http://steroids-and-baseball.com/

To quote:

Good ethics starts with good facts, and the claims on this point are, to understate the case, seriously overstated. In any event, we regularly allow adults to do things that are far riskier than even the most extreme claims about steroids: the claim by the leader of the National Hockey League that they test for steroids because they’re concerned about the health and safety of the players is, well, hysterical.
— Dr. Fost

The rationale of banning drugs to protect the health of athletes assumes that performance-enhancing drugs are harmful under all conditions. In the case of anabolic steroids, this assumption does not appear to hold.
— Dr. Yesalis

More

“Coercion” is the use or threat of force, or the threat of depriving someone of something he or she is entitled to. No one in American sports is forced to use steroids. Nor is anyone entitled to be a professional athlete. It’s an opportunity, often involving high risks, which everyone is free to walk away from.
— Dr. Fost

[T]he final decision to use steroids or to participate in the sport still lies with the athlete. Heavy weight training, a basic requirement of most strength and power sports, is itself a health risk that athletes are pressured to endure. Furthermore, this ethical dilemma is not peculiar to sport. If a scientist wishes to do laboratory research on virulent strains of viruses or bacteria, he or she must accept certain risks; the only way to completely avoid such risks is to not participate in this type of research.
— Dr. Yesalis

And still more:

There is no coherent argument to support the view that enhancing performance is unfair; if it were, we would ban coaching and training. Competition can be unfair if there is unequal access to particular enhancements, but equal access can be achieved more predictably by deregulation than by prohibition.
— Dr. Fost

Moreover, is there a difference between athletes’ using anabolic steroids and their using vitamins, aspirin, amino acids, or corticosteroids, all of which are allowed by most sport governing bodies? The use of fiberglass poles, synthetic track surfaces, lifting suits, and high-tech tennis rackets raises similar questions of unnaturalness.
— Dr. Yesalis

And so who are Drs. Fost and Yesalis?

*

Dr. Norman Fost : Dr. Fost was awarded an A.B. by Princeton, an M.D. by Yale, and an M.P.H. (Master of Public Health) by Harvard; he is not only a practicing pediatrician (and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin) but also a widely recognized expert in medical ethics, being Director of the Program in Medical Ethics at the University of Wisconsin (which he founded) and Chairman of the Hospital Ethics Committee; he heads the Child Protection Team, and is a former Chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Bioethics. Last year he received the William G. Bartholome Award for Excellence in Ethics from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
*

Dr. Charles E. Yesalis: Dr. Yesalis was awarded a B.S. and M.P.H. by the University of Michigan, and his doctoral degree by the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. He has been a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, a member of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health at the University of Iowa, and is currently Professor of Health Policy and Administration and Exercise and Sport Science at The Pennsylvania State University. He has testified six times before the U.S. Congress and acted as a consultant for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. Yesalis is the author and editor of four books on drugs in sport: The Steroids Game, Anabolic Steroids in Sport and Exercise, and Performance-Enhancing Substances in Sport and Exercise.

And yet each day and night, the George Mitchells, and the jackals in MSM spew their ignorance at unfathomable costs to reputations, livelihoods of some of our best athletes and the besmirching and trashing of the National Pastime by the very same individuals who purport to be its guardians. Welcome to Fascism.

Methinks Roger doth protest too much, but then again, anything that anyone says to stay out of jail seems slightly suspect to me.

I think Clemens sees Mcgwire and Bonds blackballed, and wants it on record that a case was thrown out (or he won). I really don’t think there’s anyway in hell that anyone can prove anything “beyond a reasonable doubt” with any of them EITHER WAY – so the column is exactly right, it’s all appearances, acting indignant and wielding lawyers looks like… something.

I would just like to see some “paragon of virtue” such as Cal Ripken get nailed unquestionably, the very same day that he saves 12 children from a burning building, thus earning further eternal sainthood and becoming untouchable. Then we can all go home and watch the damn game.

http://tinyurl.com/346l5s

Clemens told “60 Minutes” that McNamee never injected him with steroids, but rather with vitamin B-12 and lidocaine, the latter an anesthetic which Clemens claimed was “for my joints.”

Q: What is lidocaine, and how does it work?
Dretchen It’s a member of a class of compounds that work as local anesthetics, which means it’s injected close to where there’s a nerve area to decrease sensation and pain by deadening the nerve fibers.

Dombrowski: We’ve all had experiences with it. We’ve gone to the dentist and had a tooth numbed up, or a dermatologist to get a wart or mole removed. They inject it under the skin to make it numb.

Q: So would it make sense for a pitcher to inject lidocaine?
Dr. Dombrowski: If it’s your pitching arm, I could see injecting the shoulder to loosen up, throw some better heat. That’s not unreasonable.
Lidocaine would not do anything about joint inflammation.

Q: Can you get pain relief in your joints by injecting lidocaine into your, well, buttocks?
Dr. Dombrowski: No. Never. Unless Clemens was limited by hip pain or whatever in his buttocks, then no, that’s not what you do. You use big deep muscles for injecting steroids. But you would never treat shoulder or elbow pain in that way. If what he was injected with was truly lidocaine, his butt cheek would be numb. And that’s it.
Dr. Dretchen: Just a blind injection into the gluteus area, that would be a strange usage of the drug. When you go to the dentist, would you get an injection into your arm?

Can anything be done to stop these “Playback” posts from infecting your blog?

he is a public figure, and he has to prove that macnamee not only lied but had malice and forethought….almost impossible to prove

and john, i fuckin hate new york