I think what matters is whether there's a health cost to these drugs and if so how much. If a drug is quite safe, then it should be allowed -- no matter whether we are talking about sports or academia.
Academic research is not done for entertainment, it directly benefits society and mankind in general. If someone wants to risk their health to find a cure for cancer faster, more power to them.
Yes, this would change the focus to "who has the best toys" - but how is this any different from "who was born with the best genes"? To my mind, the element of randomness makes heredity less fair. A striver might be able to get sponsorship for a course of enhancements, but he can't change his birth.
There are many known tricks such as blood doping that are almost impossible to prevent, and once a few people start doing it everyone must to remain competitive. A huge number of potential athletes take steroids in high school, before testing begins.
I personally think that we should take care to ban these drugs and practices to people who are still developing mentally and physically, but adults should be allowed to make their own decisions. If Stallone wants to eat barrels of HGH to get huge for Rambo, he should be (legally) allowed.
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment:
One could perhaps make the analogy to caffeine (as others in this thread already have). Sports and academia alike drink it all the time. This is a drug so generally harmless that we don't even consider it a drug. Who would argue that caffeine gives an unfair advantage? Does it not make sense that a drug with a more pronounced benefit and similarly innocuous side-effects should be accepted?