December 19, 2007

Slippery Slopes and Tipping Points

Malcolm Gladwell blogs in defense of baseball players who claim they only used Human Growth Hormone to get over injuries:

"Let's assume, for a moment, that what Vina said was true--that he only took HGH because he was trying to recover from an injury. Let's assume the same of Pettitte and Bennett. I think we can also agree that there is reasonable evidence that Human Growth Hormone speeds recovery.

So what, exactly, is wrong with an athlete--someone who makes a living with their body--taking medication to speed their recovery from injury? Is it wrong to take ibruprofen? Is it wrong to ice a sore elbow? For that matter, is it ethical or even legal for Major League Baseball--or indeed any employee or governing body--to deny an employee access to a potentially beneficial medical treatment?" [More]

Well, is it wrong for a ballplayer to hang out with professional gamblers and bookies? Is it wrong for him to bet on sports other than baseball? Is it wrong for him to bet on other baseball teams, but not his own? Is it wrong for him to bet on his own team to win? Is it wrong for him to bet on his own team to lose? Is it wrong for him to throw games, like the 1919 Black Sox?

The last is catastrophic to the welfare of baseball, so to minimize temptation, the game has walked its rules about betting a long way back up the slippery slope.

Similarly, once players start taking HGH to help them over nagging injuries (and all players over a certain age, and probably all starting pitchers of any age, have nagging ailments), how likely is it that they will stop? Why not keep going with the HGH until your head has swelled up to Barry Bonds's current size and you're trashing the record book by setting the all time mark for career homers?

By the way, the reason I've always been more interested in the impact of steroids than in Human Growth Hormone is because steroids are sex hormones, and thus provide unnatural experiments in the biological differences between the sexes. They are called "anabolic steroids" because they try to remove the other virilizing effects besides muscle-building, but they still have other side effects. Of course, products like the synthetic testosterone that Andrew Sullivan takes are even more closely related to natural male hormones in effect.

In contrast, Human Growth Hormone isn't as interesting as a test of, say, feminist theory.

By the way, I tend to believe Yankee pitcher Andy Pettite's claim that he only briefly used HGH. The product tends to make your jaw swell up, and Pettite has the kind of particularly narrow face on which the effects would be most visible.

It seemed fairly likely at the 1996 Olympics that veteran superstar Carl Lewis had gone on HGH because his normally clean-cut features [1992 photo] were suddenly ridiculously misshapen [1996] -- he looked like a squirrel carrying nuts in his cheeks. My wife and I saw Carl on TV recently, and she was shocked at how his face had gone a long way back to its original form.

Lots of sprinters during the 1990s who were in their 20s and even 30s suddenly got orthodontic braces on their teeth, because their faces were changing shape due to HGH, causing their teeth to point in weird directions. There weren't HGH tests in the 1990s, so it was a popular alternative.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

11 comments:

  1. I don't know why our society is so obsessed over players trying to make themselves better. Consider that half of college students take Ritalin, half of middle aged men take Viagra, everyone takes medicine to lower cholesterol, fight depression, stay up late, and have more energy.

    Most successful athletes have huge genetic advantages to start out with (just ask the overwhelmingly east african marathon winners).

    So, what's wrong with helping the already objectified and over endorsed athlete put him over the top?

    Hey, being insanely tall gives Yao Ming an unfair advantage, and makes his successes less respectable. We should outlaw tall people in the NBA.

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  2. Is it wrong for him to bet on other baseball teams,...

    If the other team is playing against his team, and he's betting that his team will lose, then yes, most definitely.

    Is it wrong for him to bet on his own team to lose?

    Obviously yes. Because it's much easier to do something to guarantee that you will lose than it is to do something to guarantee that you will win.

    It seemed awfully obvious at the 1996 Olympics that veteran superstar Carl Lewis had gone on HGH...

    To perhaps state the obvious: the photographic evidence here regarding Lewis isn't nearly as dramatic or convincing as the 'before' and 'after' photos of Bonds.

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  3. Education:
    Malcy was on NPR today...

    IQ Test Is Also a Measure of

    Society, Author Says
    Writer Malcolm Gladwell discusses his recent New Yorker article, "None of the Above: What IQ Doesn't Tell You About Race." Gladwell's article reviews a recent book by psychologist James Flynn which posits that IQ is as much a barometer of society as it is a measure of intelligence.

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  4. I have a hard time believing that structural changes to bone would reverse like that. In that case, wouldn't Bonds' head shrink back to a normal size?

    Call me an empiricist, but I have a very hard time gauging biological effects of PEDs through photographs.

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  5. is that 1992 cover of runner's world real? that's pretty funny if it is.

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  6. Setting aside whatever moral/philosophical/etc. arguments there are to make against steroids, the overriding practical argument against them is that if we all know the players are juicing, we're not going to care about the sport - who wants to watch a contest of who is the better drug-taker/drug-producer? So if baseball wants to prevent fans from losing interest in it, they will be strict about where to draw the line on the slippery slope. (Moral philosophers may not be able to draw a distinction between height and drugs, but, amazingly, we the ignorant public can!)

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  7. Steve said that there were no tests for HGH in the 1990s, implying that there are tests today.

    I was under the impression that we still did not have a test for HGH. Is that right?

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  8. I have read that HGH is only performance enhancing when taken in combination with steroids, so taking HGH to heal injuries is similar to taking anti-inflammatories.

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  9. Can you take/get HGH without a prescription?

    Isn't that the key thing no one is talking about. If it's legal, why the debate?

    If it isn't legal, then there should be a debate. Case closed.

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  10. I would like to respond to a comment made by you Steve that is absolutely fase and defamatory. My name is Carl Lewis and I have NEVER used HGH, STEROIDS, or any drugs. I find it interesting that you tried to put a picture up that does not compare the way I look from year to year. And by the way, the look that you get from HGH is structural and not reversible so what you and your wife saw was in your own eyes. It is consistant with the bias toward professional teams over Olympic Sports. I have been a leader in the fight against drugs in sports for more than twenty years. I asked for an independent agency to take over drug test in ALL sport in 1987 when it was not a major issue. It is people like you that spread false information that urts the cause. Instead of making excuses for a sport and its athletes that has a rampant drug problem, you should blame a union that refused to alow testing even after Faye Vincent recomended it. If you are going to have a blog and provide information to the public, you should at lease get you facts straight. And to all of you, this is agreat time in sports, our goal should be to make our sports clean for the cildren of the future. Competing as a athlete is a privilage not a right in this country and if you choose to cheat you should be caught and suspended for years like the Olympic sports, not for a few games like the major league sports. If you want to speak on this subject, why don't you ask baseball and the major team sports why they do not have independent testing like the Olympic sports. I would love to see what response that would get...

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  11. I was under the impression that we still did not have a test for HGH. Is that right?

    There is a test(s) for HGH now, it just requires a blood test which the MLBPA will not allow MLB to administer. Olympic athletes, cyclists, etc are another story.

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