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As some of you may know, daytime television tackled the topic of steroid use yesterday in its usual serious and objective way. (Yeah, sure!) I agreed to appear on it so that there might be at least some reliable information for the public. Claiming to be a "fair" and "unbiased" examination, the show was anything but. For starters, take the title: "Steroids: Deadly Drugs."
The standard format of these shows is to introduce the person with a complaint -- such as “my sister dresses too sexy," or “my grandma stole my boyfriend.” Then, the offender is trotted out, ripe for ridicule. In this particular case, various bad behaviors were attributed to the steroid users, at least one of which appeared to be mentally disabled. But think about it: are the few illegal steroid users willing and eager to appear on national television and confess to their criminal behavior fairly representative of most illegal steroid users? I doubt it. While some tragic incidents were recounted, the show had neither the time nor the inclination to delve into the role that preexisting mental illnesses, use of other illicit substances (alone or in combination), or a host of other unrelated factors might have played. It was always time for another commercial. Welcome to television.
Later in the show, a toxicologist spouted the usual litany of nonsense to validate Ricki Lake’s repeated factual distortions and oversimplifications. It wasn’t surprising, given that the medical community has been twisting the truth about steroids for years (starting with their original straight-faced lie that steroids don’t work). Off camera, I asked the doctor why he was double-talking. He said that if his warnings scared just one kid away from using steroids, he’d have done well. I responded that for the one kid he swayed, there were surely a dozen other, more sophisticated kids with access to books, magazines or Internet sources – all of which would quickly expose the doctor as a Boy Who Cried Wolf. His bogus warnings having been stripped of credibility, most kids would disbelieve ALL health warnings – even the valid ones. If they suffered consequences, he could blame himself. He was visibly stunned.
Shortly afterward, as I left the studio, I spied the poor doctor standing nearby. Between his lips was a cigarette. The desperate soul couldn’t even wait to leave the vicinity before dragging on a cancer stick. To the delight of the exiting show guests, I mocked him for a while. Hippocrates, the wise Greek physician and originator of the famous Hippocratic Oath, must be spinning in his grave over hypocrites like this guy. In fact, I think I'll turn this post into a column for next month's Muscular Development magazine and call it "Steroids and the Hypocritic Oath." What do you think?
The standard format of these shows is to introduce the person with a complaint -- such as “my sister dresses too sexy," or “my grandma stole my boyfriend.” Then, the offender is trotted out, ripe for ridicule. In this particular case, various bad behaviors were attributed to the steroid users, at least one of which appeared to be mentally disabled. But think about it: are the few illegal steroid users willing and eager to appear on national television and confess to their criminal behavior fairly representative of most illegal steroid users? I doubt it. While some tragic incidents were recounted, the show had neither the time nor the inclination to delve into the role that preexisting mental illnesses, use of other illicit substances (alone or in combination), or a host of other unrelated factors might have played. It was always time for another commercial. Welcome to television.
Later in the show, a toxicologist spouted the usual litany of nonsense to validate Ricki Lake’s repeated factual distortions and oversimplifications. It wasn’t surprising, given that the medical community has been twisting the truth about steroids for years (starting with their original straight-faced lie that steroids don’t work). Off camera, I asked the doctor why he was double-talking. He said that if his warnings scared just one kid away from using steroids, he’d have done well. I responded that for the one kid he swayed, there were surely a dozen other, more sophisticated kids with access to books, magazines or Internet sources – all of which would quickly expose the doctor as a Boy Who Cried Wolf. His bogus warnings having been stripped of credibility, most kids would disbelieve ALL health warnings – even the valid ones. If they suffered consequences, he could blame himself. He was visibly stunned.
Shortly afterward, as I left the studio, I spied the poor doctor standing nearby. Between his lips was a cigarette. The desperate soul couldn’t even wait to leave the vicinity before dragging on a cancer stick. To the delight of the exiting show guests, I mocked him for a while. Hippocrates, the wise Greek physician and originator of the famous Hippocratic Oath, must be spinning in his grave over hypocrites like this guy. In fact, I think I'll turn this post into a column for next month's Muscular Development magazine and call it "Steroids and the Hypocritic Oath." What do you think?
} [/B]
I got some guns, but those guys have the heavy stuff! 
