Should Altitude Sleep Tents Be Banned?

I am not a sports person in any sense of the word. Oh sure, I catch a college football game here and there and I used to watch a lot of NHL games, especially when the Detroit Red Wings were actually winning. But as for what's going on in the world of major and not so major sporting events, I'm usually pretty clueless. So when I read a recent article about altitude tents (Tilin, Andrew. "Get In Shape While You Sleep." Men's Journal Jan. 2007: 42), I felt like I was reading about some bizarre new trend that science fiction writers hadn't predicted would happen for another five hundred years or so: the ability to train your body for high endurance sports while you sleep.

Altitude tents are a way for athletes to increase their red blood cell production overnight, giving their bodies an extra boost beyond regular exercise and training. This wonder of the sports world lowers the amount of oxygen in the tent while you're off in dreamland enough so that your body and red blood cell count adapts to the level of air that you'd find at higher elevations, giving you the edge if you're getting ready to embark on a bike excursion into the mountains. In fact, the author of this article, Andrew Tilin, tested one of these altitude tents and found that he did indeed have increased stamina and an easier time catching his breath at higher elevations. Though he "still had to train hard", the altitude tent obviously gave him an advantage.