigh culminates in discussing economic valuation when he writes, “However, to maximize the instrumental value of all sports contests for profit making, the characteristic of known equal opponents is essential.” (Fraleigh 58). This is important because he omits his previous discussion on closure being that extrinsic value on which the intrinsic value of knowledge of relative ability is the function of which maximizes this value. The valuation of the closure may maximize the instrumental value of sports contests, because the valuation rests on the losing or winning of a team when omitting gambling outcomes from economic discussions. This implies that a bad sports contest may have higher instrumental value in some cases and contradicts Fraleigh’s argument (this is a viable discussion after recently witnessing this years Superbowl sports contest myself).

By assuming that the good performing team isn’t subjected to he same test when playing against poor performers, Fraleigh neglects his stated valuation that the inherent value is in the outcomes of the sports contest as he discusses the knowledge of the relative abilities being intrinsically valuable. Because an outcome of any sports contest is that this knowledge is created to an extent in all sports contests that have at least started, the measure of how incompatible economic and ideal valuations are in sports contests is what causes these ideological modalities to compete. This is because the individual interests motivates all spectators to conclude that a sports contest was good or not (players are also spectators). This perceived balance between the two ideological valuations is the simultaneous measure of their incompatibility with each other and their compatibility with external human interest over time. That Fraleigh misses this point of view appears to be due to a his opinion that sports has an intrinsic value. An individuals external valuations may hold simultaneous partial valuations of each ideological valuation which may be perceived as compatibility with each other.

Fraleigh’s proposed intrinsic value of knowing the relative abilities may also be asserted to be test-independent in the scope of his argument as he’s not built an argument regarding the crucial nature of how the ‘test’ is correlated to outcomes of any sports contest (the knowledge of the relative abilities). This is something that even a good-performing team may not be able to fulfill against another good-performing team because if someone’s got a headache and is only performing at 99% of their 100%, then this fails the criteria of “complete and accurate knowledge” that Fraleigh presents (Fraleigh 56). This impacts his argument in that the granular approach he applies using a good, bad or neutral sports contest should instead be considered using a different approach that uses mathematics to discuss exactly what percentage of people must agree to constitute that ‘closure’ has been found.

Where Fraleigh indicates whether or not “closure” is achieved is important, as it may be a more appropriate measure by which to gauge inherent value of the sports contest because closure is more reasonably experienced based off of if a winner or loser can be identified by all the spectators. This suggests that a threshold of spectators must accept the outcome of the sports contest to. Fraleigh seems to be aware of this as he writes, “a contest which has the prospect of being an even match is more marketable than one which does not,” which implies that an even match may often result in ties (Fraleigh 57). To satisfy ‘confirmation of closure’ roles, spectators may find that may be economically or ideally advantageous to design sports contests to result in ties often if the extrinsic value of closure would be more valuable as a result. This economic valuation perspective takes the stance that the outcome of the game in being able to decide winners and losers, rather than Fraleigh’s notions of relative ability, is a more appropriate concept by which to value the outcome of a sports contest from an economic perspective rather than an ideal one.

In conclusion, there are multiple competing ideological valuations of sport that fundamentally conflict with each other but are each compatible with human values. This may lead to redundantly valuing the same sports contest where foundational ideas about two valuations may appear to be compatible due to a dualistic thought process. There are many different manifestations of valuation methodologies and Fraleigh’s highlighted two more noticeable iterations here. This omits recent, broader economic developments (including gambling) that reflect a Western ideology in transition away from socio-capitalistic modality. He’s also omitted a discussion incorporating historical ideal valuations of sport going back thousands of years.

Works Cited

Fraleigh, Warren P. “An Examination of Relationships of Inherent, Intrinsic, Instrumental, and Contributive Values of the Good Sports Contest.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, vol. 10, no. 1, Oct1983, pp. 52–60, https://www.doi.org/10.1080/00948705.1983.9714400. Accessed 23Mar2025.

I think that externalism best describes the role that sports fills in Western ideology because it seems to be the prevailing way they are conceptualized in most discussions. My understanding of externalism as it pertains to sports is that there are values held by a culture such that one could determine whether or not a society is capitalistic, socialistic, sexist, racist or more, which all can be directly discerned by the way that the sport is played. These values relate to Jan Boxill’s notion of competitive sports as a, “competition in a mutual challenge to achieve excellence (Boxill 2). This excellence therein referred to is generally that which is to be showcased by the sport and is also valued by the larger society in which the sport takes place.

If a society values guys with big muscles or tall men, then one would expect to see both of these present and overly-represented with respect to a normal sample of a population in the most popular sports that society enjoys and plays. This is the case for both basketball and football in the USA. As Boxill writes, “Sport is a microcosm of society, complete with all its conflicts, assets, and defects.” (Boxill 9). What this means is that it’s because these two values originate from the external Western ideology that the more popular sports are expected to have both of these types of people. As cultural values shift over time, one may expect the popularity of the sport to respond commensurately to some factor representative of how much that value is showcased by the sport(s) which for these two is how prevalent those types of people are seen in the sport. Folks may make observations about Western ideology in relation to whether it is sexist, or not, based on these values which are showcased in these sports.

I think externalism better explains the role of sports in Western ideology because people are the source of values and the reason for these values changing over time is that people are intellectually constrained by their changing societal circumstances. I think it was incredibly important that in his discussion of broad internalism, Robert Simon made a point that instead supports externalism when he wrote, “What gives moral force to the virtues and excellences required in sport is their connection within the practice to respect for certain qualities of human beings.” (Simon 10). This statement means that it’s because of inherent values external to sports that comes from people, that folks will showcase in sports the values that one will find in their society which are used to best play the game that is being played. Simon later made another astute insight that, “the best explanation of why some principles, premises, or other justifiers to which we appeal are regarded as deep is because they have at least provisionally passed intellectual tests that confer normative force upon them” (Simon 14). This is because circumstances will dictate the intellectual framework by which people will perform intellectual tests. These circumstances in society will change over time depending on different factors that are external to sports, and so too will the outcome of these tests when applied to different sports.

In conclusion, externalism provides a better description of the role of sports in Western ideology than broad internalism. This is because humans are the main source of values in sports and society, which are external to both. Arguments for broad internalism may actually support externalism as a concept more than an argument for itself.

Works Cited

Boxill, Jan. Sports Ethics: An Anthology. Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

Simon, Robert L. “Internalism and Internal Values in Sport.” Taylor & Francis Online, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport Volume 27, 2000 – Issue 1 , 19Jan2012, https://www-tandfonline- com.ezproxy.bu.edu/doi/citedby/10.1080/00948705.2000.9714586scroll=top&needAccess=true. Accessed 16Mar2025

Why is there a rejection of peptide usage among the general population? People are offered to be cut up or are told to follow incredibly ineffective routines that all too often don’t really solve their issues. The things are often able to be eaten or injected. There are fewer objections to eating animals that have been injected with antibiotics and immunizations, and many people seem to think that there is no need to apply this same methodology to themselves for chemicals that are far more safe. The lack of marketing, the lack of good information, the lack of what can be cured are a few factors. Folks might
have heard of the weight loss peptides such as tirzepatide and semaglutide. These are two of thousands of compounds with even more uses. Preventing hair loss can be corrected with a copper GHK-CU peptide. There are many that can act as a nootropic. There are peptides that ease the appearance of aging such as NAD+. There are even ones that can aid in recovery, such as in the case of tendinitis.

According to a leading Medical news publication, “Peptides are naturally present in protein-rich foods. It is not necessary to take peptide supplements or use topical sources of peptides.” (Leonard 2023). The way that this is worded is misleading to me. For one – when is it not necessary to take the supplements? All the time? The open-ended statement lead myself and certainly many other folks to dismiss what otherwise could be very important opportunities in their life. Just last year I was told I had De Quervain’s tenosynovitis in my right wrist and would need a De Quervain’s release surgery in order
to restore the mobility in the wrist. The sickness is essentially an inflammation of the tendon that runs from the bone in your arm to your palm, somewhere. In there the tendon runs through a hole of cartilage in the wrist that enables fine motor precision movements under load, so basically when you are holding something, that you can rotate it around freely for any reason you please is due to the ability to have no restriction on that tendon as it slides through that channel.

Occasionally, inflammation or scarring can build up in such a way that parts of either the
channel itself or on the tendon string. The enlargement or swelling of either of these can cause contact between the two surfaces that cause inflammation due to rubbing. As this builds up over time, the inflammation and the normal usage of the wrist can get so bad that nothing be picked up. I let it go on for about ten months before I’d see an orthopedic surgeon who confirmed the diagnosis and recommended surgery as the amount of time that had elapsed was beyond a typical expectation for it to heal without surgery. I put it off for a few reasons but during that time was informed of two peptides called BPC-157 and TB-500, which showed incredible promise for recovery for me (Chang 4) & (Maar
9). I used both of these for a couple of weeks, and before the month was over with my wrist was getting better. Before the end of the year the issue was gone. I had a full recovery.

Returning to the article mentioned earlier, Medical News Today is a highly credible news
agency, leaning toward a “Pro-Science” rating (MBFC 2024). It’s incredible to me, still unbelievable, that fifty dollars worth of chemicals that aren’t discussed anywhere other than outside of this country & medical system as solutions to these kinds of problems. I was told that I would need to take up to a month off of work, get physical therapy and risk going through a surgery that wasn’t even needed. Why do these doctors have so few tools available to them? The doctor never mentioned peptides, the only thing he mentioned he could offer was corticosteroids and NSAIDs during the first months for
treatment. It turns out that the doctors aren’t allowed to recommend these as solutions, and despite them being available for sale in every single modern country, the general disclaimer as to why they aren’t available for sale is because, “not all peptides make it to the last stage of clinical trials.” (Rathi 2024). As a ‘translation’ here, this typically means that there exists no opportunity for a company to be able to properly monetize a solution despite having 99% of the safety and efficacy data. As I’ve been a part of medicine industry for 20 years and could discuss this at exhaustive lengths, I’d like to keep discussion on patent law, clinical drug trials and what may prevent the bringing of these drugs to market away from the main focus of this paper and instead focus on regenerative medicine applications.

For my solutions, I stumbled on them from a random bodybuilding forum online at
https://www.professionalmuscle.com. Despite an entire medical team that included a primary care doctor, a surgeon and a few nurses that nobody had mentioned these things that bodybuilders use commonly. It reminds me of a time just two years ago, when I started having air leak from my tires. I didn’t know what was going on. I brought it to the place that sold me some new Michelin’s and they told me there was nothing wrong with the wheels that they could see, but at the time I was flying around a lot for work and so I parked it and when I got back two weeks later two of the tires had lost about 5-10 psi. It was not enough to cause much issues at the time, so this goes on like this for a month or two, I fly out and come back and put 5-10 psi into the tires each time. About three months of this goes on before I brought it to the same place and they told me they would take a look at them. I got told there was nothing wrong with the tires but they replaced one of the TPS sensors. So I left, and then came back a week later and they were still losing air. This goes on for about another six months, me bringing it to random places to fix it only to find out that whatever they told me was a lie or just wrong.

One guy told me he pulled a piece of bone out of the tire! While this was going on, I’d moved from San Antonio to New York around that time and was parking in a parking garage for a while and the folks that maintained the garage drove by and asked me
what was going on. I told him this story about taking the thing to like 4 or 5 places all keep telling me nothings wrong with the tires. The guy tells me that he’s got the best tire guy that I’d ever find and I should go there. I figured it would be worth it to try, and it turns out that I had two cracked rims and it would cost me 150 dollars to fix it up and I haven’t had a problem since then. The other folks were trying to sell me some rims at one point and it was then that I realized that the reason they didn’t tell me that I had cracked rims even though they would happily sell me a whole wheel for 600 dollars each was because I was just taking the truck to the wrong place. They didn’t make any money on fixing rims, they made money by selling rims.

I guess this kind of relates a little bit to my doctor issue, because had I gone to a different
doctor, I would have probably been told the same thing. I don’t know what made me look for tendinitis issues on a muscle building forum online, but I’m glad I found it. I don’t think it will be the case that the 10-15 years of training these doctors get would be able to keep up with the rapidly changing field of synthetic peptides. I think that it’s more likely to be the case that they just don’t know of what these things can do, rather than they didn’t tell me about them. It would be a waste to think that it would have instead have been so them & the insurance folks could make thousands of dollars when all I needed to
spend was fifty dollars.

I believe that these types of chemicals are just the beginning of regenerative therapies that can be used to avoid invasive and potentially risky surgeries. Possibly in my case it was just that I was lucky, definitely in some areas I was. One particular issue is that due to the chemical composition of these compounds, I don’t believe they are able to be patented profitably for use in commercial sales and because of this it’s a lapse in patent law that seems to be preventing the interest in these from being picked up by larger manufacturers. I guess there is a lot of social issues as well, like faith in the healthcare industry – many folks would have and have gotten the surgery instead. My biggest fear in
surgery is that my mom went in for a spinal fusion and ended up with a dropped foot that left her in a worse physical shape than before. I don’t hold a grudge against the industry – everyone knows that surgery comes with risks. I don’t even think at the time when she had gotten the surgery that these types of compounds had been available as small-scale single-use biomanufactuirng techniques were still largely unavailable unless in a lab or mass-scale manufacturing model. Either way, the event and the change in life I had seen for my mother had lead me to seek any other alternatives prior to proceeding with the same thing.

In conclusion, there are risks that come with using traditional methods of healing a body that are generally outside the domain of regenerative medicine. A lot of folks are faced with treating their immediate issues and this lacks a holistic approach that may yield better results. There are a lot of reasons for viable drugs to not make it to the market despite most of their safety and efficacy data being available. Had I opted for the surgery I would have been pecking away at the keyboard with the points of my fingers for a while instead of buzzing right through the keystrokes I know so well already.

Works Cited

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