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Middle aged men rejuvenated by steroids and growth hormone; Can I please have some?
As the shitstorm swirls around yesterday's Boys of Summer, now the goats of Fall, may we not pause a moment in wonder at the miracles of chemistry?
Just because teenage boys (already suffering from testosterone poisoning...) ought not bump their hormones artificially, does this mean that we should turn away from the prospect that men over 40 (Rocket, this means you...) might benefit from the same bump?
And should free individuals not be permitted to choose for themselves what risks to incur for what benefits?
Enhanced performance is a good thing.
Put differently, if God had not intended us to consume steroids (smoke dope, lick toads...) it would not have invented them.
Better living through chemistry!
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Chemistry indeed, but what about biomedical engineering?
I don't understand why people who would have watched the fat guys scratching their package and spitting their chaw would have a problem with veins bulging from the veins of the last cohort of baseball players. I can also see the value of a football team averaging 600lb of pure muscle.
I like fighting. People like me who train for it can go a few rounds, get the snot beat from them, and then articulate together where each went wrong or right. Martial arts keeps it realistic. But I can definitely imagine the appeal of straight boxers working on andro, crazy with rage and without pain. What if Chuck Lidell could pack on another 79 pounds?
And why not bionics?
To borrow a phrase, 'Fuck it!' If it's entertainment, and we all understand it, wouldn't it be better, and more competitive? There should be a 'roids league.
December 14, 2007 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't mean to be insensitive to the argument that those who do not wish to juice are thus at a competitive disadvantage, but so might be those who eschew surgery to implant a spring in the tibia.(cf. your example of the bionic competitor, which is already maturing into controversy in re:wheelchair marathoners and guys with those springloaded protheses)
I guess I'm just a little puzzled by the tut-tutting from a society that has (in the context of a different kind of performance enhancement) embraced Viagra for the old boys and speed for the young ones.
What a surprise! Give kids speed and they do better in school.
(Lucky I figured that out for myself 40 years ago.)
December 15, 2007 2:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, but us heads co-opted that great line. Think LSD.
December 14, 2007 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not for nothing is the sainted Dr Hoffman listed primus inter pares tied with Stephen Hawking, as the two top of the twenty five greatest living geniuses...
Talk about your molecules of awe, (or as Sash Shulgin used to say, "amines I have known and loved...")
December 15, 2007 2:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Better living through chemistry
I agree with the better living, but remember who came up with that moniker and why.
I was Dupont the explosive manufacturer who came up with the line
Better living through chemistry because the public had attached
the moniker "Merchants of Death".
The two should always be linked in the yin-yang balance of life.
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Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking
December 14, 2007 10:15 PM | Reply | Permalink