Does anyone really care about cleaning up athletics? That is the question that will fester away long after we know whether Dwain Chambers will be competing for Great Britain at the Olympic Games in Beijing next month.

“It comes down to dollars. The IOC does not want to face the truth because there is too much money riding on it. The Olympics are marketed as this elite competition and nobody wants to admit it's all false.” So said Victor Conte, the founder of the Balco laboratory, a tainted ex-con in many eyes but a man with a pretty good insight into beating the system.

Conte accused the IOC of dragging its heels because it did not want the extent of doping to be made public. He may have been making a melodrama out of a crisis, but that we are saddled with the IAAF's paltry two-year ban is one reason why the British Olympic Association (BOA) bylaw banning dopers for life is needed. Whether or not it falls tomorrow, even temporarily, the debate should move to whether there is a collective will to eradicate doping.

And what is doping? It has been casually dismissed as someone making a mistake, but doping is actually rigging results. If Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, bought off referees to win the Champions League, would we forget about it after two years? How would you feel if, after your emotional investment in Rafael Nadal's Wimbledon triumph, you found out that he had been getting a man-made fifth-set kick? Would you cheer his return two years later?

Chambers seems remorseful, but he lied, cheated, defrauded a sport and thus devalued it. He also denied his compatriots medals. Yet in the build-up to his win in the 100 metres at the Olympic trials on Saturday, I heard a PE teacher saying that Chambers should be going to Beijing. Discuss for your homework, kids.

Few seem to care. Craig Pickering, who finished third at the trials behind Chambers, is anything but outspoken. He must feel like the boy in The Emperor's New Clothes because he is the only athlete hoping to qualify for the Olympics who has said that a life ban is good. Next he will be saying that it is not nice to drown puppies. Yet such is the apathetic response to doping that Pickering is singled out for his views. Plenty of former pros have given Chambers a verbal kicking, but how many would have done so if they were still competing?

“We're guilty until proven innocent,” Pickering said of the effect that cheating has had on the 100 metres. So why is he a lone voice? There is no peer pressure bearing down on the dopers.

Even Ed Moses, the legendary former 400 metres hurdler and leading anti-drugs voice, said that the life ban is like a “death sentence”. Last year I broached the subject with Pierre Weiss, the IAAF general secretary, who suggested that murderers did not get that long.

I am not sure they understand why athletics stadiums are usually half-empty. Athletics has a probably incurable credibility problem. Pious voices damning Chambers for suggesting in a BBC interview that it was possible to win clean but “the person that's taken drugs has to be having a real bad day” are in denial. Chambers took drugs because he believed his rivals were at it. Given that three of the past five winners of the Olympic 100 metres final have at some stage tested positive, he would have been daft not to be cynical. He should be criticised for what he did, not what he said, but is there a collective will to cure the problems rather than crucify someone for acknowledging them?

Not really. It is to the sport's embarrassment that we are still waiting for four-year bans. It is to its shame that more research has not been done into the long-term effects of doping. Two years ago a study at Umea University in Sweden raised worrying questions. “The morphological changes induced by testosterone and anabolic steroids are very long-lasting, perhaps life-long,” it said. “It is very likely that these changes are beneficial for physical performance. The findings ... therefore raise questions regarding relevant suspension times for athletes caught with banned substances in the body.”

If someone in Sweden can do some meaningful research, why can't the World Anti-Doping Agency?

The BOA bylaw has been overturned on appeal no end of times, but it still sends out the message that doping should be abhorrent. It should be deeply offensive to all in sport. Chambers should not have felt that he needed to take drugs to have a level playing field. Get rid of the bylaw and all it will show is that the collective will is more offended by stiff penalties for cheating than by cheating itself.