Yao Ming and Performance Enhancing Surgery
 

So why isnt anyone upset about this? Ming is going in to have surgery on his foot so he wont get stress fractures so he can play.
Personally, I dont see much difference between this and steroids. If a PROFESSIONAL athlete wants to do something to improve performance. Go for it.

Is this sarcasm?

I have been saved.

Baseball allowed some punk-ass kid with a freak arm injury to pitch for the Cubs, which was kinda like a performance enhancing injury... so maybe performance enhancing surgery should be allowed as well?

ROSINBAGGER!

I loved that movie.

isn't all surgery "performance enhancing"? I mean, Brady is sure going to play better this year after having knee surgery than if he hadn't...

So by your logic anyone who needs any kind of surgery or treatment should just be done?

Makes sense.

Heck no. I think anything that makes a professional athlete perform better should be okay.

No, I think the point is that there's a lot of hypocrisy. Laser-eye surgery is "performance-enhancing"; should we ban that and get a bunch of old farts to whine about the integrity of the game on that? PED's/Steroids whatever get blown out of proportion.

lol one is performance-enhancing somebody who is otherwise healthy. the other is correcting an injury. it's an apples-to-oranges argument and it's insulting to the intelligence of everyone here that you'd try to make it with a straight face

I don't think it's that black and white an issue. One use of steroids is to help a player with rehab. And many surgeries today may seem barbaric by standards 100 years from now (as long as this health care "reform" mess fails).

Maybe the answer is to create safer steroids or to create a "pure" league where people who have undergone laser-eye surgery or Tommyjohnsurgery are not welcome.

What about glasses or stitches or ice packs? How about a Christian Scientist league?

Pitcher got a big butt.

Well, what would you say if a hitter had contact lenses that elevated his eyesight to 20/15? No stitches, ice packs, gloves, aspirin, helmets or rosin bags.

I see this new league as potentially being Perfect 10 as compared to Playboy.

Well, that sums it up nicely. Extremely well as a matter of fact.

:D

i've been hanging around threads with you more lately - it must be rubbing off on me :D

Planning to deny cancer survivors who had treatment a place in the league too?
Let's see how long it takes Congress to squash that one.

edit to add: Or are you just going to spin it as "life-threatening illness or injury only"? And how long before someone challenges the definition of that?
Or maybe you're just being downright silly and I'm missing the humor.

Just to play devil's advocate here.

If you have an injury, should you then be allowed to take anabolic steroids to get healthy? I mean you are just trying to correct an injury faster.

Where do you draw the line too? Cortisone is a steroid yet is really common in all sports. Curt Schilling doesn't throw Game 6 with the bloody sock without it. It's in fact more dangerous in a way.

Performance enhancement can be used many ways. Why is Winstrol illegal but a crapload of natural herbs at GNC aren't? Tons of athletes take creatine and whey which is a performance enhancer. Tiger Woods had elective surgery on his eyes to make them 20/15.

I guess I don't see why they draw the line at what they do. Either performance enhancers are illegal or they aren't. It seems sports try to turn certain steroids into the boogeyman that they aren't.

Baseball players used steroids to help them get over the nicks and nagging injuries they suffered during a 162 game season. Middle relievers used steroids to help them recover from 3 or 4 days of 3 IPs quicker. The side benefit was power hitters found they could hit the ball farther.
I am okay with use of anything by pro athletes. If it makes the game more entertaining. Have at it.

I guess if you want to take things to extremes then food is a performance enhancer. So why not ban food if you are banning steroids?

I think the answer is that food, eye surgery, knee surgery etc doesn't result in human beings lives being damaged the way steroids can. So why is one substance not ok and another is ie Cortisone and whatever else? I don't know perhaps when they became accepted the dangers weren't understood or perhaps they have been determined to not have the same risks? Or perhaps it's because they are used in limited circumstances over short periods of time? I don't recall Shilling putting on 40 pounds of muscle before game 6 or the '05 season (it was 05, wasn't it?) for that matter.

The problem too me with saying let pros do whatever they want to do if it makes the game better is the cost to said players. Not to mention all of the youngsters coming up, that never make it in the pros, using to try to "get there shot or payday". The human cost is not worth it to see a ball go 40 feet further, a pitcher come back a day earlier, or a fastball go 101mph instead of 97 mph.

This is where the players union has really dropped the ball. While protecting someone's privacy and making it difficult to weed out the cheaters\users they have "forced" many others to risk their health to try to keep up with the users.

Where to draw the line? Like anything else there will be gray areas but maybe erring on the side of quality of life of the players in their later years may be the way to go?

As to the original post Daddy Torgo had it right, apples and oranges.

Let's see... foot surgery - legal. Anabolic steroids - illegal. Case closed.

Where are these lives that have been damaged? Statistically, anabolic steroids doesn't kill a lot of people. You don't have tons of football, baseball, and basketball players dying every year. In fact, almost all the side effects of anabolic steroids go away once you stop taking them.

These things are given to people all the time. From cancer patients to other degenerative conditions that cause weakness and muscle loss. You at some point in your life will be given them and they will help you.

This isn't an argument to make them legal, it's just to stop this silly demonization of steroids. They don't kill tons of people and don't destroy the lives of tons of people. There is little to no scientific evidence out there that shows the massive life altering consequences the media portrays. People don't like them because they feel it ruins the game. That it gives players unfair advantages. That's fine, but it's wrong when people start spreading disinformation about steroids to try and justify their argument.

You can acquire the stuff legally though. Just go to a doctor (even a chiropractor) and tell them you think your hormone makeup is messed up. They can prescribe you what you need.

So if Barry Bonds has a prescription for the drugs, do you feel he should be allowed to take as much as he can and play?

So, then no problem with middle school, high school, and college athletes taking them?

Serious question since you seem to know a lot more about them than I do.

I don't think young people should be taking them (unless advised by a doctor) as they are not adults and not able to make an educated decision about it. We also don't know enough about how they effect growth plates in kids.

I'm also not saying that they should be allowed in professional or amateur leagues at all. I'm just saying they aren't as horrible as people make them out to be. Society has built this boogeyman around steroids that has no facts to back it up.

I dont believe kids should use them. They are still developing physically and emotionally. Plus, their skill development isnt there yet.
Now If a pro wants to use them, I have no problem with it at all. Its a business and entertainment. Baseball was struggling until roid boys McGwire and Sosa started lighting up the leagues. The fans loved it. So why not?

I, for one, think LASIK should be banned from sports leagues. Partially because that is about surgically improving somebody's natural abilities versus surgically repairing them to their natural state. I mean, what about when they perfect a surgery that makes it so anyone that gets it can throw 95mph?

But mostly because excellent vision is one of my (only?) natural genetic advantages and all these genetic weaklings are cheating their way to my kind of vision just by paying a little money. :D

Author's note - I'm not actually serious about banning LASIK from sports leagues.

How many times do I have to bring up that kid on the Cubs? Apparently all you need is to break your arm. We already live in that kind of future.

I gotta change the battery on my sarcasm meter--you had me fooled at the beginning.

They loved it because they didn't realize that a fraud was being perpetrated. There will always be a fringe that is okay with win-at-all-costs, but the majority of fans won't have it. It isn't in a sport's best interests to allow it.

Just because a line is hard to draw does not mean that we should not attempt to draw it.

glad to know you're a complete fucking retard.

Just reliving another classic reply to a tarcone thread. :)

Why? Why is it fraud? Why is this a topic that causes people to call others names?
If people are that concerned about fraud, then baseball should be a dead sport. From spitballs to corked bats to speed to steroids. Baseball players have always done whatever it takes to win. Yet every year millions of people go through the turnstiles, dropping hundreds of dollars a night.

As has been pointed out, steroids hasnt proven to be that life altering and in fact is prescribed by doctors everyday.
The major benefit of steroids is injury recovery. If you have ever had a steroid shot, you feel like a million dollars for about a day. The side benefit was guys got bigger.
If you guys really feel that steroids was perpetrating a fraud against the fans, then why watch pro sports?

LOL.....got me.

While i don't think that Yao surgery could be considered "enhancing" but "fixing" i guess i know where are you trying to go with this thread.

I would be against surgery performed only to give an advantage to sportmen. Let's say medicine advances enough to replace bones with "adamantium" (Wolverine's comics joke), and then football players get it done so they can hit harder.

That is an exaggerated example, but yeah, you might be into something, maybe surgery should be looked at and regulated to avoid any kind of abuse.

No comparison between a steroid shot and a cycle of anabolic steroids. People who say they are the same have no idea what they are talking about.

A steroid shot (usually a drug called Kenalog) is given as an anti-inflammatory. Similar to placing a bottle of alleve in the shoulder or knee. It has a diminishing effect over time, and has very little side effects. Under the guidance of a physician, it is a common and effective treatment. It is a corticosteroid. It has an entirely different chemical makeup than anabolic steroid. Other steroids include cholesterol and vitamin D.

Surgery, steroid shot in the shoulder, a back rub before the game, whatever = performance ENABLER.

Anabolic steroids,diuretics, masking agents (i.e. the pharmacological experiment that was Barry Bonds)= performance ENHANCER

There is a difference.

Your thread title should be Yao Ming and Performance ENABLING surgery

Cortisteroids are actually more dangerous in my mind. They mask an injury and can result in something more serious. You could partially injure something, get a shot, feel like a million bucks, and not notice you are doing more damage to it.

I don't see how there is this huge difference in the two. Cortisteroids are allowing you to play with an injury that you would normally not be able to play with.

Because in the specific instance you mentioned (the home run chase), McGwire and Sosa were secretly using steroids. I would be willing to bet that the large majority of fans polled at that time would have rejected any possibility of steroid use by those two. Folk heroes don't 'roid up.