An Alternative View On Hgh And Sports Athletes

Performance Enhancing Drugs Change the Way We Think about Sports

Why the United States will never beat PEDs in Professional Sports

Drugs like HGH, Testosterone, and other Androgens have had an incredible impact on professional sports.

Although it may be honorable to fight the good fight regarding keeping Performance Enhancing Drugs out of sports, we may be better off just giving up on this impossible task.

Performance Enhancing Drug Use at All-Time High

Performance Enhancing Drugs are becoming so ubiquitous in some sports that it seems futile to attempt to stem the use of these supplements. In addition, many options, like Human Growth Hormone or IGF-1 Injections, are utterly undetectable if athletes have even the slightest modicum of sense.

In the sense of this utter futility, why not just give in and let the athletes do whatever they feel they need to do to be the best? In sports like track and cycling, the use of HGH and other drugs is so endemic that there is likely no hope of ever wholly getting them out of the sport.

PED Abusers Incredibly Difficult to Detect

Although this is highly controversial, there is no reason to get upset about the decline in the purity of modern athletics. Instead, we should reconsider what we value within the athletic field.

There is no way to catch all athletes who abuse performance enhancers. The science of physiological enhancement is growing too fast, and those that choose to evade the rules will always remain miles ahead of those attempting to enforce the rules. It's just the nature of the cat-and-mouse game being played.

Stricter Rules May Be Dangerous for Players

The more rules that get created prohibiting players from attempting methods of Performance Enhancement that are relatively safe and well-understood and researched, the more likely that athletes will attempt to turn to other forms of physical enhancement that may not be so safe.

The evolution of Performance Enhancement is a literal arms race that is utterly futile to combat and may actually do much more harm than good in the long run.

Government Regulation Has Done Nothing to Stem Steroid Use

Government intervention in athletics has not stemmed the tide of Performance Enhancing Drug use and may have actually expanded the use of these drugs by inadvertently providing free advertising and also driving the sale of these drugs underground.

Driving these drugs underground not only makes it more challenging to monitor and study the use of these pharmaceuticals, but it also puts athletes at greater risk because the drugs that they seek are no longer guaranteed safe and effective in the same way.

The further underground the Performance Enhancement Drug trade is driven, the more likely that unscrupulous individuals can take advantage of these athletes that are simply trying to keep up with other competitors that have more accessible and more trusted access to such underground methods of obtaining these drugs.

Another reason that Performance Enhancing Drug use will never be eradicated is that almost every Players' Agreement requires players to be given advanced notice before all drug testing. This gives players enough time to clear their systems and pass a drug test.

Steroid Use Progressively Becoming Less Controversial

It has been over a decade since Marion Jones had her gold medals stripped after the Sydney Olympics. It has been 25 years since Ben Johnson had his medals stripped after the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

It has been over a decade since Mark McGuire quit baseball amid concerns regarding suspicion of PED use. Every time someone gets caught cheating this way, the impact is less severe.

Look at the recent deal with Lance Armstrong. Even though the punishment within the sport was severe: He had all of his Tour de France titles stripped and lost the majority of his endorsements, the reaction among the public has been incredibly tepid. Everyone already knew he was utilizing these drugs for his performance.

They understood that almost all others at his level had at least dabbled in these drugs. Although there will always be some people who feel betrayed, the vast majority of ordinary people look at the Lance Armstrong case and shrug their shoulders.

Steroids Saved Baseball

Although, in the early 2000s, people across America were incensed by the use of HGH and other Performance Enhancing Drugs by professional baseball players, the vast majority of players implicated in this era of scandal have moved on relatively unscathed. Mark McGuire, for example, still has a career in Major League Baseball despite his use of PEDs and is currently on the staff of the Los Angeles Dodgers, acting as their batting coach.

Although so many were so upset at the time of the Baseball PED scandal, one thing has become exceedingly clear in the years that have passed. The Steroid Era of Baseball played an instrumental role in restoring the sport to national prominence after the MLB strikes of the mid-1990s.

Steroids and Performance Enhancing Drugs are the primary reason that baseball became popular again. Without Steroids, baseball might be in a similar boat as the NHL, floundering for national prominence outside of a few specific markets.

Human Growth Hormone Injections Vs. Releasers

In addition to HGH, compounds known as Human Growth Hormone Releasers are beginning to be experimented with and used with greater frequency. HGH Releasers are Amino Acid molecules that have been shown to have the capacity to increase Human Growth Hormone production.

These HGH Releasers are very difficult to detect, but they also may be associated with an increased risk of side effects. This is because Growth Hormone Releasers can increase internal HGH Secretion while also having secondary effects throughout the body.

These HGH Releasers are not regulated as strictly as HGH, and although they may actually present a higher risk than Growth Hormone itself, they can be used with significantly less risk than Human Growth Hormone.

Drug Testing Dilutes the Athletic Talent Pool

Why not let the players utilize Bio-Identical HGH or other Performance Enhancing Drugs?

By allowing athletes to utilize these drugs as tools, we may actually be protecting the long-term health of many of these players by allowing them to utilize drugs that we have extensively vetted and researched, rather than forcing them to turn to experimental Performance Enhancing Drugs that do more harm than good.

Athletic commissioners also admit that Performance Enhancing Drugs may be here to stay. A representative of United States Track and Field named Fred Finke explains that there have been several situations where competitive runners would actively drop out of competitions in which it was sprung that they would be subject to drug testing.

Other competitors would come up with excuses, claiming that they experienced injuries that prevented them from competing so that they could save face and credibility while also utilizing Performance Enhancing Drugs. Finke recognizes that it is entirely impossible to uncover all or even an appreciable number of athletes that choose to abuse these drugs.

Promote Full Disclosure: Reward Clean Players

In an ideal world, perhaps we would prevent athletes from utilizing these Performance Enhancing Drugs, but let's be realistic. This new era of PED use is here to stay, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Why not let players choose to utilize these drugs in exchange for full disclosure? Let the fans clearly see the reality of the sport. Let them choose the players they genuinely respect without the lingering fear that their heroes may be anything but.

Changing the American stance regarding Performance Enhancing Drugs will also save the United States Government millions upon millions of dollars while freeing up valuable hours and time for our representatives to discuss more pressing and vital national concerns.

If you allow these athletes to utilize Performance Enhancing Drugs, you also open up an incredible avenue of scientific research. By allowing researchers to study these athletes, you could honestly and clearly see the effects of PED use among the most exceptionally healthy people on the planet. This data could be invaluable in expanding the research body and discovering who may benefit the most from various medical treatments.

It's all about honesty and accountability.

Let the fans be the ones to decide. Let the athletes do what they deem necessary to be the best. By changing how we conceptualize Performance Enhancing Drugs, we can create a greater sense of balance that saves money and preserves the integrity of athletics while freeing up a large amount of money for both Law Enforcement Agencies and the Federal Government.

Players Should Be the Judge of Their Health

In the end, athletes are stewards of their own health and well-being and should be allowed to be responsible for such. Although many treatments like Human Growth Hormone Replacement Therapy have not been verified to be safe for patients who don't display symptoms of HGH Deficiency, professional athletes have the right to decide whether the risks are worth the rewards when they utilize Performance Enhancing Drugs.

Also, they have access to some of the best Health Insurance in the world, and they are forced to keep themselves in impeccable shape. For these people, more than almost anyone else in the world, the potential benefits far exceed the costs in the majority of cases.

Highlighting Clean Players Lets us Truly Reward Good Role Models.

By changing how we conduct ourselves on the athletic stage, we will be able to highlight those who try to do things the right way, the clean way. Even though they might not be the best in the world (and they likely often still will), we can put a spotlight on these paragons of virtue in a way that we have never been able to do before.

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