Argument Paper, MLA Style (Hammond)
Hammond 1
Jamal Hammond
Professor Paschal
English 102
17 March XXXX
Performance Enhancement through Biotechnology
Has No Place in Sports
Opening sentences
provide background
for Hammond’s
thesis.
The debate over athletes’ use of performance-enhancing
substances is getting more complicated as biotechnologies such
as gene therapy become a reality. The availability of these new
methods of boosting performance will force us to decide what we
value most in sports—displays of physical excellence developed
through hard work or victory at all costs. For centuries, spectators
and athletes have cherished the tradition of fairness in sports.
While sports competition is, of course, largely about winning, it is
Thesis states the
main point.
also about the means by which a player or team wins. Athletes who
use any type of biotechnology give themselves an unfair advantage
and disrupt the sense of fair play, and they should be banned from
competition.
Researchers are experimenting with techniques that could
manipulate an athlete’s genetic code to build stronger muscles or
Hammond establishes his credibility
by summarizing
medical research.
increase endurance. Searching for cures for diseases like Parkinson’s
and muscular dystrophy, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania
have created “Schwarzenegger mice,” rodents that grew largerthan-normal muscles after receiving injections with a gene that
stimulates growth protein. The researchers also found that a
combination of gene manipulation and exercise led to a 35%
Source is cited in
MLA style.
increase in the strength of rats’ leg muscles (Lamb 13).
Marginal annotations indicate MLA-style formatting and effective writing.
Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007).
This paper has been updated to follow the style guidelines in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers,
7th ed. (2009).
Hammond 2
Such therapies...