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"Performancing-Enhancing Drugs, Part II"

16 Comments -

1 – 16 of 16
Anonymous ben tillman said...

But since the league's policies clearly can't govern drugs prescribed legally by a physican....

Does Gladwell really believe this?

12/19/07, 8:37 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why we object to juicing:

Because we'd like our kids to be able to play competitive sports.

As things are now, I dread my kid growing up and wanting to compete in these sports -- if he doesn't juice he won't be able to compete, and if he does juice, we will be harmed.

That's not a world I want my kid to grow up into.

12/19/07, 9:56 PM

Anonymous Let's! said...

O-T! Steve, what do you have to say about Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy?

When a high achiever gets pregnant young, modern society acts extremely shocked. "Successful" women are supposed to wait until they're as decrepit as the yuppie "Idiocracy" couple, or Julia Roberts.

However, Spears has money and resources and she's just saved herself years of agonizing thru her thirties.

What if the taboo against high-achieving young women getting pregnant was to dissipate? They could have kids while they were 18-22, start college at 27, and hit the workforce running at a relatively young 31 (equivalent to a man starting his professional career at 25-26 due to his shorter life expectancy), never having to worry about the "Mommy track."

By her early forties she's an empty-nester and can make annual pilgrimages to Tibet for the rest of her life if she so desires.

12/19/07, 9:58 PM

Anonymous Scott said...

"The best answer I've been able to come up with is an evo-bio one. To wit, that most people unconsciously view sports as a display of reproductive fitness, not merely one more entertainment option among many"

Two problems:

1. "Artificial enhancements" don't seem to be much of a problem when it comes female beauty contests.

2. The fitness-display theory of sports appreciation would make more sense if the audience were mostly female, which it isn't

12/20/07, 1:30 AM

Anonymous Dutch guy said...

@Scott:

Good points, but:

- I doubt whether the audiences of beauty contests are predominantly heterosexual male.

- Artificial enhancements are less of a problem for men than for women because men are less selective than women anyway - given a choice, many guys may still prefer the 'unenhanced' option - I know I would.

- Sports audiences may be mostly male - after all, sports spectacles play an important role in determining social hierarchy, but at the top level and locally - but women have been watching the results of such competitions and going after the winners since times immemorial - the equivalent of the knigh who wins the favours of a lady in a jousting tournament.

12/20/07, 3:54 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

the main problem with steroids is that they cause harmful side effects. If steroids had the health profile of,say,vitamins then it'd be fine to take them

12/20/07, 4:51 AM

Anonymous PatrickH said...

Baseball resisted science for a long time, and pace Friedrich, weight training was not considered okay until long after other professional sports took it up. Baseball has now 'rationalized', with players using every kind of dietary and training manipulation to improve their game, extend their careers and (above all) sustain a high level of performance throughout a very long season.

Given the amounts of money involved, there is an enormous incentive to use any advantage, so there will always be demand for performance enhancing drugs in baseball and elsewhere. Regulations, testing and banning will simply drive the activity underground and create a 'black economy' in baseball. The drug scandals will never go away. They'll get worse.

The only effective punitive regime will be one that catches obvious users. Once PEDs are developed that don't produce things like pumpkin-heads, the fans will quiet down and return to their fantasy land of baseball as a test of 'natural God-given' talent. But it will be just that...fantasy. The real fantasy league in baseball will be none other than MLB.

12/20/07, 5:31 AM

Anonymous Concerned Netizen said...

Steve,

Apart from whether or not Sadwell is right or wrong, you make too much of the raw effect of test.

While these guys are scarfing test, their Y chromosome goes a-degeneratin'!!!!

Andrew Sullivan will never escape the curse of the Y chromosome.

He'll end up looking like an old lesbian, too.

His worst nightmare.

12/20/07, 6:41 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

In many ways it really comes down to money. At least in the case of baseball, the money to be earned by extending one's career an additional few years by means of steroids is so great that it's nearly impossible to resist.

Peter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights

12/20/07, 6:58 AM

Anonymous bushrod buttram said...

Classical musicians definitely use beta blockers. Back when I was an orchestral musician, they were de quite common at auditions; in some cases, to my certain knowledge, over half of the candidates took them.

I think they're more common at auditions than in concerts, because auditions stakes are so high. (Students coming out of conservatory, usually with at least one graduate degree, routinely practice 8 hours a day for 3 years in order to win regional auditions for jobs paying $30k / yr. There's an entire orchestra made up of these people in Florida.)

12/20/07, 7:57 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

It seems like the teams have to pay old players extra because, even when it's not their free agency year, they always have the option of retiring. For example, Andy Pettite is get $16 million not to retire this year.

12/20/07, 8:24 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What if the taboo against high-achieving young women getting pregnant was to dissipate? They could have kids while they were 18-22, start college at 27, and hit the workforce running at a relatively young 31 (equivalent to a man starting his professional career at 25-26 due to his shorter life expectancy), never having to worry about the "Mommy track."

They'd have to marry men at least five to seven years older than themselves for this to be workable from a middle-class point of view. A big increase from today's current husband-wife age gap of a year or two. Increasing the husband-wife age gap is a bad idea given the way that men age more quickly than women and die much younger.

Peter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights

12/20/07, 9:40 AM

Blogger Half Sigma said...

The average NFL football player is said to have an average life-expectancy of only 55. (Playing pro football takes 20 to 25 years off of your life, very scary.)

I don't suppose you happen to know the statistic for baseball players?

12/20/07, 10:53 AM

Anonymous tommy said...

No, because ever more juicing, Ken Caminiti-style, would still be tempting, so baseball becomes just a test of foolhardiness.

Drug use among bodybuilders is a good example of this. Heavily juiced bodybuilders have turned the sport into as much an arms race of finding the right combination of performance enhancing (and health damaging) substances as one of optimal genetics and difficult training. Those not willing to engage in heavy drug use need not even apply themselves to becoming the next Mr. Olympia. That's a rather boring conclusion for bodybuilding, in my opinion.

Fortunately, bodybuilding's appeal is mostly limited to boys in their late teens and grown men. Under Gladwell's scheme, the message sent to young kids playing softball would be atrocious.

12/21/07, 2:53 AM

Anonymous georgesdelatour said...

I remember those freakish looking East German women at the Olympics in the 80s. There was a swimmer who'd taken so much testosterone she looked like an alien life-form - won a gold medal, swimming absurdly far ahead of all the others.

And yet - was it Ben Johnson who ran the fastest 100 metres ever for Canada, but was disqualified because of drugs? Even WITH drugs, surely that's amazing?

So why not have two competitions - one with a no drugs policy, and the other a freakshow with a "take any drug you like" policy. But if you win in the drug olympics, the med guy in the lab coat gets to share the gold medal with you...

12/21/07, 4:06 PM

Anonymous TCO said...

SEriously now:

Please read the 3 Steroids books: Canseco book, Balco book and Steroid Nation. And give a bit of a stepping back view.

12/21/07, 5:56 PM

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