Ethical Hypothesis: What if Steroids Were Safe?
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Well, haven't they? What are all the whey proteins, creatine, etc., that guys take now? I understand that these aren't strictly "drugs", but you get my point.To address his point (that this is nothing new), while there are performance enhancers out there right now that don't have negative side effects, there is not a safe muscle-builder. The ingredients for muscles, to my understanding, are micro-tears in your current muscles, protein, testosterone, and sleep. You get the micro-tears by working out those muscle groups. You have to eat the protein in one way or another (and I think the protein is needed for making the stem cells). Sleep I'm guessing you're familiar with. Testosterone is the stimulant -- to my understanding, I'm no doctor, and I'd love for someone who knows this stuff better to tell me how wrong I am here -- and there isn't a way to safely enhance that ingredient. Steroids try. Stemulite is just another of these supplements, which seems to me to use the protein in eggplant which simulates testosterone's effect (but isn't testosterone). This still gets us nowhere with the ethical question of where do we draw the line, if we draw one, with performance enhancement in general? Obvs, there's no way to force every NCAA football player to have the same regimen as Harry Kipke. So I figure, if we're to draw a line somewhere, the one already there between "dangerous if used as intended" and "not dangerous if used as intended" is as good as any. But then, what happens when they can simulate every ingredient for muscles safely? What if you could take a pill that creates the mini-tears just where you need them, and then stimulates and creates an overabundance of testosterone and stem cells for fast rebuilding (and helps you sleep), but was completely safe. The potential for the existence of such a drug makes my "safe/unsafe" line incompatible with our basic moral senses. Another put forth is legality, another very visible line, but in that case more subject to the whimsy of lawmakers (i.e. us). Any more? As you can see, the OP here is pretty conflicted.
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If you gave Babe Ruth steroids and the extra games that are played today in comparison to the season length he played you would definitely have a different single season home run leader.You forgot to mention the first six years of his career were during the dead ball era: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/ruthba01.shtml#1914-1919-su… There are a lot more factors than that. For one, what we call a "ground rule double" today was a home run until 1931 in most parks. On the other hand, those parks were generally a LOT bigger. On the other other hand, the years he was with the Yankees had a lot more runs in general than today. All told, the neutralized batting stats we have say that playing 162-game seasons against modern pitching, Babe would have hit 712 home runs. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/ruthba01-bat.shtml#1914-193… ut that doesn't seem to take into account the size of ballparks, which hurts Babe in the homer category if it helps with his batting average. And it doesn't give him back the years he spent pitching. Ruth hit 49 home runs between 1914 and 1919. He hit 54 in 1920, and 59 in 1921, and AVERAGED 41 homers a year for the rest of his career. With both of these men, then, there was a marked shift in amount of home runs hit at the same time there was a marked shift in power numbers across the league. In 1992, the AIR (offensive level of the parks played in) was at 91 for Bonds, and was generally in the high '80s or low '90s until then. In '93, it jumped to 101, and never dipped below 100 again in his career (he moved to San Francisco in '94 so it wasn't that the park changed). For Babe, it was low 80s until jumping to 90 in 1919 and to 110 in 1920, remaining about that level for the rest of his career. For Ruth, it was the live ball and the construction of the Classic Era ballparks that explains this. For Bonds, I guess 1993 is the start of the steroid era.
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