« Family Tradition | Main | Murders Not Forgotten »
December 07, 2004
Dumb Jocks. Dumber Reporters
A lot of what I've read lately, which admittedly hasn't been much since finals started Sunday, has been about the 'doping' scandal in professional sports. Now we can argue until the cows come home about its effects on sports and players.....IMHO it's one of the side effects of greed destroying what sports is really all about. The love of playing the game.
But this statement kinda caught my eye this morning.
Scott Gottlieb, a former senior policy adviser to the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, notes: "There are plenty of people with [multiple sclerosis], Crohn's and Colitis and rheumatoid arthritis and lupus and other diseases who are on much higher doses of chronic steroids. Certainly they have a lot of side effects, but they don't drop dead of [heart attacks] so easily."
Maybe some of my more medically astute readers will correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a world of difference between anabolic steriods, a synthetic version of testosterone, and cortical steriods, a version of adrenal gland hormone, that sick people take? Cuz I'll tell you, I've taken several versions of the latter and it's never pumped me up. Well, actually it did, but it wasn't with muscle tissue let me tell you.
Though granted, they can both have the side effect of 'Shitllkillya'. Which is one of the reasons the latter is available by prescription only, and the former is illegal.
Am I wrong, or wasn't that an extraordinarily stupid statement for a former FDA policy advisor to make?
Posted by Rita at December 7, 2004 05:53 AM