Comments on: Legalize Dud Drugs

By: Is Being “Too Short” a Disability? | Science Not Fiction | Discover Magazine

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:45:04 +0000

[...] Athletes really like to pretend that HGH makes them more powerful. It might, but it probably doesn’t. Whether it works or not, athletes should be allowed to utilize it. But banning performance [...]

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:04:41 +0000

I just added to this post.

By: Leiito

Leiito — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:19:18 +0000

why not legalize all drugs, tax them and use the money to educate people but if they still want drugs, they can get them in a supervised setting? Not that it’s a new idea, it’s been proven to work in many countries and it’s certainly better than the war on drugs that resulted in milions of non-violent people incarcerated, trillions spent on prosecuting and jailing them and still there were never more addicts, drugs were never cheaper, terrorists and organized crime are the only ones to benefit. Not to mention the government has no business telling people what they can do with their bodies.

By: bruce

bruce — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:56:06 +0000

I don’t plan to start taking anything for another ten or fifteen years. But, when I’m 55-65+? I want the option. My life depends on it.

I don’t mind keeping the Gentlemen versus Players distinction for young athletes. But us old farts deserve a legal, professional ‘take what works is the whole of the law’ senior sports league out there, testing the cutting-edge exercise/drug routines for us.

By: ECM

ECM — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:50:25 +0000

Actually, a substantial drop in bodyfat *is* a performance enhancer since you’re quicker with less dead weight hanging on your frame so HGH *is* a performance enhancer, especially when coming off a bulking cycle of steroids and you need to lean out.

By: tim

tim — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:53:40 +0000

Out of curiosity, why did you leave out 2006′s 5,386 home runs? It’s not like it contradicts your hypothesis or anything.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:27:37 +0000

A drug can have little or no effect when used by itself, but a synergistic effect with other drugs. That’s the contention with HGH: it reduces fat slightly, without putting on significant muscle, when used alone, but when combined with testosterone (or other anabolic-androgenic steroids), it supposedly amplifies the muscle-building effect — or so it was thought for a while.

Finasteride, which Violet mentioned above, is better known as Propecia, the male pattern baldness drug. It blocks the transformation of testosterone, the most popular performance-enhancing steroid, into DHT, the hormone that triggers hair loss. So finasteride isn’t a performance-enhancing drug — or, at least, there isn’t good evidence that it is — but it is linked to steroid use.

Clomifene is a women’s fertility drug that doesn’t simply stimulate the ovaries; it also “reboots” the male organs after they’ve stopped producing testosterone, which happens with long-term steroid use.

By: Brenton

Brenton — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:29:53 +0000

Just because testing is implemented doesn’t necessarily mean that doping stops, or even significantly lessens. I don’t know why people assume it does.

By: Shek

Shek — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:51:07 +0000

He was referring to home run rates, which have not dropped with any significance following the introduction of testing and are not that far off of the 2000 figure, which is the maximum. See the graphs at this post, which uses the Lahman Database. What Caused the Steroid Era?

By: Violet

Violet — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:14:11 +0000

In case of HGH probably signaling.

If HGH was legal and athletes took HGH to boost performance it would create a signal that there is “legalized doping” (even if it in reality didn’t boost the performance).

Finasteride is banned because it might be used to hide the traces of the use of banned substances (anabolic steroids in this case).