should performance enhancing drugs be allowed in sports

[Universe Prince]

Questionable as in when does a pain-killer or muscle-relaxant or stimulant or anti-inflammatory become a mood elevator or a muscle growth factor, etc.?  Questionable as in where does an injury-related condition reach the point where the medications aren't needed in the same dosage as they were at the beginning?  Questionable as in raising questions.

But why is using drugs to enhance muscle growth or stamina questionable? As to your second question, seems to me that would be better answered by doctors rather than trying to shove the whole thing under the table.

[Universe Prince]

Kimba raised an excellent point. 100% healthy according to what standard?

[Michael Tee]

100% healthy as in not needing any drugs to perform.

<<But why is using drugs to enhance muscle growth or stamina questionable?>>

By "questionable" I meant it's hard to determine when the drug is meant to alleviate a temporary disability due to injury or illness and when it's meant to enhance performance, as for example, by enhancing muscle growth or stamina.    The point I was trying to make was that if you let some drugs in for some purposes, it's inevitably going to lead to arguments over whether or not they're necessary for the alleviation of temporary disability or not.

If you accept that the purpose of using the drugs was to enhance muscle growth or stamina, that's not questionable, it's objectionable.  If I watch a sporting event (which I admit is a very rare occurrence for me, probably less than once in two or three years will I watch any match from start to finish, usually the most I can take is about ten minutes three or four times a year) I really appreciate the natural skill and strength of the athletes; I just wouldn't feel the same admiration for a performance if I felt it was due to chemicals.  That's because I feel with the right kind of chemical cocktail in his blood, a really mediocre athlete could achieve levels of performance that would appear impressive to a spectator - - maybe the guy I'm watching wouldn't be so impressive if I knew I was watching the steroids performing, and not him. 

Maybe at some level the thrill of watching a sporting event is vicarious achievement - - I get to be, or 10% of my conscious being gets to be, that left fielder leaping up to make the catch before the ball sails over the wall, and some of the thrill of the accomplishment gets appropriated by me.  If I knew the guy was on coke or steroids, I'd probably be thinking, BFD, give me what he's on, and I'd jump up and catch it with my teeth.  So all the enjoyment of vicarious achievement is gone.

[kimba1]

the part that make this a grey area is some drugs simply has to be used for some folks and it really doesn`t mean cheating
ex. lance armstrong

[Universe Prince]

If you accept that the purpose of using the drugs was to enhance muscle growth or stamina, that's not questionable, it's objectionable.

That is the purpose of the use of some drugs.

If I watch a sporting event (which I admit is a very rare occurrence for me, probably less than once in two or three years will I watch any match from start to finish, usually the most I can take is about ten minutes three or four times a year) I really appreciate the natural skill and strength of the athletes; I just wouldn't feel the same admiration for a performance if I felt it was due to chemicals.  That's because I feel with the right kind of chemical cocktail in his blood, a really mediocre athlete could achieve levels of performance that would appear impressive to a spectator - - maybe the guy I'm watching wouldn't be so impressive if I knew I was watching the steroids performing, and not him.

At no point in professional sports are we seeing purely natural skill and talent. We see talent honed by training, by machine and these days possibly by the use of computer analysis. And strength is modified by work outs on machines, modified to be above what the players might naturally have even with regular exercise. And even without steroids there are diet programs and protein drinks, et cetera, that are used to modify weight and muscle mass. Other things, like hyperbaric chambers and medicines, are used to speed healing of the muscle strain and injuries that occur as a result of practicing and playing the game full time. So I guess I just don't see why using drugs is whole lot different than all that.

Maybe at some level the thrill of watching a sporting event is vicarious achievement - - I get to be, or 10% of my conscious being gets to be, that left fielder leaping up to make the catch before the ball sails over the wall, and some of the thrill of the accomplishment gets appropriated by me.  If I knew the guy was on coke or steroids, I'd probably be thinking, BFD, give me what he's on, and I'd jump up and catch it with my teeth.  So all the enjoyment of vicarious achievement is gone.

Give you what he's on, and put you through the same level of training and exercise and put on the same diet, and you could jump up and catch it. Sure. Drugs can help give a person an edge, but they don't give him talent or skill. There is no magic cocktail of drugs that makes a person a world-class athlete. Captain America and his super-soldier serum is a fantasy. Reality doesn't work that way.

[Michael Tee]

the part that make this a grey area is some drugs simply has to be used for some folks and it really doesn`t mean cheating
ex. lance armstrong
======================================
Sure it's cheating.  If Lance Armstrong can't perform at his exceptional level without the drugs, then he's cheating.  If he happens to be a sick man, he deserves all the credit in the world by pushing his body with all its limitations to whatever he's able to do - - but if he enters a competition enhanced by drugs, he's achieved a level that is beyond his natural capacity.  There's no shame in recognizing that an illness has slowed you down, but the end result is that you ARE slowed down, just as I myself am slowed down by natural lack of Lance's strength and endurance.

[Michael Tee]

<<At no point in professional sports are we seeing purely natural skill and talent. We see talent honed by training, by machine and these days possibly by the use of computer analysis. And strength is modified by work outs on machines, modified to be above what the players might naturally have even with regular exercise. And even without steroids there are diet programs and protein drinks, et cetera, that are used to modify weight and muscle mass. Other things, like hyperbaric chambers and medicines, are used to speed healing of the muscle strain and injuries that occur as a result of practicing and playing the game full time. So I guess I just don't see why using drugs is whole lot different than all that.>>

Those are good examples.  I feel instinctively that the diet and protein drink examples are going to be particularly hard to distinguish.  The other examples, I feel that they could probably be distinguished, and justified, but to tell you the truth, I don't have any immediate answer.  They're puzzling and they require some thought.  You really slowed me down.  I still feel I'm right but now I'm not so sure.  Gotta think about it some more.

[kimba1]

thats true
I use goo when I run and honestly i would never be able to run as well without it.
I hit my zone much faster and sustain it longer
but i use it sparingly since i grow immune to it extremely fast

[yellow_crane]

Geez, they are ENTERTAINERS, it's not like they were doing anything of importance. They are grown men playing with balls, who, lamentably, are role models with a lot of impressionable children.

Sports are suppose to teach fair play. Not pharmacology.

The archtypical connections between sports and the business world are strong, and are still operating with a hum.

Not a cog has been skipped.

Athletes on steroids mirrors exactly the comportment of that which the corporate world has become.

[Plane]

Unlimited class baseball


Now stepping up to the plate is Herve Vasquez Jumo the rookie , my what a specimen , his arms and legs are surgically modified for improved speed and his eyes are augmented with high speed cameras that feed his on boardcomputer precise information on ball speed vector and rotation. At three hundred pounds Herve is one of the smallest men on his team , but on deck is the one man who is smaller ,"Shoeless" Michael Jorenson is one of the most dedicated base runners in the world , his genetically engineered body features hollow bones and oversize lungs from his avian ancestors and his legs and feet are feline in form based on the limbs of a cheetah , interestingly his glow in the dark skin harks back to the jellyfish that provided the gene for biolumenence , but in a serendipitous discovery made in the formulation of Shoeless MJ's DNA Jellyfish hormones actually improve his eye claw coordination.

Starting pitcher for the Pirates today is T3F3 the fastest fast ball pitcher in history , his right arm is an howitzer and his left is a recoilless rifle. His famous change up pitch is a catapult on his rear arm that has a special spinning basket on the launcher arm to achieve the steepest curve ball possible. A little known fact is that "TF cube" was origionally a human being but over time as his worn out parts were replaced he became more and more a devoted pitching specialist , he has had no original parts since his 2045 overhall.


And here's the pitch , swing and it is a hit, OH OH ,.... looks as if the ball has fallen apart , another single.

[Universe Prince]

[...] and his eyes are augmented with high speed cameras [...]

As I understand it, Tiger Woods has had LASIK eye surgery to give him better than 20/20 vision. Is that cheating?

[...] his genetically engineered body [...]

Future gene therapy techniques might allow for essentially drugless muscle enhancement and possibly increase of stamina. Would that be the same as using drugs?

[Michael Tee]

It's starting to break down at least in my own perception into things that are fairly common in the general society, things that non-athletes might do for non-athletic reasons, like LASIK eye surgery, and things that are exclusively or mainly related to athletic performance, like plane's post on the robo-jock of the future. 

Same with drugs - - everyone takes an aspirin now and then, mostly for non-athletic purposes.  A player who's starting a game with a bad headache might want to pop a few ASA, Tylenols or Advils, and since the majority of the population use the stuff anyway, I see no reason to ban them.

Steroids, OTOH, are used primarily by athletes on a regular basis for muscle enlargement and ought to be permanently banned from sports.  You can't find too many people in the non-athletic world using them regularly or at all.  Maybe for relief of strains and sprains, although I understand that non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDS) have been replacing them.

Steroids also raise another issue and that is permanent harm.  All drugs which confer performance benefits at the expense of bodily health ought to be banned permanently from athletics, although they might have a kind of "lesser-of-two-evils" place in the world of clinical medicine.  The issue is one of public morality, allowing public spectacles where permanent harm is being inflicted on the participants for no reason other than the entertainment or gratification of the spectators.

[Amianthus]

Steroids, OTOH, are used primarily by athletes on a regular basis for muscle enlargement and ought to be permanently banned from sports.  You can't find too many people in the non-athletic world using them regularly or at all.

Steroids are used in a variety of treatments, joint pain or inflammation (arthritis), temporal arteritis, dermatitis, allergic reactions, asthma, hepatitis, systemic lupus erythematosus, inflammatory bowel disease (ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease), sarcoidosis and for glucocorticoid replacement in Addison's disease or other forms of adrenal insufficiency. Topical formulations for treatment of skin, eye diseases (uveitis) or inflammatory bowel disease are available.

My wife has several steroid treatments that she keeps around the house, because she has some severe allergies. I've been prescribed a steroid when I had a severe reaction to poison ivy. My daughter was prescribed a steroid for severe acne when she was in high school.

Care to re-examine your blanket statement?

[Michael Tee]

<<Care to re-examine your blanket statement?>>

It was not a blanket statement since I allowed for the possibility of steroidal treatment of strains and sprains.  It wasn't my purpose to give an exhaustive compendium of all the medical uses of steroids, only to indicate, as I did, that there was some legitimate medical use of them.  I also referred to the development of NSAIDS, which were developed to provide the medical benefits of steroidal anti-inflammatories without the dangers of steroid use. 

Topical steroids, which you also mentioned, have not as far as I am aware been identified with any risk of long-term harm and really don't fall within the topic we're discussing.  They're usually not performance-enhancing although it's probably possible to think of some relatively infrequent situation where they might be. 

[Amianthus]

It was not a blanket statement

Well, "You can't find too many people in the non-athletic world using them regularly or at all," sounds like a blanket statement to me.

Every member of my family has used them (and the one for acne was not topical, but oral), and a lot of people I've talked to have used them at one time or another, for a variety of conditions.

Or is America just chock full of people who are members of the "athletic world"?