Brave new world?

I just finished reading “The real trouble with steroids” written by Neal Gabler and published in the Boston Sunday Globe’s Opinion Extra. What I find most troubling about the article is its common sense approach to the performance enhancement issue. By the end of the article, Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens are no longer cheaters, they're transcended into the pioneers of as Gabler puts it “the brave new world”.

Although Gabler initially confirms the popular belief that “steroids unlevel the playing field, that they endanger the integrity of sports, and that they are a high-tech form of cheating” he shifts his opinion by offering up that  “athletes have always looked for an edge. Improved nutrition, weight-training, vitamins, and other dietary supplements, even aspirin…”

In an effort to become “bigger, faster, stronger” Gabler contends that competitive athletes have found their answers not in genetics, but rather in science.

Gabler acknowledges that sport is steeped deep in history and tradition and that once upon a time athletes “seemed dependent on their own skills” and that “everyone was playing by the same rules.” He believes that the most troubling part of performance-enhancing drugs for a majority of people is that the history of “individual achievement” has been compromised.

Gabler challenges popular opinion and contends that if Armstrong and Bonds were in fact doing Performance Enhancers, so were their competitors none of whom won seven Tour De Frances or hit 762 home runs. In an age when every athlete was searching for an edge, certain athletes were still the best in their sport, accomplishments that should not be overlooked according to Gabler.

Gabler does not deny the belief that performance-enhancing drugs are currently a health risk, and that taking them is a personal decision individual athletes must make, however he suggests that the successful users often force others into becoming users themselves in order to remain competitive.

Gabler concludes his article by suggesting that science will soon develop safe performance-enhancing drugs and the end result will be “drugs that make athletes so big, so fast, and so impervious to injury that they may seem like quasi-Supermen.”

The article presents a very convincing argument, one suggesting that perhaps the current culture should lighten their stance on performance-enhancing drugs and the accomplishments of successful users.

Reading Neal Gabler’s compelling article “The real trouble with steroids”has forced me to re-evaluate my own belief system…

The article can be read in its entirety at:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2...

According to Wikipedia, Neal Gabler is a professor, journalist, author, film critic and political commentator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Gabler

VINCENT LEVINE is a free-lance writer and can be reached at: vincent.levine@rocketmail.com