Counterpoints to some common arguments— Charles Leroux
January 15, 2008
Dr. Norman Fost has ticked through his arguments against the objections to steroid use often enough that he can do it by rote, stopping only when his listener says something that indicates he gets Fost's point. Then he stops, smiles, points an index finger and says, "Bingo."
Steroids give an unfair advantage. "There are a lot of things in sports that are unfair. In some football games, my beloved Badgers offensive line may outweigh opponents by 60 pounds. That's unfair. It is hypocritical for leaders in Major League Baseball to trumpet their concern about fair competition when one team [the Yankees] is allowed to have a payroll three times larger than most of its competitors.
"Steroids are unfair only if there's unequal access. Removing the ban would give equal access, Also, as long as they are banned, steroids will come from people making them in their bathtubs, no clinical trials as to safety, no oversight of manufacturing process, no long-term studies. If steroids are harmful over the long term, that would be good to know, but under the current conditions, we may never find out."
Athletes are coerced into using steroids. "That would mean there's the use of force or a threat of deprivation. Steroids are an offer to be better off than you are, just as signing up with a professional team is an opportunity to be better off than you are. In the first year of testing in 2003, with the results anonymous and with no penalties, about 6 percent were found to be using steroids but 94 percent were not. If there was coercion, it wasn't working."
Steroids are unnatural. "Testosterone is made by the body. It's the most natural of all steroids. The rest are synthetic. Yet testosterone is the one steroid that we know does cause cancer and therefore is no longer used.
Sport hasn't been 'natural' since the first naked Olympian put on sandals. A Nautilus machine isn't natural. Should athletes train only by lifting rocks?" Steroid use undermines the integrity of the sport. "That's the Bob Costas argument about the validity of records. There already is no validity in comparing athletes era to era. In baseball, the mound is lower, the ball livelier, the fences lower, the sizes of the fields and the rules of play are different. And what do you do about Coors Field?"
Columnist George Will wrote: "Sport — and a society that takes it seriously — would be debased if it did not strictly forbid things that blur the distinction between the triumph of character and the triumph of pharmacology."
"Did Barry Bonds undermine the integrity of baseball?" Fost asked rhetorically. "Well, the fans didn't seem to think so." And, a listener noted, the home run race between McGuire and Sosa is widely credited with bringing fans back after the strike.
"Bingo," Fost said.
Steroid users are bad role models for kids. "I'm more concerned about sexual assault, drunk driving and other things kids see some athletes doing."
What about Lyle Alzado? "That question seems to come up every time I do an interview," Fost said. Lyle Alzado, a star defensive end in the NFL, became the poster boy for the dangers of taking steroids because of his death from brain cancer at age 42, a cancer he claimed was brought on by steroid use. So compelling was his story that, now, 16 years after his death, many Web sites about him conclude by saying: "Cause of death: Brain cancer brought on by excessive steroid use." "But there's not a shred of evidence to prove that connection," Fost said. "He was the poster boy for the wrong thing."
More from Fost here:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0115steroids_fostjan15,0,2159614.story
