How about some facts about steroid use? How about something based on information, rather than speculation? Dayn Perry takes a long look at the issue in an article originally published in January of 2003, in the aptly named magazine Reason.
Pumped-up hysteria: forget the hype. Steroids aren’t wrecking professional baseball.…. A more objective survey of steroids’ role in sports shows that their health risks, while real, have been grossly exaggerated; that the political response to steroids has been driven more by a moral panic over drug use than by the actual effects of the chemicals; and that the worst problems associated with steroids result from their black-market status rather than their inherent qualities. As for baseball’s competitive integrity, steroids pose no greater threat than did other historically contingent “enhancements,” ranging from batting helmets to the color line. It is possible, in fact, that many players who use steroids are not noticeably improving their performance as a result.
…. The media give the impression that there’s something inevitably Faustian about taking anabolics–that gains in the present will undoubtedly exact a price in the future. Christopher Caldwell, writing recently in The Wall Street journal, proclaimed, “Doctors are unanimous that [anabolic steroids] increase the risk of heart disease, and of liver, kidney, prostate and testicular cancer.”
This is false. “We know steroids can be used with a reasonable measure of safety,” says Charles Yesalis, a Penn State epidemiologist, steroid researcher for more than 25 years, and author of the 1998 book The Steroids Game.
…. One reason the health effects of steroids are so uncertain is a dearth of research. In the almost 65 years that anabolic steroids have been in our midst, there has not been a single epidemiological study of the effects of long-term use.
…. One of the chief drumbeaters for the steroids-don’t-work movement was Bob Goldman, author of the hysterical anti-steroids polemic Death in the Locker Room. Goldman, a former competitive power-lifter turned physician and sports medicine specialist, was an early, and shrill, critic of performance pharmacology. In his 1984 expose, Goldman attributes steroids’ tissue-building qualities almost entirely to the placebo effect. His agenda may have been morally sound, but his conclusions ran counter to the preponderance of scientific evidence at the time. Today, his claims are even less supportable.
…. Whatever his intentions at the time, Goldman’s views played well in the media, which cast the book as a sobering empirical assault on performance-enhancing drugs. Its warnings soon gained traction with lawmakers. Although the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 had already made it illegal to dispense steroids for nonmedical reasons, Congress, ostensibly out of concern over reports of increasing steroid use among high school athletes, revisited the matter in 1989.
…. Congressional hearings convened to determine whether steroids should become the first hormone placed on Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act, reserved for drugs with substantial abuse potential. Such legislation, if passed, would make possession of anabolic steroids without a prescription a federal offense punishable by up to a year in prison. Distributing steroids for use, already prohibited by the 1988 law, would be a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. What’s usually forgotten about these hearings, or perhaps simply ignored, is the zeal with which many regulatory agencies, research organizations, and professional groups objected to the proposed changes.
The American Medical Association (AMA), the FDA, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and even the Drug Enforcement Administration all opposed the reclassification. Particularly adamant was the AMA, whose spokespersons argued that steroid users did not exhibit the physical or psychological dependence necessary to justify a change in policy.
…. Can steroids be used for muscle building with a reasonable degree of safety? “The candid answer is yes, but with caveats,” says (Rick) Collins, the attorney who specializes in steroid law. “It would need to be under the strict direction of a physician and administered only after a thorough physical examination, and it would need to be taken at reasonable and responsible dosages.”
It’s a statement that even Goldman, once the bellwether scaremonger, says is “something I could probably agree with.”
…. Herbert Haupt, a private orthopedist and sports medicine specialist in St. Louis, is “absolutely, unequivocally, positively opposed” to steroid use as a training or cosmetic tool. But he concedes that properly supervised use of the drug for those purposes can be reasonably safe. “The adverse side effects of steroids typically subside upon cessation of use,” says Haupt, “and use over a short span, say a six-week duration, probably carries nominal risk.”
It is important to remember that we live in a society that encourages, that demands risks be taken if one wants to excel. Athletes in all sports have always taken risks to excel, always. Mickey Mantle played in an era where the abuse of amphetimines was legendary (not to mention his penchant for playing drunk or hung-over). What about Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry’s spitball? The Dodgers raised pitchers’ mounds during Koufax’s years of dominance? These are but a few of the ways baseball players have attempted to raise their levels of play by bending or breaking the rules.
Let me ask a question: Is it natural for a player to have Tommy John surgery? Reconstructive knee surgery? Where is the line drawn? Why is one way of changing your body OK, while another is “wrong”?
It’s sanctimonious to stand here and tell a person how they should or shouldn’t live their life, wouldn’t you say? If I decided to write a book glorifying criminal behavior, a book that a publisher says he will pay me millions of dollars to write, are you gonna tell me I can’t. It’s none of your business, and it’s none of mine if any player wants to do whatever he can to succeed.
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