On Mar 21, 2007, at 1:31 PM, Seth Breidbart wrote:

> Hank Kearns <hkearns4@...> top-posted:
>
> > People who use illegal drugs to enhance their physical stature are
> > frauds.
>
> What about people who use legal drugs?
>
> Who decides which drugs are illegal? What qualifications do they
> have?
>
> What about people who use drugs that are legal where they use them,
> but might be illegal elsewhere (e.g. caffeine)?
>
> I know: let's eliminate everybody who ever drank coffee or tea or ate
> chocolate.
>
> Seth

My main point was, as a culture we cannot put those people who use
illegal performance drugs on a pedestal, and we should try to keep
those people from competing with other people who should not have to
nor want to use performance enhancing drugs. Sadly, this seem more
and more difficult. People are able to beat the system, and that will
probably always be the case. A case in point is Lance Armstrong. I
hope he is a clean athlete, but if I had to make a wager, I would
say, he probably took some illegal performance enhancing drug, just
like the American who was disqualified from the Tour de France. We
are in a sad situation, in my point of view.

If someone is so insecure with themselves that they need to take
steroids and other such drugs to look a certain way, let them be my
guest. I just have a problem when they have an unfair advantage (and
it is huge) when competing against clean athletes.

Our FDA has a lot of room to improve, but I would like to think that
even with the Republican Party in charge, we can intelligently
differentiate between a drug that is relatively safe, like caffeine
and anabolic steroids which can be devastating.

Perhaps in the brave new world there will be ways to take steroids in
a safe manner. Perhaps in a later time we will give them to our
newborn safely. I don’t know, but right now that is not the case. I
hope we never get to that point, but who knows.

Hank Kearns