It seems not everyone thinks that the use of performance enhancing drugs should be illegal. Just recently, the law/bioethics law professor, Max Mehlman, from Case Western Reserve University put the question out there “What’s wrong with letting athletes use performance-enhancing drugs?”
He feels that the legalization of performance enhancing drugs would make things safer since there would always be a doctor overseeing the drug regimen the athletes were using. What many don’t realize is that the list of banned substances is made up of more than steroids. Did you know that caffeine, which is a stimulant, is on that list? In fact, Mehlman says that if you drank a 16-ounce Starbucks coffee and then drank two Mountain Dews you would have crossed over to the prohibited list. Recently HGH or human growth hormone has been added to that list, yet it is actually not used for performance enhancement but rather to help heal injuries faster.
The Major League Baseball investigators have been busy recently – connecting around 20 players to a Biogenesis of America a clinic in Miami area, which is at the center of an ongoing PED scandal. Ryan Braun and Alex Rodiriguez are under scrutiny. Lance Armstrong has gone off the rails and lost all credibility for everything he has accomplished because he admitted to using endurance drugs. Josh Gordon, a wide receiver was felled for the first two games of the season for using codeine-laced cough syrup.
There may not be anything ethically wrong or fundamentally wrong with using performance enhancing drugs, but currently steroids are illegal in the USA unless you have a doctor’s prescription. If a substance is listed as against the rules, then using it is equivalent to cheating. The thing is that sports can make up any rules they want and they do.
While the sports boards and the government would like us all to see steroids in a negative light, the truth is that they help athletes develop excellent physiques and they can prevent muscle tears from happening and prevent the shredding of the muscle sheath.
HGH is also considered a performance enhancing drug and it certainly has been shown to enhance performance, but it is also used in recovery from injury. Let’s look at some of the science.
Three years ago, researchers at Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, conducted a study on 103 recreational athletes between the ages of 18 to 40 that concluded that HGH does provide a boost of energy in sprinting events such as swimming or running. At random, athletes took either HGH, a placebo, HGH with testosterone (an anabolic steroid) or testosterone alone.
The study indicated that HGH users saw a 4% to 5% increase in speed on a bicycle, while testosterone users had an 8% increase. The study, which was funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency, also concluded that in a 10-second sprint over 100 meters, using HGH leads to a 0.4 of a second improvement. The researchers in the study also said HGH did not increase power, strength or endurance.
Researchers found that HGH led to reduced fat mass and more lean body mass, though it also can trigger swelling and joint pain.
“We used lower doses of growth hormone than athletes are reported to use, and for a shorter time,” Professor Ken Ho, head of pituitary research at Garvan, said in the study. “We can speculate, therefore, that the drug’s effects on performance might be greater than shown in this study, and its side effects might be more serious.
“In conclusion, growth hormone increases athletic sprinting when given alone or in combination with testosterone. This is the first demonstration of improvement in a selective aspect of physical performance with growth hormone. We believe that this effect may bring a competitive advantage to athletes engaging in sprint events.”
There are a number of athletes that turn to HGH for recovery from injury in hopes of repairing bone and cartilage. Even though in these instances you are not using the HGH to improve performance, it is still considered illegal in pro sports.
The HGH test is progressing. In season, random HGH blood testing is not done on players in Major League Baseball. The NBA and the players union are close to an agreement relating to HGH testing. Last year the London Olympics implemented an HGH detection test. While the NFL has banned HGH at this time they do not have a test in place, but there is an agreement in place to change that by the end of this year.
Synthetic HGH injections require a prescription but most teams have a doctor on staff or know a doctor that will prescribe and administer HGH. The current bans stem from historical precedence and concerns about the effects on health that are not always based on science. Mehlman says, “There is also a belief that performance enhancing drugs damage the spirit of the game.”
“I’m not sure what that means,” he said. “If you look at competition historically, athletes have always tried everything they possibly can to get better than their competitors.”
Historically, competing athletes have always looked to try anything they can to be better than their competitors. And performance enhancing drugs really weren’t a concern until 1968 when President Nixon implemented the war on drugs. Then according to Mehlman, there was outrage over East German athletes who were using PED, even though most of these athletes had no idea they had been doped.
Mehlman went on to say, “I submitted a paper to a journal about cognition-enhancing drugs, such as soldiers take a drug to stay awake for 48 hours in combat,” said Mehlman. “In it, I quoted the National Institute on Drug Abuse on liver concerns and bone density effects. When a reviewer asked for support for those statements, I had my research assistant, a medical student, research it. She found nothing. Oral steroids, the corticosteroids, are metabolized in a totally different way than injectable steroids. With injectable ones, your voice will deepen and there will be other effects.”
Should performance enhancing drugs be used – it’s likely going to be a subject of great debate for years to come, just as it is now. One thing is for certain, many would agree that many feel that HGH should not be classified as a performance enhancing drug.
The fact that someone would use a performance enhancing drug like human growth hormone secretly against opponents that are clean is not fair. Those who are cheating should be banned from professional competitions period.
Just an idea maybe we should create special professional leagues where athletes could use performance enhancing drugs. The level of performance is bound to improve a win win for the fans.
That would be cool maybe we would end up with the 100 meter being run at less than 8 seconds. the current world record is around 9.58 seconds.
For me that’s a big NO! For what these people are getting paid and the prices I am paying to see them play a game, yes only a game, they can do it the old fashioned way and work out harder and more often than the other teams.
I think they should be legalized in sports. That would make a much better and more entertaining game to watch as I have seen many boring basketball, baseball and hockey games in my day.
This is a question that shouldn’t even be asked. Is it okay to cheat on an exam? Especially when that exam can get you a better education, a scholarship or even a better job? The answer is no and so is the answer to all of these professional athletes who think it’s okay.
I think sports should be unregulated only because the technology to enable athletes to enhance their performance is constantly advancing. For a year or so it is ahead of the testing, so the times and awards athletes received before their cheating could be detected were unwarranted. Better to say do all you can to win and level the playing field completely.
I don’t watch professional sports because of things like this. I prefer college sport because they aren’t getting a big paycheck to play a game, they are working hard to have a chance at that paycheck and that’s what makes college sports so much better than pro.