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Morning Links
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007• Jim Henley finds a particularly odd case of puppycide: Did Blackwater kill the New York Times’ dog?
• Surely we can do better than this. The fact that this was first reported last March and nothing has since changed is even more shameful.
• So here’s my question about HGH: Is it really cheating if you used the stuff to recover from an injury, with a doctor’s consent? If it is illegal or against the rules of MLB, should it be? I mean, I’m of the opinion that this is all folly, and sure as hell is none of Congress’ business. But even accepting the premise that the steroid scandal is the death of baseball, why should we ban a substance that helps someone recover from injury more quickly?
• Welcome to the dog-eat-dog world of…competitive knitting.
Radley,I must agree .Why not use drugs to heal from injury?In the NFL you see player have multiple operations and leave the game crippled for life.If you can make your body stronger and more able to take the pounding I see no problem.Whats worse,taking HGH or taking hit after hit for years on end?We all have seen the record the league has for taking care of players after a career ending injury.
As long as a substance is legal, doctors should be able to prescribe it. If MLB wants to ban it, they have all the right in the world to do so. They are a private organization and can set their own rules. If they want their players to never have taken aspirin, they can do that, too. It’s up to the fans to let the league know what’s acceptable to them and what’s not.
I mean, come on, Radley, you’re a Libertarian so you should be all for the rights of MLB to do as they please within the law (as a private company). It is no different than allowing establishments to allow their customers to smoke or not. There shouldn’t be a law against this; it should be up to the individual establishments.
BTW, I’m totally against Congress having anything to do with this.
>>I mean, come on, Radley, you’re a Libertarian so you should be all for the rights of MLB to do as they please within the law (as a private company). It is no different than allowing establishments to allow their customers to smoke or not. There shouldn’t be a law against this; it should be up to the individual establishments.<<
I don’t believe I said MLB should be forced by law to allow HGH. They should be free to make their own policies and guidelines. And I’m free to criticize them for making bad ones.
Sorry Radley, I misunderstood what I read.
With the HGH issue,
It is just another situation, where untrained individuals are telling doctors how to practice medicine. Treatment of a medical problem should be between the patient and the doctor. Not a bunch of uneducated “experts” who have decided to tell people how their doctors can treat them. It is nothing new. Just investigate the treatment of chronic intractable pain patients and their providers. Another reason where we need to get the government’s hands out of individual’s private lives. If they can’t detect HGH, I doubt that they are going to be able to restrict its use in any way.
I am unfamiliar with HGH, but steroids work by helping you heal faster. When you work out you tear muscle. When it heals, it comes back bigger and stronger. If there is not enough recovery time then you can’t add muscle. That is why you don’t work the same set of muscles everyday. Using steroids speeds up the healing/recovery time. This allows you to work out more often which leads to bigger, stronger muscles. When Schwarzenegger was Mr. Universe, he lifted weights for 8 hours a day. This would be physically impossible without steroids.
Thanks for posing this question, Radley. While I oppose Congress having to do with any of this, I’ve always supported baseball banning steroids because I don’t think athletes should be forced to risk their health in order to keep up with their roided-up colleagues. Obviously this is a policy choice that baseball (through its players and owners) must make on its own, but if I had a son who was an excellent baseball player, I would like to know that he could succeed at the professional level without putting his health in danger.
That being said, I always assumed HGH had side-effects similar to steroids. A cursory internet search has lead me to question this assumption. If HGH can help one recover more quickly without significant side-effects, then how is it any different than any other modern medical treatment? I think we need to ask what the dangers of HGH are before lumping them into the same category as anabolic steroids. Anybody with more knowledge of HGH care to chime in?