What's wrong with steroids?
- Thread starter Syzygys
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Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
If some atheletes take drugs that damage their bodies but do increase their performance it puts other atheletes at a disadvantage. To ban them is to protect atheletes from ALL sliding into their use. Pretty soon the vast majority of professional atheletes would use them. They do enhance performance and they do damage bodies (and relationships and mental health) and shorten life spans.
It is not simply an individual choice. If one athelete wants to take them and be fast, for example, fine. But if it means he will get a job or a position on a team or win prestigious amateur events he is hurting, in a broad sense, other atheletes.
Let's cut the bullshit 'what about the kids who look up to these athletes'. the first foul thing about steroids for most is that it's cheating. the kids thing is a cheap moral argument. true, if athletes don't want to be role models, they don't have to be (a great start to this is to turn down the multi-million $ nike endorsement deal that puts your face everywhere). but fans don't loathe barry bonds because some high school star will decide to bulk up too. players from other teams don't loathe barry bonds for that reason. the media doesn't loathe barry bonds for that reason.
last, but not least, if your kid is stupid enough to use steroids because barry bonds is using them and/or you are stupid enough to blame your kid's steroid use on barry bonds (or whatever athlete), then you are stupid enough to blame an athlete for just about anything. after all, since when does anyone blame celebrities or rock stars for teenage drug abuse or drinking?
the argument is just lame. take some responsibility, and stop pointing to the kids as any reason WHATSOEVER for a professional athlete to be banned from steroids. If a kid is smart enough to procure steroids, i'm damn sure the kid can make the effort to find out what risks there are. and god knows we've heard enough about steroids been bad from the benoit and the bonds story. i'm not saying athletes shouldn't be banned from steroids, but i'm just criticizing what is clearly a very lazy moral argument.
last, but not least, if your kid is stupid enough to use steroids because barry bonds is using them and/or you are stupid enough to blame your kid's steroid use on barry bonds (or whatever athlete), then you are stupid enough to blame an athlete for just about anything. after all, since when does anyone blame celebrities or rock stars for teenage drug abuse or drinking?
the argument is just lame. take some responsibility, and stop pointing to the kids as any reason WHATSOEVER for a professional athlete to be banned from steroids. If a kid is smart enough to procure steroids, i'm damn sure the kid can make the effort to find out what risks there are. and god knows we've heard enough about steroids been bad from the benoit and the bonds story. i'm not saying athletes shouldn't be banned from steroids, but i'm just criticizing what is clearly a very lazy moral argument.
Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
But if the rules allowed athletes to take steroids, then it wouldn't be cheating to do so. The problem is that that rule change would likely make steroid use a de facto requirement to play professionally.
On the kids front, bad news for people, but high school athletes already use steroids often enough. It gets you noticed as a player and can get you scholarships or even attention from scouts. I'd be surprised if, amongst those kids who are seriously eyeing a potential professional career (which is likly far more kids than could ever possibly actually have such a career), they weren't at least extremely tempted to use them. Assuming more kids are eyeing professional sports than are going to get in, the steroid users likely have a disproportionately better chance.
That's not Barry Bond's fault personally, but by heaping accolades on his drug-induced accomplishments you do: (i) reinforce (or perhaps even increase) the perceived benefots of being a professional athlete, thus encouraging more children to desire that lifestyle and (ii) suggest that the drug use isn't all that bad. (After all, if it were really bad the accolades at all? He should just be fired.)
The counter to that, until there is proof enough to take Bonds's livelihood away from him, is the condemnation some are heaping on him and on steroid use in general. If it were just Bonds we were concerned about, I wouldn't care much. The problem is that his drug use seems likely to reinforce the use of steroids amongst others, including children hoping to become professional athletes.
It's not that kids might be "stupid enough to use steroids because barry bonds is using them" it's that such a decision by kids is perfectly rational and understandable if those kids want to be professional athletes (and, unless things have changed since I was a child, that's a sizable number). The more rewards Bonds and others get out of their drug use, the more rational the decision to use them becomes.
You're missing the crucial point. The only time we find out about an athlete's use of performance enhancing drugs is when we find out about it in a NEGATIVE light. There are no glorifications or celebrations of steroid use in cycling, wrestling, or baseball. When it is publicized, it is described as something shameful. Therefore if a kid finds out that Barry Bonds hit 700,000 home runs in a season by using steroids, then the kid by all means knows TOO that steroids are not an elixir, that steroids are frowned upon by society and also by other baseball players, and that steroids are dangerous. If the kid chooses to ignore that (for whatever reason), the athlete cannot be blamed. We cannot say that Barry Bonds (or anyone else) is the reason that the kid took steroids because THERE IS NO CAUSAL LINK - in other words, all we find is that the kid used Barry Bonds as a rationalization or justification for improving his/her lot but, certainly, Barry Bonds can't be blamed because someone used his success as a rationalization. That doesn't make sense. It may be true that that's the way kids think and that they can't be helped thinking that way but all the same but Barry Bonds is not the one to blame. I'd imagine it's not totally easy for a kid to get steroids and I'd imagine that if the kid was determined to get steroid, the kid is smart enough to know about steroids. I can't see how you can know ONLY the good side of steroids if you heard anything about Barry Bonds and the steroids saga. The only conclusion must be that you KNOW what the risks are but you think that Barry Bonds doesn't suffer any or that you are invincible or that the benefits outway the risks and so you take the risk. But again, Barry Bonds is not to blame because of a foolish decision. If you blamed Barry Bonds in this case, then you have to realize that we could blame public figures any time our kids make foolish decisions.
I can just imagine the shooter of those Newark kids blaming his actions on the glorification of violence in rap videos. How silly. There are many more kids who watch rap videos and don't go around shooting people execution style. People are usually held accountable for the decisions they make, especially when the risks involved are so significant that it would take perfect ignorance and stupidity not to know them AT ALL.
I can just imagine the shooter of those Newark kids blaming his actions on the glorification of violence in rap videos. How silly. There are many more kids who watch rap videos and don't go around shooting people execution style. People are usually held accountable for the decisions they make, especially when the risks involved are so significant that it would take perfect ignorance and stupidity not to know them AT ALL.
Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
Perhaps, though the way I see it, we all *know* that Bonds juices. Yet his accomplishments are being celebrated anyway. Granted there is some condemnation in the crowd, but the major league baseball is basically winking and nodding at the guy by pretending that his accomplishment isn't drug enhanced.
How negatively are we treating it? Let's measure that in terms of the millions of dollars Bonds will be paid this year. Add to that, it's only negative at all *if* you get caught. Bonds's example suggests to me that the MLB doesn't want to know the truth, and it will bury its head in the sand as long as it can. How many people in the MLB (or other professional sports) aren't being hounded, but really are juicing?
I played college football, and I could count on fingers and toes the number of players who weren't using steroids (maybe it was up to 30'ish, I suppose, out of about 120-130). Why? They wanted to go pro, and the key to achieving that dream is getting noticed. If your competition for a pro slot juices, and you don't, even if the stuff only brings him up to your level, you may not stand out enough. If the guy is just a little bit less talented than you, then the roids will throw him into a whole new level, above you and into a pro position before you.
It's the stupid kids who don't use steroids (or it's the kids who don't really want a professional career).
Grantywanty
Registered Senior Member
Most kids are not assuming they will have a professional career in which they will be unfairly competing at the cost of their own health. They want to look strong and get bigger stronger muscles faster without working as hard to get them. This is literally the case. That is what they want. They learn it in part from its effectiveness on professional atheletes though of course it is not limited to this.
Is it Barry Bonds responsibility? Nah. Does it make him partly a jerk if he took them, yeah. He treated himself poorly. He also makes his living as an idol as a person in the eyes of children and adults. He took a risk that with those eyes on him he would come out looking like shit and he did. He has nothing to complain about about the publicity now if he did use them.
He has influenced people to make bad decisions. More will do so because of him. Because of the asterisk and the controversy, perhaps less pros will use steriods. This means the rules and shaming is a good thing. I doubt this controversy will affect amateurs just trying to be tough guys, hunks, and better on the playground or court.
Grantywanty, I agree with what you were saying but I want to qualify this: "He has influenced people to make bad decisions. More will do so because of him."
More will do so because they think it will make them stronger, not "because of [Barry Bonds]". (After all, if they do it simply because 'Barry Bonds is doing it', well.. can't really blame Barry for your kid being stupid). But there's the rub. We can at best say Bonds indirectly influenced their curiosity for using steroids, but all I'm saying is we can't actually BLAME Bonds anymore than we can blame the tobacco plant for causing millions of deaths. At some point the kid who uses steroids (and MOST likely knows there's SOME sort of risk involved) has to be held accountable for his/her decision just like Barry Bonds is being held accountable for his decision instead of us blaming his personal trainer for giving Bonds steroids without his knowledge. See the double standard that would ensue?
More will do so because they think it will make them stronger, not "because of [Barry Bonds]". (After all, if they do it simply because 'Barry Bonds is doing it', well.. can't really blame Barry for your kid being stupid). But there's the rub. We can at best say Bonds indirectly influenced their curiosity for using steroids, but all I'm saying is we can't actually BLAME Bonds anymore than we can blame the tobacco plant for causing millions of deaths. At some point the kid who uses steroids (and MOST likely knows there's SOME sort of risk involved) has to be held accountable for his/her decision just like Barry Bonds is being held accountable for his decision instead of us blaming his personal trainer for giving Bonds steroids without his knowledge. See the double standard that would ensue?
Bonds is symbolic of the problem. Again, I ask: What about the natural athlete?
The reason competitive sports grabbed people's attention is that (A) it was a diversion, and (B) "Did you see that? I didn't know a person could do that!"
The celebration of what humans can do is important. The cultural ties surrounding competitive sports are and always have been important. However, with steroids, it's no longer about what a person can do, but about what technology can do. Hell, if it's only about how spectacular it looks, why not just put robots in the game and watch them explode as the competition becomes more and more demanding?
When the competition is so fierce that the only way to make the team is to take steroids and ruin yourself, well, there goes the human aspect of competitive sports. Even tossing the role model argument aside, because I do believe the last people right now who should be role models are superstar athletes, the question is whether we will pretend that steroids won't bleed down the chain. As the gap between college players and the professional set increases, it won't be just the natural talent of the college players that catches up; it will be artificial performance enhancement. And then, once it's a matter of going on to the college team, the effect will bleed down into the high schools.
The role model argument is extraneous. The real consideration is what we're going to ask children to do to themselves in order to make the team. Hard work and dedication? Fine, great. In fact, isn't that sort of the point? But turning themselves into hulking mutants with all sorts of health and behavioral problems?
Imagine that image of the anxious father-to-be sitting there with the tiny mitt he can't wait to give his newborn son. He's dreaming all sorts of dreams about the kid's future. Should those dreams include Winstrol rage, cancer, brain disease, and heart attacks?
The reason competitive sports grabbed people's attention is that (A) it was a diversion, and (B) "Did you see that? I didn't know a person could do that!"
The celebration of what humans can do is important. The cultural ties surrounding competitive sports are and always have been important. However, with steroids, it's no longer about what a person can do, but about what technology can do. Hell, if it's only about how spectacular it looks, why not just put robots in the game and watch them explode as the competition becomes more and more demanding?
When the competition is so fierce that the only way to make the team is to take steroids and ruin yourself, well, there goes the human aspect of competitive sports. Even tossing the role model argument aside, because I do believe the last people right now who should be role models are superstar athletes, the question is whether we will pretend that steroids won't bleed down the chain. As the gap between college players and the professional set increases, it won't be just the natural talent of the college players that catches up; it will be artificial performance enhancement. And then, once it's a matter of going on to the college team, the effect will bleed down into the high schools.
The role model argument is extraneous. The real consideration is what we're going to ask children to do to themselves in order to make the team. Hard work and dedication? Fine, great. In fact, isn't that sort of the point? But turning themselves into hulking mutants with all sorts of health and behavioral problems?
Imagine that image of the anxious father-to-be sitting there with the tiny mitt he can't wait to give his newborn son. He's dreaming all sorts of dreams about the kid's future. Should those dreams include Winstrol rage, cancer, brain disease, and heart attacks?
I should point out that not every guy who took steroids in professional baseball was able to hit 755 homeruns. Steroids are not an elixir. They don't perfect your swing. Therefore I have to be suspicious when someone says "with steroids, it's no longer about what a person can do, but about what technology can do." The first thing I did admit when I entered this thread was that the real problem with steroids is that it's cheating and so I'm in agreement there with tiassa (on what he calls the 'cultural value' of sports). The issue I took however was identifying Bonds, Lance Armstrong, or whatever high-profile athlete linked to the steroids saga as the reason for some kid choosing to use steroids. After all, what if we sanctioned steroids under the condition that it was absolutely secret and our kids couldn't easily tell who used steroids and who pumped iron every day. Would that make sports fans feel better about steroid use in sports, because kids are protected? Of course not. And that's what I was pointing out. It's the cheating which we think is wrong because even if suddenly steroids were deleterious to performance, the fact that someone was trying to cheat would steal ruin the spirit of the sport - regardless of whether or not the person was successful.
Therefore the fact that Bonds is being (or could be) scapegoated - especially, if not only, because he is successful - for influencing some kid who couldn't be that ignorant of the insalubrious effects of steroids to use them rings absurd to me.
My heart is with that father in your example. He shouldn't have to worry about that when he drops his kid off for practice. But he also shouldn't sue Barry Bonds when his child falls ill from steroid use for obvious reasons.
Therefore the fact that Bonds is being (or could be) scapegoated - especially, if not only, because he is successful - for influencing some kid who couldn't be that ignorant of the insalubrious effects of steroids to use them rings absurd to me.
My heart is with that father in your example. He shouldn't have to worry about that when he drops his kid off for practice. But he also shouldn't sue Barry Bonds when his child falls ill from steroid use for obvious reasons.
Bonds isn't responsible. Many people simply resent the fact that everyone's congratulating him for beating Hank Aaron's record when he didn't do it the same way. It's kind of like winning the Tour de France on a motorcycle. Or, as the current controversy has it ... steroids.
Allegedly used steroids. Innocent until.. tried in the court of public opinion?
Poor poor Michael Vick. Must be http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=vicksatlanta]a racial conspiracy
Poor poor Michael Vick. Must be http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=vicksatlanta]a racial conspiracy
I just don't give a shit if every jock in the world wants to shrink his balls. GREAT!
Then the jocks that don't want to shrink their balls can realize what a fuggin bogas pile of marketing shit sports has become.
Then the jocks that don't want to shrink their balls can realize what a fuggin bogas pile of marketing shit sports has become.
§outh§tar said:
See, that's the thing. There is at least one person sitting in jail for either hiding or refusing to turn over evidence in the Bonds investigation. Without it, there won't be a trial. Convenient for Barry, eh?
I actually recommend an article for everyone who pauses to consider the Bonds controversy. It's called "Hollow, not hallowed", by Dan Wetzel. Some highlights:
His numbers are nonsensical – most notably the absurd 73 homers in 2001, a total 19.7 percent greater than Roger Maris' mark of 61, which hasn't been touched without massive suspicion in 46 years and counting.
Forty-six year old records don't just fall by 19.7 percent. Or even by the 14.7 percent Mark McGwire exceeded Maris' record in 1998. If someone were to shave 19.7 percent off the current world record in the mile run (3:43.13), he'd finish at 2:59.2. Yes, a three-minute mile. You think you'd believe something so statistically improbable? How about 100-meter dash in 7.8 seconds? You think your grandkids would buy that one, or mock it as some old fish story? ....
.... Bonds' ties to disgraced BALCO labs, the fact that his personal trainer is behind bars for refusal to turn over evidence on him, and the possible federal indictment on perjury charges this fall means that 756 deceives only the most dim or devout ....
The saddest part is that Bonds never needed it, that in surpassing the most hallowed record in baseball he tarnished his reputation to the point his apologists have to remind people that he was Hall-of-Fame-worthy long before baseball's "Steroid Era" began.
Bonds should be hitting his, say, 650th clean homer about now, continuing to build the case that he is the greatest ballplayer of all time. That is how great he was, and is. He never needed the juice. His legacy would have been so much greater, meant so much more without it .... (Yahoo! Sports)
Forty-six year old records don't just fall by 19.7 percent. Or even by the 14.7 percent Mark McGwire exceeded Maris' record in 1998. If someone were to shave 19.7 percent off the current world record in the mile run (3:43.13), he'd finish at 2:59.2. Yes, a three-minute mile. You think you'd believe something so statistically improbable? How about 100-meter dash in 7.8 seconds? You think your grandkids would buy that one, or mock it as some old fish story? ....
.... Bonds' ties to disgraced BALCO labs, the fact that his personal trainer is behind bars for refusal to turn over evidence on him, and the possible federal indictment on perjury charges this fall means that 756 deceives only the most dim or devout ....
The saddest part is that Bonds never needed it, that in surpassing the most hallowed record in baseball he tarnished his reputation to the point his apologists have to remind people that he was Hall-of-Fame-worthy long before baseball's "Steroid Era" began.
Bonds should be hitting his, say, 650th clean homer about now, continuing to build the case that he is the greatest ballplayer of all time. That is how great he was, and is. He never needed the juice. His legacy would have been so much greater, meant so much more without it .... (Yahoo! Sports)
The only reason I care about Barry Bonds is that I keep hearing about it. I don't watch much baseball these days, and when I do, it's our local Mariners I care about. But it's been impossible to not hear about Barry Bonds if you go anywhere near baseball. It's a sad, sad thing. And if we accept Barry as some sort of legend to be spoken of with the same respect as Hank, Mickey, Babe, and Roger, we'll only be legitimizing steroid use, which leads back to the theme I've been pushing throughout this topic. When there is no place left for natural athletes, competitive sports will be reduced to pure entertainment, something akin to WWE or, as I've mentioned, Cyberball.
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But they do optimize your strength, which allows you to play longer and harder.
(laughs) Good reiteration. I don't have any problem with civilians like you and me taking steroids, I couldn't care less, I have a problem with professional atheletes who think they can cheat their way into history. What ever happened to doing your best and being proud of yourself, that is the real reason behind sports-pride. The endless pursuit for perfection is what drives some people into depression and a downward spiral. Just ask Rembradt and those many other sick Dutch artists. There is an old adage "do your best and leave the rest". However, having said this, its a matter of time before they invent 20/20 vision pills for golfers. Like I said, I really don't care, just as long as those golfers aren't in the PGA tour, those guys are supposed to not need it.
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