Cleveland Indians lose to Yankees, 11-2

Should we care whether or not Alex Rodriguez has used steroids or HGH or some other performance-enhancing drug? Case Western Reserve professor Max Mehlman says such drugs are just another change to our games, and not really cheating.

(AP file)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- "What's wrong with letting athletes use performance-enhancing drugs?" the bioethics/law professor at Case Western Reserve University wanted to know.

Max Mehlman, 64, bases his arguments about legalizing PEDs on two provisions: A doctor would be supervising the drug regimen and athletes must be informed about them and choose to use them.

"Why is marijuana banned?" he asked. "That's one of my favorites. Marijuana is prohibited, but why is that? It has no physical performance-enhancing effects.

"Dick Pound (the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency,or WADA) and I were debating that. He said the reason is that 'The White House wants us to put it on the prohibited list, in order to fund USADA (the United States Anti-Doping Agency).' It's a political thing."

And Mehlman said: "Caffeine (a stimulant) is on the list. Do you realize if you drank a 16-ounce cup of Starbucks coffee and had two Mountain Dews, you would be over the line on the prohibited list?"

Case Western bioethics professor Max Mehlman.

Major League Baseball investigators have connected about 20 players to a Miami-area clinic, Biogenesis of America, at the heart of an ongoing performance-enhancing drug scandal. Among them are Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun. Lance Armstrong's reputation went over the cliff when he admitted to blood doping and lavish use of endurance drugs. Codeine-laced cough syrup felled Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon for the first two games of next season, at least according to Gordon.

"There is nothing fundamentally wrong or ethically objectionable to PEDs," Mehlman argued.

Steroids, however, are currently illegal in the U.S. without a doctor's prescription. "If (a substance) is against the rules, then using it is saying, 'You cheat,'" Mehlman conceded. "Sports can make any rule it wants. Just like it's silly for there to be 10 players (counting the designated hitter) in the American League and nine in the National."

Steroid users develop their impressive physiques because, said Mehlman, "Steroids can prevent muscle tears, prevent the muscle sheath from shredding, and that's how the muscles grow."

The current PED ban stems from historical precedence, health concerns and a vague belief that PED use damages "the spirit of the game," Mehlman said.

"I'm not sure what that means," he said. "If you look at competition historically, athletes have always tried everything they possibly can to get better than their competitors."

The sanctity of the records, after lesser players broke those of legends, helped drive baseball's ban on PEDs. Mehlman asked, "How is baseball different than someone who invents a revolutionary technique or gets an advantage with equipment differences, such as the fiberglass pole? We didn't see it become a big deal. Everybody just said, 'It's changed.'"

But the rules specified that vaulting poles could be made from anything.

The Cold War and the American cultural divide of the 1960s heated up the debate about drugs. "Nothing really happened until the war on drugs started in 1968 with President Nixon and then the outrage at the East German government-run doping," said Mehlman.

Most of the East German athletes were doped without their knowledge or consent. The bittersweet joke goes that American swimming coaches supposedly sat together in a restaurant during the Olympics in the 1970s, complaining about how deep were the East German women's voices, all within earshot of the East German team.

Retorted the East German coach, "They came here to swim, not to sing."

Health concerns center on the assertion that PEDs are dangerous. Mehlman said that a blanket indictment lacks supporting evidence.

"I submitted a paper to a journal about cognition-enhancing drugs, such as soldiers take a drug to stay awake for 48 hours in combat," said Mehlman. "In it, I quoted the National Institute on Drug Abuse on liver concerns and bone density effects. When a reviewer asked for support for those statements, I had my research assistant, a medical student, research it. She found nothing. Oral steroids, the corticosteroids, are metabolized in a totally different way than injectable steroids. With injectable ones, your voice will deepen and there will be other effects."

The injury issue brings another question: Why are painkillers, which allow athletes to compete at all, viewed with less condemnation than PEDs, which allow them to get better?

Mehlman conceded PEDs should not be used by minors because anabolic steroids, for example, interfere with physical development in adolescents. But if the pro leagues legalized them, it would be almost impossible to keep them out of the hands of young players trying to emulate those they see on television.

In the future, there will probably be genetic engineering, human cloning, and feats of strength and speed conceived before only in superhero movies. Said Mehlman, "They have weightlifting contests with untested competitors. People say, 'What's the point of that?' But why wouldn't you want to see how much weight a human can lift, not by using a mechanical lifter, but by using whatever diet, extra training and steroids can provide? Can a man lift 600 pounds? Let's find out."

Although bribes were taken and cheaters sometimes were triumphant at the Ancient Olympics, a time when divine beings were believed to meddle frequently in mortal affairs, the 26-mile run that the messenger Pheidippides made from Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory in battle over the Persians was celebrated. It cost him his life, but it was an astonishing achievement of human will. Society today still highly values clean athletes.

"But how do we know what that Greek was on?" Mehlman said.