Blog Entry #92
By Dan Chaiet, Senior Editor – Steroidal.com
Ever since the very first early humans hundreds of thousands of years ago picked up sticks and stones to combine together and create tools in order to become more efficient at hunting, building, farming, and gathering, we have become a performance enhancement species. Our society and our species as a whole is rife with performance enhancement in every aspect and every area of our lives, yet somehow for some reason we have been convinced to take a different attitude – the completely opposite attitude – towards muscle growth, athletics, and physical performance.
This discussion should put the issue of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) and anabolic steroids into perspective for all of us, as it seems as though our culture and society has slipped too far into the area of irrational double-standards when it comes to this aspect of our society, culture, and species. In every other aspect of our lives, we embrace the advancements of all sorts of technologies that enhance our performance – we drive cars to work so that we don’t have to use a horse and buggy or walk, we fly on jet aircraft across the world in order to minimize our travel time, we use computers, cellphones, and televisions to communicate at near-instant speed with one another across the world. Could you imagine if we still had to send messages to others via horseback-riding messengers? Of course not. But why is it that we push for greater and greater technologies that make all aspects of our lives quicker, faster, and easier with instant gratification, but as we are concerned with athletics, bodybuilding, and physical capability, we want to roll back technology to the Stone Age? It doesn’t make sense.
It doesn’t make sense because our Western culture has been convinced to adopt a double standard as it pertains to athletics and physical fitness – a double standard that never existed in our prior history. Unbeknownst to the majority of individuals, the ancient Greek Olympic athletes circa 1700 BC did consume anabolic steroids – in the form of Testosterone via the consumption of large quantities of sheep and bull testicles. Performance enhancement did not end there either, as these ancient athletes would employ a plethora of other dietary modifications and practices under the belief that they would enhance physical performance. In fact, the quest to utilize something that would provide a performance enhancing edge to the athlete was not just allowed and accepted, it was encouraged! This is in stark contrast with our attitudes towards PEDs and anabolic steroids today, where the overwhelming majority of individuals in our society shun the use of PEDs, even by noncompetitive athletes who are merely attempting to use these substances for their own personal physique goals. But this doesn’t make sense considering the daily use of technologies by these same anti-PED individuals that enhance every other aspect of our lives, which would make the vast majority of individuals in our society, quite plainly, hypocrites.
There are many anti-PED individuals and groups out there that would rebuttal this point by bringing up the fact that these drugs and substances can have potential risk of ill health effects, or that these drugs are not a necessity for the recreational users who utilize them, putting themselves at unneeded risk. Who says that any of the technologies we use today to enhance our lives are without risk? The use of automobiles to travel faster not only present a dire risk to the driver(s) of them, but they also present harms and risks to society as a whole, as the combustion of gasoline and other fossil fuels contribute to the pollution and destruction of our environment. Cars and automobiles are also not a necessity, as there are plenty of individuals who walk to and from work or school because they cannot afford a car or to use public transit. Furthermore, our species survived and functioned just fine for thousands of years without automobiles! The point being made here is that every decision to develop and utilize some sort of technology, product, or device to make our lives more convenient and more efficient all carry with them risks of ill effects, and many of them far worse than anabolic steroids or PEDs could ever impose!
Furthermore, what is it that we do with the technologies we use on a daily basis thus far? We discovered that automobiles in the 1960s and 1970s presented significant amounts of pollution, so today we use fossil fuel driven vehicles that have been developed such that they present a far lesser impact environmentally. We are even intensively searching for novel fuel sources that might be able to replace fossil fuels whilst still providing us with the desirable effects of automotive transportation, and possibly eliminating the side-effects! Vehicles pre-1970s were horribly dangerous and lethal when involved in collisions, resulting in needless deaths. Today our vehicles are safer than ever, and we only continue to improve on our developments and technologies, improving on what we have already built, fixing faults, and finding safe(r) alternatives.
It is therefore completely illogical and irrational to point fingers at anabolic steroids and PEDs, claim they are harmful to those who use them, and deem them unnecessary for such use and criminalize and ban them. We should be adopting the same attitudes and mindsets that we currently utilize with everything else in our society. We should be allowing freedom for science to research anabolic steroids and PEDs so that we might be able to reduce or eliminate the potential risks/hazards, and/or perhaps develop or discover a hypothetically ‘completely safe’ anabolic steroid or PED. Unfortunately, with these prohibitionist medieval and archaic attitudes that the majority of our society harbors towards PEDs and anabolic steroids, the prohibitionist laws that have been implemented have destroyed and completely retarded our scientific progress and development in this area. As a result, it might not be possible that we will see safe and equally effective alternatives to anabolic steroids in our lifetime if the current anti-steroid laws and societal attitudes continue.
We should be embracing our abilities to enhance performance in all aspects of our culture, society, and species. We should not be adopting backwards double-standard attitudes that serve only to hold back scientific and technological development. To censor and hold back scientific progress is to ensure eventual doom for our society and species.
There is nothing morally superior about ignoring the advancements of science and biochemistry of the past century as it pertains to athletics and muscle building. If you want to live an Amish lifestyle where athletics and bodybuilding are concerned, that is your personal choice, but please do so quietly and spare those who choose to utilize anabolic steroids and PEDs of your self-righteousness.
