Steroid Use in Pro Sports is Unethical

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When you were a kid, didn’t you want to play a professional sport? What would you give to be one of the best athletes in the world? Would you risk your reputation? Your health? Would you be willing to die? Although many studies have come out saying that steroids diminish one’s health, people still take them hoping to be the best. Imagine if you were a 28 year old who left college early because a pro team “guaranteed” you that you would play in the big leagues. Yet you just got stuck in the minors, and the only way you could get to the big’s was to take a pill that made you super-strong and super-fast. It would make sense to just take it. But what if that pill shrunk your testicles, hurt your heart and vascular system, and made your heart work 3 times harder than it is suppose to? An athlete would be pressured to take these pills, yet it would be smarter to say no. Why would athletes, of all people-risk harming their bodies? If I became a major league baseball player, and hit 65 homeruns, I couldn’t live with myself thinking that most of those wouldn’t have gone over that fence if I hadn’t taken steroids. I could never be proud of my stats or not be ashamed when a reporter told me how good I was and asked me how I learned to hit the ball that far. Although the benefits of steroids are good, the risks and side effects are too dangerous. Therefore athletes should not use steroids.

Steroids have a surprisingly long and interesting history. Although steroids did not become popular until the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, they were around for a long time before that. In the 1930’s, anabolic steroids were developed to treat anemia and other muscle-wasting diseases. But it was not until 1954 that anabolic steroids began to appear in athletic competition when Soviet weightlifters supposedly used them at the World Championships. In 1958, a doctor by the name of John Ziegler developed Dianabol; the first mass produced anabolic steroid, with the help of a Pharmaceutical company, and in 1960 distributed Dianabol to the U.S. weightlifting team. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) banned the use of anabolic steroids in 1974, just 7 years after it hired a medical commission to perform drug tests on athletes. Two years after the ban by the IOC, eight athletes were disqualified from the Montreal Olympics after testing positive for steroids. The NFL started ...

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...y if every player uses them. Also when sports were invented it was made to be challenging. Baseball wasn’t invented for someone to go up to the plate and hit 2 of every 10 balls pitched to them over the fence. When a player hits a homerun it is supposed to be special. When golf courses need to be renovated from 500 yard Par 5’s, to 650 yard Par 5’s, because players are driving the ball 350 yards, it kind of defeats the purpose of the game. What is the point of watching it when the players are too good for the courses they play on. Are all sports going to become obsolete or boring to watch from the use of steroids? The answer is yes, if the use of steroids isn’t stopped.

Bibliography

Congress gets baseball to act on steroids

www.comcast.net/news/sports

Fredric J. Frommer

Associated press writer

Steroid use a growing problem among American High School athletes

www.opposingviewpoints.com

Gary Mihoces

USA Today

Athletes have the right to accept the risks of steroids

www.opposingviewpoints.com

Robert Lipsyte

New York Times

United states must spearhead reform to eradicate drugs

www.opposingviewpoints.com

Barry R. McCaffery

Retired U.S. Army general

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