Steroid Use In Professional Sports

Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports

Athletes for centuries have been using enhancement drugs to achieve greatness(Burdick,2003) A Sixty Minutes interview of Jose Conseco conducted by Mike Wallace clearly shows how widespread and popular these drugs are. Athletes who are on them deny there use fully and denounce the drugs(Newsday.com,2005) Performance enhancing drugs are necessary in order to make the playing field fair and even.

In order to to understand why enhancement drugs are used, the public needs to know the different types, and what they do to the human body. There are three main types of enhancement drugs used by athletes. Anabolic, androgenic, and growth hormones are the categories in which they are grouped. Anabolic refers to muscle building. Androgenic refers to increased masculine characteristics.(2005,march NIDA Infofacts). Some widely used anabolic drugs are Testosterone, Dianobol, and Deca Durabolin. Widely used androgenic drugs are Equipoise, Masteron, and Trenbolone. Growth hormones are different in nature from anabolic-androgenic steroids. Human Growth hormone is an endocrine hormone that is produced by the anterior portion of the pituitary gland. Human growth hormone is made up of 191 amino acids. Virtually every system in the human body is in some way dependent on HGH for proper functioning.(2000-2001Real-Testosterone.net) Anabolic agents increase protein synthesis and increase red blood cell count thus making the muscle swell and increase in strength and size. Androgenic agents increase endurance and energy levels to produce better results on the field.

Enhancement drugs are widely used among athletes at all levels of play. Amateur athletes use them to try to achieve the same prestige as the professionals they look up to. Competition starts at a very young age and lasts throughout life. Winning makes the athletes become

recognized by the community, the state, and sometimes even the nation. There is very little testing at the high school levels of play. Athletes at the high school level watch sports on television and admire the best athletes.

Professional athletes have everything to lose if they are not the best at what they do. There will always be another spectacular star just waiting to step into his shoes as soon as they show signs of failing. If there was a way to slow the aging process and increase ones ability, then why is that considered cheating? At the professional levels of play there is no room for error. When an athlete starts to show signs of slowing down or losing that edge that pushed him to the level he is at, then he will be replaced, no questions asked.

In today's world these enhancement drugs are becoming necessary to help athletes compete and win. Let us face it, winning makes the athlete's more money. That is the bottom line. The more money you can have places you at the top of society and people do not want to be on the bottom.

This is not a new phenomenon. Taking performance enhancing substances has a long and rich history. As far back as the 776 BCE Olympics, athletes were using cola plants, hashish, cactus-based stimulants and even eating sheep's testicles in an effort to boost performance. In the late 1800s, athletes were using ether-coated sugar cubes and wine laced with cocaine to offset pain and fatigue. In the 1904 Olympics, Thomas Hicks, an American runner, had to be revived by several physicians after he won a race while on cocaine and strychnine. And he still got his gold medal. (Burdick,2003)

If using performance enhancing drugs is cheating, then we could say the same thing about a lot of different things used by athletes as well. There are more performance enhancing tools used everyday to improve the athlete and they are not considered cheating. If the andro that helped McGwire hit 70 home runs in 1998 was an unnatural, game-altering enhancement, what about his high-powered contact lenses? "Natural" vision is 20/20. McGwire's custom-designed lenses improved his vision to 20/10, which means he could see at a distance of 20 feet what a person with normal, healthy vision could see at 10 feet. Think what a difference that makes in hitting a fastball. Imagine how many games those lenses altered.(Saletan,2005) Scores of professional athletes have had a procedure called Lasik. Does the upgrade help? Looks that way. Maddux, a pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, was 0-3 in six starts before his surgery. He won nine of his next 10 games. Kite had LASIK in 1998 and won six events on the Champions Tour over the next five years. Three months after his surgery, Irwin captured the Senior PGA Tour Nationwide Championship. (Saletan,2005) It's the same regarding Roger Clemons, Barry Bonds, or Rafael Palmiero. These players won't say they took performance enhancing drugs. In fact, they won't cite any injuries or affects these drugs may have induced during their careers. Every year a new bat is developed to increase the distance a ball can be hit. Nike comes out with a new type of shoe which claims to increase your vertical jump. It seems as if these are enhancing an athletes abilities also. Supplements are intended to help out an athlete in areas where there may exist a deficiency. This could be a lack of protein, creatine, or even testosterone. And because of this any substance taken to correct a deficiency could be considered a supplement to the athletes diet even the multi-vitamin he takes at breakfast.(Burdick,2006)