should performance enhancing drugs be allowed in sports

[Michael Tee]

<<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.>>

Lesson time, I see.

Blanket statement:  "You can't find anyone in the non-athletic world using them regularly or at all."

Not a blanket statement:  "You can't find too many people in the non-athletic world using them regularly or at all,"

No, no, don't thank me, it's all just part of the service.
-------------------------

Your family experience of steroid use is very different from mine.  Apart from topical hydrocortisone very occasionally over the years, nobody in my family, as far as I know, has ever used steroids.  When I fucked up my back several years ago, I was on two months of NSAID, Celebrex, which has its own problems, but they weren't known then.  But I'm not gonna say which family experience is the more typical.

[Amianthus]

Your family experience of steroid use is very different from mine.  Apart from topical hydrocortisone very occasionally over the years, nobody in my family, as far as I know, has ever used steroids.

Then health care in Canada must be behind the curve - steroids are being used for a large number of treatments in the US, UK, and Germany, and the number is increasing.

[Michael Tee]

<<Then health care in Canada must be behind the curve - steroids are being used for a large number of treatments in the US, UK, and Germany, and the number is increasing.>>

And that's a good thing, right?

Let me ask you this: if steroids are so great, why would the pharmaceutical industry bother to develop NSAIDS?  Is it all a con, a fraud?

[Amianthus]

Then health care in Canada must be behind the curve - steroids are being used for a large number of treatments in the US, UK, and Germany, and the number is increasing.

One would also wonder why Manitoba changed the payment guidelines for prescription corticosteroids to reduce their use about 10 years ago.

[Amianthus]

And that's a good thing, right?

Yes; a number of studies has shown that corticosteroid use among asthma patients reduces (significantly) the number of ER visits for severe asthma symptoms, and that is only one of their major prescription uses.

Let me ask you this: if steroids are so great, why would the pharmaceutical industry bother to develop NSAIDS?  Is it all a con, a fraud?

No; having a greater variety of treatment options allows doctors to better customize a treatment plan for each patient. NSAIDS are known to have some bad side effects as well - no drug is perfect.

And, BTW, NSAIDS have been around a long time. Aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxin are all NSAIDS.

[Universe Prince]

The Washington Post has a nice opinion piece from Reason editors Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch. An excerpt:

Yet members of Congress, already among the most out-of-touch people in American society, find themselves sputtering with frustration that baseball fans don't share their pain. Maybe that's in part because Americans themselves are discovering better living through chemistry, whether for anxiety, sweaty palms or restless legs syndrome. When 84-year-old retired senator Bob Dole, born in a year during which Babe Ruth hit 41 homers, is better known as a shill for erectile-dysfunction drugs than as a statesman, you've probably lost middle America on the notion that all drugs are automatically bad. The uncomfortable truth is that illegally obtained muscle-rebuilding treatments exist on a continuum that includes laser eye surgery, Vitamin B-12 shots and Tommy John surgery (a procedure that grafts ligaments from knees or elsewhere onto a wrecked elbow, frequently giving pitchers more velocity than they had before). Sorting out the morality and legality of self-improvement has more to do with aesthetic revulsion and moral panic than with considered science or logic.

Whole thing at the other end of this link.

The basic gist of the piece is that steroid or other performance enhancing drug use in sports is none of Congress's damn business. And I agree. Even if one doesn't like drug use in sports, I don't see how it could be something about which the U.S. Congress needs to be having hearings. Surely there are more important and pressing issues for Congress and particularly for the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

[Universe Prince]

And then there is http://steroids-and-baseball.com/, which is an extensive look at performance enhancing drugs, particularly in relation to baseball. Lots of interesting stuff there. On one page of the site, Eric Walker, the man who put the site together, summarizes an American Medical Association Journal of Ethics article by Dr. Norman Fost thusly:

Steroids result in unfair competition: 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. Steroids are coercive--if your opponents use them, you have to: "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. Steroids cause life-threatening harms: 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. Steroids are unnatural, and undermine the essence of sport: Sports are games, invented by humans, with arbitrary rules that are constantly changing. Since the beginning of recorded history, athletes have used an infinite variety of unnatural assists to enhance performance, from springy shoes to greasy swimsuits, bamboo poles to better bats, and endless chemicals from carb-filled diets to Gatorade drinks. Should vaulting poles be banned because they undermine the essence of the high jump? Why is there not a ban on training in high altitudes, or sleeping in a hypobaric chamber? Steroids undermine the integrity of records: we on [http://steroids-and-baseball.com/] have dealt elsewhere with that one at much more length than Dr. Fost does. Fans will lose interest: it isn't clear what the moral issue is here, other than the likely dishonesty of the claim. Chicks dig the long ball, and the "steroid era" has been accompanied by record-setting attendance. It's bad role modeling for kids: Baseball is presided over by the former owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, who play in Miller Park, where beer is consumed in prodigious quantities. Professional hockey promotes illegal violence and infliction of injury, and it is taught in the junior leagues; professional football glorifies hurting your opponents. But steroids are a moral disaster?

I don't know that I'd say pro football glorifies hurting one's opponents. No one dances when a player is truly injured. But it could be said to glorify physical conflict.

Anyway, the site has a lot of good information. If you're interested in making an informed opinion, check it out. It might not change your mind, but you'll probably know more about the subject than you did before.

[hnumpah]

No one dances when a player is truly injured.

I did when Lawrence Taylor broke Joey Theismann's leg. Wore my tape out years ago, but it's on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGbmctX9WBQ

[Universe Prince]

I did when Lawrence Taylor broke Joey Theismann's leg. Wore my tape out years ago, but it's on YouTube:

I would not celebrate that. For one thing, it sent Theismann into sports broadcasting. How he maintained a career in that I will never know. Seriously though, other than the guy in charge of replay, I don't recall anyone rejoicing about what happened to Theismann. Even Taylor was seriously freaked out by what had happened.

[hnumpah]

Seriously though, other than the guy in charge of replay, I don't recall anyone rejoicing about what happened to Theismann.

Well, now you know two.