Thursday, February 14, 2008

The Next Steroids.

I'm not much of a sports fan, but the story below suggests once again that it's time to take the money totally out of sports (beyond salaries for jobs done). The "winner take all" nature of the game creates a gigantic incentive to use performance-enhancing drugs to get into the high-paid majors (which pay much (much) more than the minors and amateur sports) or to stay there (cf. Barry Bonds).

If things continue to go the way they are going, big-league professional sports will either involve cyborgs, druggies, and/or transplantees -- or it will involve a draconian and intrusive system to prevent any kind of significant enhancement (making an extremely arbitrary decision about what's "significant").

So, even though (as an inveterate couch potato) I can't be the pied piper in this movement, I think sports fans should shun major-league sports and flock to (truly) amateur sports, or as a compromise, minor-league sports. The Olympics would be a good place to start: fans should insist that it go back to amateur athletics, perhaps with some allowance for athletes receiving a standardized salary.

My friend Ian responded that "Athletes have been cyborgs since shoes and helmets were invented and the pharmacology of performance enhancement is thousands of years old."

True, but that doesn't change the point: we have to end the winner-take-all nature of sports. (Look what winner-take-all competition does to politics! but that's another question.)



The New York Times / February 12, 2008
Finding May Solve Riddle of Fatigue in Muscles
By GINA (Piña) KOLATA

One of the great unanswered questions in physiology is why muscles get tired. The experience is universal, common to creatures that have muscles, but the answer has been elusive until now.

Scientists at Columbia say they have not only come up with an answer, but have also devised, for mice, an experimental drug that can revive the animals and let them keep running long after they would normally flop down in exhaustion.

For decades, muscle fatigue had been largely ignored or misunderstood. Leading physiology textbooks did not even try to offer a mechanism, said Dr. Andrew Marks, principal investigator of the new study. A popular theory, that muscles become tired because they release lactic acid, was discredited not long ago.

In a report published Monday in an early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Marks says the problem is calcium flow inside muscle cells. Ordinarily, ebbs and flows of calcium in cells control muscle contractions. But when muscles grow tired, the investigators report, tiny channels in them start leaking calcium, and that weakens contractions. At the same time, the leaked calcium stimulates an enzyme that eats into muscle fibers, contributing to the muscle exhaustion.

-ellipsis-

Then, collaborating with David Nieman, an exercise scientist at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., the investigators asked whether the human skeletal muscles grew tired for the same reason, calcium leaks.

Highly trained bicyclists rode stationary bikes at intense levels of exertion for three hours a day three days in a row. For comparison, other cyclists sat in the room but did not exercise.

Dr. Nieman removed snips of thigh muscle from all the athletes after the third day and sent them to Columbia, where Dr. Marks's group analyzed them without knowing which samples were from the exercisers and which were not.The results, Dr. Marks said, were clear. The calcium channels in the exercisers leaked. A few days later, the channels had repaired themselves. The athletes were back to normal.

Of course, even though Dr. Marks wants to develop the drug to help people with congestive heart failure, hoping to alleviate their fatigue and improve their heart functions, athletes might also be tempted to use it if it eventually goes to the market.

-ellipsis-

So the day may come when there is an antifatigue drug.

That idea, "is sort of amazing," said Dr. Steven Liggett, a heart-failure researcher at the University of Maryland. Yet, Dr. Liggett said, for athletes "we have to ask whether it would be prudent to be circumventing this mechanism."

"Maybe this is a protective mechanism," he said. "Maybe fatigue is saying that you are getting ready to go into a danger zone. So it is cutting you off. If you could will yourself to run as fast and as long as you could, some people would run until they keeled over and died."

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Econoclast raises more than one interesting issue which are inter-related. First, performance enhancing drugs in major league sports. Why should I care? Why should pkrofessional sports come under the supervision of the Congress? More importantly, why is the Congress wasting time and money on this Clemens Circus? Is there really nothing better to do by way of congressional investigations at the present time?

Professional sports teams are business entities which serve the purpose of earning those involved very substantial sums of money as an entertainment medium. If the interest of the public wanes because the behavior of those involved is seen as tawdry, then their business suffers. Don't hold your breath until the fans lose their taste for publilc spectacle. If the performance enhancing drugs are illegal then let local prosecutors do their jobs. It doesn't warrant wasting the tax payer's money on congressional grand standing.

Anonymous said...

Part II: Performance enhancing drugs. So what else is new? Get a copy of Sigmund Freud's, The Cocaine Papers. Early research, which Siggy carried out early in his career, was first focused on two aspects of the drug's potential. First, performance enhancement was known to be a primary "benefit" to the natives of the Andes Mt areas where it was grown. Get together with a few tribesmen. Boil up some coca leaves. Pray to your local deities. Dance around for a couple of days and nights. Good stuff!!
Freud made efforts, albeit rather primitive by modern experimental standards, to measure the physical enhancement effects. Very positive
results.

The stuff was also thought to have good potential as a cure for opium addiction in the same way that methadone was thought to be useful in heroin detoxification. Not so good. It was quickly discovered that cocaine had some serious negative effects; addictive itself and the patient stood a good chance of over dosing. This was apparently the outcome for one of Freud's close friends who suffered morphine addiction as a result of a serious case of neuralgia(I think).

So performance enhancing drugs are not new. In the case of cocaine such enhancement was not to be its long term benfit. Eye surgery, however, did find good use for the drug early on. Go know.

Econoclast said...

why should we care about drug abuse in professional sports? well, maybe because we subsidize them: Major League Baseball is exempted from anti-trust, while lots of cities have paid for new stadia for their gladiators.
Jim

Anonymous said...

Maybe better yet we should stop our asinine local politicos from subsidizing a privately held business which earns its owners large sums of money. It's not sport when its sports business. It has been amply documented that the monies spent by local municipalities on sports teams does not return the investment.

The best form of anti-trust control would be feet walking away from over priced stadium seats and the opportunity to spend on over priced hot dogs and such. This is certainly one area of private enterprise that the government would do well to keep out of and on which to make no special exemptions or expenditures.

Econoclast said...

Jack: >Maybe better yet we should stop our asinine local politicos from subsidizing a privately held business which earns its owners large sums of money.<

as a non-sports nut, how could I disagree. But it seems to me that the spectacle of cyborg sport (cybort?) is a problem because (1) it is bad for the athletes who take these drugs and (2) it's bad for the culture.
Jim

Anonymous said...

econoclast, I don't think it should be the gov't's role to be the culture police.

I totally agree with Jack. This should be none of congress's business. And there should be no subsidies to pro sports of any kind. No anti-trust exemptions, no publicly funded stadiums for wealthy sports team owners, etc. Let pro sports fend for it self in the so-called sorta free market, and let the fans express their attitude toward the pro sports culture with their dollars and whether they continue to spend them to prop up the whole enterprise or get disgusted by it all and walk away.

If the sports-loving public doesn't care about the drug issue enough to just stop going to the games, then it seems a bit elitist, particularly if one is a non-sports buff, to lecture them about their culture (and I say this as someone who is a non-sports buff himself and who has no time for the ridiculous circus of pro sports, being mired in the ridiculous circus of rock music instead)

As for the athletes, if they feel forced to take drugs to stay competitive, let them take it up with their unions, rat out the users among themselves, walk off the job until the problem is addressed, or take other collective action.

But keep the government out of it. It's just another opportunity for congress-critters to grandstand and act self righteous anyway, while not, in the end, doing a thing that has any positive effect on the majority of citizens.

I'd rather they spend their time stopping the torture and illegal surveillance and reigning in all the abuses of presidential power that have happened over the past 7 years. Coming up with a workable plan for true universal healthcare wouldn't be bad, either. But going after silly sports stars is apparently so much easier and more rewarding, PR-wise.

Anonymous said...

To the issue of what an individual should or shouldn't do to them self. If certaian substance can be shown to be seriously deletorious to the body, some degree of regulation may be appropriate. Unfortunately that's a road well traveled and poorly navigated. We can drink alcohol to our heart's content and eventual destruction, as too we can with tobacco products. We can't smoke weed. Huh?? If stroids and human growth hormones are truly problematic then leave them in the hands of the medical community, as we do any prescription drug.

If a sports organization, NBA, NFL, MLB, etc. wants to have rules against certain personal activities of its employees, that's between them and is easily structured within the laws of contracts. Professional sports has one goal, which is profitability. If Baseball can regulate its player market (antitrust anyone?) then it can certainly regulate drug use. In a world where teams that are based in New Jersey call themselves the New York Giants and Jets, what rational thinking should we expect?

Econoclast said...

Joe Ray:
> I don't think it should be the gov't's role to be the culture police.

> I totally agree with Jack. This should be none of congress's business. <

I generally reject government interference in culture, but it's a mistake to be absolutist.

First, it's true that culture is "none of congress's business" but it's possible that we could have a more democratic society someday in which Congress would actually represent the people. In that case, the people whose culture is being regulated would be in greater sync with the people who make the decisions.

Second, and more importantly, it's hard to separate culture from behavior. Is pederasty (statuary rape) only a matter of culture? I don't think so.

Even in the case of steroids, it's more than "culture." If athlete A uses them, it pushes athlete B to use them too, to maintain competition. This is true all over the map these days: competition is positional, where one person's actions have an impact on others.

Now I don't think the current Congress can change this situation. Congresscreeps will continue to be demagogic about steroids and child abuse. And their behavior will continue to reflect not only their campaign contributors' dollar votes but also the excessively individualistic culture we have these days.

> And there should be no subsidies to pro sports of any kind. No anti-trust exemptions, no publicly funded stadiums for wealthy sports team owners, etc.<

Yeah, get business out of government! do you think Obama, Clinton, or McCain is more likely to implement this plan?

> Let pro sports fend for it self in the so-called sorta free market, and let the fans express their attitude toward the pro sports culture with their dollars and whether they continue to spend them to prop up the whole enterprise or get disgusted by it all and walk away. <

If you read my initial posting you'll notice that this is what I called for. Boycott big league sports!

> If the sports-loving public doesn't care about the drug issue enough to just stop going to the games, then it seems a bit elitist, particularly if one is a non-sports buff, to lecture them about their culture ...<

Hey, you're preaching to me. Why I can't I preach to you?

> As for the athletes, if they feel forced to take drugs to stay competitive, let them take it up with their unions, rat out the users among themselves, walk off the job until the problem is addressed, or take other collective action. ... <

Alas, the baseball union is a total apologist on the steroid issue. I don't think this problem will go away as long as major-league baseball pays so much more than minor-league and amateur baseball.

> I'd rather they spend their time stopping the torture and illegal surveillance and reigning in all the abuses of presidential power that have happened over the past 7 years. Coming up with a workable plan for true universal healthcare wouldn't be bad, either. But going after silly sports stars is apparently so much easier and more rewarding, PR-wise. <

Sounds good to me. They should go against the US car culture to fight global warming, too.

Jack writes:
> The the issue of what an individual should or shouldn't do to them self. <

Individual use of steroids encourages other athletes to use them to survive competition and to avoid falling out of the high-paid major-league jobs. It's more than an individual issue.

> If certaian substance can be shown to be seriously deletorious to the body, some degree of regulation may be appropriate. Unfortunately that's a road well traveled and poorly navigated. We can drink alcohol to our heart's content and eventual destruction, as too we can with tobacco products. We can't smoke weed. Huh?? If stroids and human growth hormones are truly problematic then leave them in the hands of the medical community, as we do any prescription drug.<

who decides which drugs require prescriptions? it's the government!

> If a sports organization, NBA, NFL, MLB, etc. wants to have rules against certain personal activities of its employees, that's between them and is easily structured within the laws of contracts. Professional sports has one goal, which is profitability. If Baseball can regulate its player market (antitrust anyone?) then it can certainly regulate drug use. In a world where teams that are based in New Jersey call themselves the New York Giants and Jets, what rational thinking should we expect?<

That's what Bush and his friends like: voluntary guidelines and business self-regulation. It's true that the MLB owners don't like steroids -- but only as a matter of public relations. But in practice, if a Barry Bonds uses steroids that's okay as long as it brings in customer dollars.

The player's union and the owners agree that what's important is the money. It's only been public pressure and -- gasp!! -- pressure from Congress that has led to progress on this.

Anyway, what I was talking about was much more than steroids: we need to abolish the winner-take-all nature of sports.
--
Jim Devine

Econoclast said...

Juan's comment is totally irrelevant to my most.

Jack said...

juan,
Have you been snorting or just chewing on too many peyote buttons?
Or, maybe you're cultivating hemp for sale to the navy so that the marines can use it to make rope for the purpose of tying up the guys being held in Guantanamo and then smoking the residue.
Jim,
You're concerns are not poorly placed, but the ability to control the use of any drug has never proven to be effective. What to do about the use of enhancing drugs in professional sports? Publicize it when the facts are definitive. Let the sports loving public decide what they will accept. Given that pro sports is a private, for profit
business, I don't see how the winner take all character can be changed. It is what the fans demand. It occurs in collegiate sports which have fully taken on the aura of pro competition. In that venue the players are far more exploited than is the case in pro sports. Frankly, the kind of devotion that adult men show to pro sports strikes me as evidence of prolonged adolescence and/or a wide spread condition of a sense of personal inadequacy.

Anonymous said...

Jim, whatever relevance I was imagining had to do with 'performance enhancement', one hand the chewing of coca leaves, other, the use of steroids, and the different motives/ends involved, but only one directly related to the provision of spectacular entertainment.

Jack, sorry, no peyote etc, but a series of quotes, from Vespucci in 1504 to the NYTimes.

Econoclast said...

Juan wrote: > Jim, whatever relevance I was imagining had to do with 'performance enhancement', one hand the chewing of coca leaves, other, the use of steroids, and the different motives/ends involved, but only one directly related to the provision of spectacular entertainment.<

And I was saying that the sports that people should watch should not involve spectacular entertainment but rather good old-fashioned amateur and semi-pro stuff.
--
Jim Devine

Unknown said...

Many young people take anabolizant steroids to obtain a fast increase of their muscular mass, but is this the best choice? I read at Project Weight Loss what are the side effects. Androgen steroids have some negative effects on men and women who use them for muscular mass increase. Anabolizant steroids may produce long-term side effects for different organs or sometimes even lead to behavioral changes for those who use them.

Econoclast said...

Sharon writes: >Many young people take anabolizant steroids to obtain a fast increase of their muscular mass, but is this the best choice?<

that's right: there are costs associated with the benefits of steroids. Of course, steroids are necessary for some medical purposes, too. My point, however, was that the system of professional sports competition creates the incentive for individuals to down-play the costs and exaggerate the benefits, encouraging people to be irrational from their own points of view. It's just like the case where someone starves herself to win a beauty contest: it hurts her but does not do her any good if all the other contestants abuse themselves in the same way.
Jim

kevin quinn said...

Intervention makes sense as a way of helping the players, who have a collective action problem. Presumably, Jim has in mind preferences such that all players prefer an outcome where none enhances to one where all do. The problem is that each prefers even more an outcome where he/she enhances and no one else does and prefers even less an outcome where all but he/she enhances!

On the cultural front, though, sport is a "practice" in Alasdair McIntyre's sense. Practices have integrity which can be undermined by market norms or, in this case, cheating. The fans who prefer a practice with greater integrity then have a collective action problem, since the integrity of the practice is a public good.

Take science, which is also a practice. Suppose salary, promotion depends on relative publication rates and you can publish more if you take money from drug companies and subtly slant the findings in favor of the funder. Scientists are in a prisoner's dilemma : they plausibly prefer the outcome where drug company money is banned to one where it is not. Consumers of science also have an interest in integrity, but would not voluntarily contribute funds to fund research that is not tainted, prefering to free ride off the contributions of others.