I have looked for a generic D&D thread on this and not found it in the first many pages. More and more, I like to ask the question: why not allow performance enhancing drugs? Please let me explain and then flame away. I'd like to talk about what athletes have done to their bodies in the 20th century and early 21st, for part one, and then I'd like to talk about what *other* professions do to their bodies as well. PART I I used to watch high-school football players drink copious protein shake / bulk up drinks in the mid-1980's. In basketball, we didn't do that so much. But in College, a friend of mine (poor guy) played for the Rice Owls. He showed up at the dorm on the first day as a normal, athletic guy. They wanted him to play line eventually. His first year, he was a slow linebacker, but was on a steady, weird high-calorie diet to get him to gain weight. It wasn't all muscle. By the middle of his sophomore year, he had gained about 60 pounds and continually referred to himself as a cow. So my question here is how we distinguish what we do with food products and specially designed shakes, pills, etc from P.E.D. Literally, some of the legal products (and some food regimens) are indeed performance enhancing drugs. How precisely do you draw the line, and why do you draw the line? Possible answers: (A) you draw the line at health implications. But that is absurd, since no NFL lineman is observing a healthy body plan. They are all shortening their lives by weighing 300+ lbs. (B) you draw the line when chemistry labs are involved. Well, that takes you all the way down to slaughtered cattle and fresh produce from the farm. All the supplements, all processed food, shakes, and even vitamins would be out. (C) you draw an arbitrary line that mixes culture and scientific facts. But why do that? PART II Other professions artificially enhance their performance all the time. I'll leave all the p*rn star jokes aside. Hollywood "professionals" are in a never-ending cycle of physical enhancement/modification that is completely unnatural. Truck drivers use stimulants regularly (or they did when I knew any of them). I know cab drivers often use stimulants, many of them not even legal. Architects, etc. Hell, I use caffeine and alcohol for my job all the time, and I don't mean that as a joke. Depending on the meetings or schmoozy functions I'm in (business dinners, breakfasts, whatever), I make conscious performance enhancing decisions. Possible answers: (A) Athletes are different. The game is sacred, and we want to compare this era to the previous eras. You can make this argument for PART I also. I don't get this. Athletes eat better, have more advanced workouts, are started at younger ages, have different rules, different numbers of players per position and team, etc. There are already thousands of tiny differences in eras. (B) Other professions limit drug use also. Kind of, I guess -- but most businesses do NOT care if you are enhancing your performance. It's just the opposite, in fact. Let athletes become 'roided up super freaks, if they assume the associated risks (as per a person who chooses to weigh 330 lbs, etc).
I have a family friend, Leonard Forey, that played 3 years at guard for the Browns in the 1970s. During that time, performance enhancing drugs were considered part of the game. If you played either line, linebacker, tight end, and possibly a few other positions. You would receive steroids as part of your training plan. He didn't stay in the NFL long and he never used steroids after he left. He has heart problems today that are linked directly to his supervised use of steroids for three years. Some of the players that he played with are in horrible health or have already died because of those steroids. Improper use of steroids is much worse for your health than being 300+ pounds (and relatively fit). Lots of big guys are perfectly healthy. Few regular steroid users are.
B-Bob, I wish I could think of something worthy to add. That was one of the best posts I've ever read here, even if I am convinced that you are a juiced up alien in disguise, a poser, pretending to be doing research on us humans. Dressed in a furry suit, as if that could fool a donut. Where do you draw the line? Should there be a line? What part does tradition play? And should it govern this issue when, as you pointed out, competitors have always sought that edge that would allow them to win, whether in sports, business, or academia? Does that make us hypocrites if we just don't like it that someone juiced themselves so they set a record? To win? To beat the other fellow? Are we all juicers? Trim Bush.
These arguments are solid on the professional level, but with it's endorsement, we would be forcing onto kids even more obscene amounts of pressure to not only perform, but to exceed and succeed beyond their natural physical limitations. While it's true you'd be hard pressed to find pure individuals at the top of the game, there are many below who aspire and are encouraged by professional atheletes' standards of excellence with the assumption of honest hard work. I'm not saying those who performance enhance illegally don't work hard, but it doesn't fit into the ideals of honor and gamesmanship that adults want to teach in their children with sports.
I agree 100%. Push humans genetics to the limit. It's unfortunate the steroid use in kids, but the teens injecting roids in high school generally aren't the ones that make any of themselves anyway.
Thanks, all three of you (edit: whoops, four of you now...). weslinder, that is pretty powerful stuff. I suppose you can draw a certain line in terms of magnitude of health impacts. As for 300+ pounds, I think the basic guidelines of obesity (which is simply weight per age and per height) would declare all NFL linemen obese, and I think the health risks of being obese, in any form or fashion, are pretty significant. But it's true that you couldn't have a stronger correlation than the one between steroids and later health problems. I have a good friend with rheumatism (sp), and he has to have regular steroid injections. The doctors know, and tell him, that they are electing for short term progress with some significant new risks down the line. And Invisible Fan, I am really sympathetic to the "message" part of the argument. What would be telling high school kids if we said "juice away," and what are we telling people in other professions? I guess I'd hope the message could eventually be: "your work is not worth messing up your health." PS -- I kind of like the Mormon take on caffeine and alcohol, as I understand it. Maybe it strikes some people as extreme, but it's pretty defensible. Some friends of mine take one month per year with no coffee or booze, and they talk about how amazing they feel in the interim. ... But then of course they return to the normal routine.
I personally draw the line at things you don't eat or drink If you are injecting yourself or taking pills, you are crossing the line imo
Interesting argument and B-Bob you raise a good point about where you draw the line in regard to what science can do to improve performance. A lot of people like to talk about the purity of sports and seem to think that the days of the ancient Olympics, Babe Ruth and Roger Maris yet those people would have taken performance enhancing drugs if they had existed. Considering that Babe Ruth already was chemically altering himself quite a bit. Its a tough question but I think Invisible Fan has answered the question already that it comes down to the message you are sending since steriods and hormone treatment are known to cause harm. That said so does playing sports as my achy shoulder and knees can attest to. I think we can distinguish between damage caused by directly engaged in the sport vs. something that we have done to enhance our ability. To that point I think steriods and crazy weight regimens should be banned.
The problem with that is would you consider someone suffering heat stroke in the course of a game and getting IV fluids to be crossing the line?
I think with any profession, the best way to deal with this would probably be the peers of said abusers. If someone is using drugs to enhance his performance at my workplace, I'm not going to be happy and I will make sure it gets pointed out because I have a family to support and I'm not interested in abusing some stimulant or drug to compete with him. The MLB Player's Union has dropped the ball big time on this. By not going after the abusers, it puts those players who don't use in a very bad situation. Blame can also be placed on the owners, but honestly how many of us have bosses who care only about the results? Exceelent post by the way.
Eh, you are taking one statement of his out of context. He prefaced it with "I personally draw the line at things you don't eat or drink," implying he wouldn't have problem with something that's edible or drinkable on a daily basis, in case the stuff has to be taken by non-regular means. IV fluids are essentially saline, which is totally safe. Why should he reject it if he needs it? Moreover, saving oneself in a life and death situation by accepting injection of fluid -- therapeutic or otherwise -- is a far cry from taking drugs/steroids for recreational and/or non-essential usage. I can't believe I have to explain all this.
You do know that pills are taken via the same piehole that allows eat and drink. So what about vitamins? You can also take steroid forms in a pill. The more and more I think of this, I am most sympathetic to the health concerns, and the message to youngsters. So I don't know exactly how to draw the line, but I think I am already becoming pro-line.
I think this is the answer. Why? Well, I don't have a very clear answer for that, and, I don't think it is as arbitrary a line as you make it sound...you do go on to add that it mixes cultural and scientific facts. What I'm saying in general, though, is that it's a case by case basis. In this particular case, there are a lot of issues why steroids and HGH and other similar performance enhancing drugs should be banned. The side effects of steroids, both short term and long term, are well documented, and not good. You make a good argument for a bunch of other practices / regime's that are analogous, though not entirely similar. Over-eating, protein shakes, etc. I think one can certainly argue that the side effects of roids are much more harmful than some of the other things you mentioned. heck, you could consider lasik surgery as something that we can do now that we couldn't do before that help athletes / people. Anyway, I think it should be case by case. In this case, steroids are bad. So bad, that it is not just that they are banned from professional sport...they are regulated in life in general. It's a Schedule III banned substance...without a prescription, you could be thrown in jail for a long time for having roids.
Personally, the only athletes I have a problem with using steroids are track and field athletes. the reason being is that track and field events are pure athletecism, running, jumping. that may sound silly but that's just me. I think there are so many other variables to success in other sports that sterois just don't matter that much.
if there are long term (or short term) health affects they should be banned. If taking vitamins makes you healthier but have no negative affects fine -- Steroids have long term negative affects (I don't think anyone really argues this) so should be banned. Having free use of steriods would create an environment where only sterioid users (and the rare natural freak of nature) could succeed. Good athletes, who could make it against normal competition would now be forced to use sterioids to compete. We would also lose the mystique of naturally great athletes abilities because those abilities would become more common.
Let's say that your assumption is completely true, that teens who break the rules to inject are lost causes. If we implicitly tear down the rule of performance enhancing, all teens will have to consider doping/drugging/etc as a viable option. With the successes of our generation's greatest hitter and greatest pitcher it almost becomes a no brainer not to enhance in some form. Professional sports holds what...1% of all sports players? All the remaining sports players will have doped for what? Short lived fame? A shot at chronic liver or heart problem without the millions their overzealous coaches promised? A lot of players are realistic of their physical shortcomings. They just want a free ride to college and a high level degree. We're almost telling them their natural hard work is not enough. And if they can cheat in sports, they can performance enhance in school as well.
have long term health problems associate with steroids been confirmed. the issue for me is that they are out there now. so just like with recreational drugs, there could be some benifit to allowing them under medical supervision
My friend with rheumatism (sp?) tries to get relief with dosages under some specific number per month. Apparently, all research shows harmful effects if you take over this X amount, but the same research can't find any effects if you take under X amount. In general, I think doctors will tell you it's better to avoid steroids in any amount, if possible, but that it's definitely worth the risk for some conditions, and even appears relatively safe under X amount. I still think, from what I've read, that obesity is even worse for a person, but that's just me. There's some published research claiming that a BMI (body mass index) of 40 or above reduces life expectancy 10 years. That's substantial. Morbid obesity is having a body weight of over 100 lbs for your height and age, or having a BMI over 40. e.g. BMI 40 comes from a lineman who is 335 and 6' 5" See calculator: http://www.asbs.org/html/bmi.html
Precision of language is very important when formulating laws. I understand what he was getting at in terms of banning anything outside of what would be considered nutrients but a policy based on banning things injected or taken in pill form would be very problematic.
I agree that steroids have negative affects and am support banning them for sports but if steroids and other performance enhancers were allowed I don't think that would wipe out the mystique of great athletes. Anyone who can make it to an elite level in sports already has great athletic ability but at that level minor edges make a huge difference. To get there and succeed you will still need great natural athletic ability. No amount of steriods will turn 5'-7" 160 lb me into an NFL caliber football player.
