Performance Enhancers

Let me tell you.  That's not fair!!!  I want to be able to do better, but you are using something to be better than me!

That is the argument against steroids as i see it.  I have one question though, what about gatorade?  This article from Mercury news seems to focus on how unfair it is that Barry Bonds is going to pass Babe Ruth's carreer home run mark, and will probably pass Hank Aaron's if Barry Bonds used performance enhancers known as steroids.  They argue that  Bonds is cheating by using steroids, if it is true that he did.

But I ask again, what about Gatorade?  Gatorade is an unnatural substance formulated to allow the body to better endure athletic activities, the researchers at Gatorade brag all the time about how they have proven it enhances performance.

They even get to use the same words, just reversed.

I would also like to bring into question in regards to fairness the knowledge we currently have of the human physiology that was not prevelant at the time of Ruth and Aaron,  athletes today know specificly how to work each muscle out to create the desired effect, be it better bat speed or more power.  In the times of Aaron and Ruth this kind of knowledge was not at all available.  

This Knowledge is deemed fair, and so is the Gatorade, and so are a whole list of supplements that athletes today take which were also unavailable.  No one argues that contact lenses or LASIK eye surgery are an unfair advantage because it reduces glair and perephial vision or because LASIK eye surgery increases your actual vision to beyond normal.  

So what then, is the big deal?  The argument then gets shifted to health, steroids are bad for you, it severely shortens your life.  Even accepting this as true (because I am having trouble finding adequate resources on responsible steroid use) what about being a catcher?  Catchers lose their knees very young, developing arthritis, or allow me to shift the argument to football.

Professional football is known to decrease your lifespan not merely because of the weight one must put on be sucessful but also because of the ammount of trauma the body takes from being hit so hard.  Boxers are hit in the face repetedly, but no one seems to mind those kind of health risks.  

I don't like steroids either, but i don't know why.  And because i do not know why i am unready to ban anyone from the recordbooks for using them, i also want those asterisks removed, there is too much of that "back in my day" stuff going on.  The sports world is changing, accept it and try to understand it before you judge it as wrong.