So should the use of performance enhancing drugs be legalized and controlled, just like cigarettes, coffee and alcohol? Is it a defensible idea, medically or morally?
Dr. Norman Fost thinks so. For the past two decades, Fost has been arguing for a new look at performance enhancing drugs and the athletes who take them.
athletes
"The present policy of prohibiting drugs is morally incoherent and hypocritical," said Fost, professor of pediatrics, medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. "From a medical standpoint, it is counterproductive."
Fost argues that athletes already use forms of legal performance enhancement such as sleeping in oxygen-poor "altitude tents" to boost their red blood count that achieve the same results as taking EPO. He says the first step would be to conduct more medical studies about the effects of drugs on the human body in different doses.
While critics often cite the case of bulked-up pro wrestlers who have suffered heart attacks or the gender-bending East German women swim team of the early 1970s, Fost says that there hasn't been enough valid, controlled research to find out what levels are safe.
"Athletes continue to pursue drugs wherever they can get them," Fost said. "Using them without benefit of medical supervision, and without information about whatever their health risks exist will continue to get worse."
Fost also says that many athletes get their steroids or blood-boosters from shady sources -- something that legalization would prevent.
"If you are getting your drugs from Tijuana or from BALCO, you don't know what's in the bottle," said Fost, referring to the acronym for the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, the steroid supplier to former Giants'slugger Barry Bonds.
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