The Art Neuro Weblog

Not Naming Names
In what is turning into a parody of the McCarthy witch-hunts, Mark McGwire chose not to name names.

An emotional Mark McGwire told a House committee today that he would "not participate in naming names" in discussing steroid use during his record-setting baseball career, nor would he say whether he had ever used steroids himself. In answer to questions from committee members, Mr. McGwire said several times: "I'm not here to talk about the past."

And,

Mr. McGwire said that he would help in efforts to discourage young people from using steroids. "There has been a problem with steroids in baseball," he said.

"It is a problem and that needs to be addressed. What I will not do is participate in naming names and implicating my friends and teammates."

Mr. McGwire's voice quavered at times in his appearance at the televised hearing on Capitol Hill. "I've always been a team player," Mr. McGwire said, pausing to maintain his composure. "I've never been a player who spread rumors or said things about teammates that could hurt them. I do not sit in judgment of other players." Mr. McGwire said that his lawyers had informed him that testifying to the committee could "jeopardize my friends, my family and myself." He added, "I intend to follow their advice."

Oh sure, Mr. McGwire. Talk about a non-sequiteur.

Another parent, Donald Hooton Sr., lashed out angrily at the players, saying that their use of steroids had been emulated by his son, Taylor, a high school football player who also committed suicide.

"You are cheaters, you are cowards," he said. "You're afraid to step on the field without the aid of performance enhancing substances."

He said the players who were testifying "should be man enough to face the authorities, admit the truth and face the consequences," instead of "hiding behind the skirts of your union."

"I'm sick and tired of having you tell us you don't want to be considered role models," he said. "You are role models."

Mr. McGwire did say that he would be willing to speak out publicly to young people about the dangers of steroid use. "My message is that steroids are bad," he aid. "Don't use them. I will do everything I can, if you allow me, to say this to young people."

But how did he know they were bad, one panel member asked him. "I've accepted my attorney's advise not to comment on this issue," Mr. McGwire said.

You just gotta laugh at that last line.
Meanwhile, Jose Canseco had this to say:

"Steroids were a part of the game and no one wanted to take a stance on it," he said. "Hopefully this book I wrote educates people about how widespread use steroids is in major league sports, and that people say, look, you've got to stop this. The owners have to stop this. They have all got to stop this, period."

It's a three ring circus. Come watch bearded lady from East Germany and the the muscle-men sluggers of the MLB.

The Washington Post had this report saying that in the near future, the issue of steroids might be surpassed by the issue of gene-technology.

By manipulating the human genetic code, by adding and subtracting genes to replace defective or missing ones, researchers may someday unlock cures for a variety of diseases, from Parkinson's to muscular dystrophy to certain cancers. At the same time, however, researchers are starting to see a more mundane, but culturally significant, sideline to gene therapy: the potential to create nearly superhuman athletes. The same techniques that could repair diseased muscles may enable athletes to heft more weight, run faster or jump higher than ever thought possible.

Gene doping hasn't moved out of the research clinic yet, as far as is known. But the possibility that it will -- and soon -- has moved the World Anti-Doping Agency, which governs Olympic drug testing, to establish a panel to monitor its development. "The feeling is that in sports, where there's so much financial pressure and other pressures to skirt the rules, some people will feel compelled to do a genetic version of BALCO," the California lab at the heart of baseball's steroid scandal, says Theodore Friedmann, a gene-therapy expert who is a member of the Anti-Doping Agency's panel.

Then there's the description of the 'Schwarzenegger Mice'...

It may be possible to glimpse the coming debate in a laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. There, through gene transplantation, physiologist H. Lee Sweeney has created "Schwarzenegger mice," rodents with unnaturally developed physiques. After Sweeney and his associates injected the mice with a gene known to stimulate a protein that promotes muscle growth, the mice grew muscles that were 15 to 30 percent bigger than normal, even though the rodents were sedentary.

Next, Sweeney and exercise physiologist Roger Farrar injected the same muscle building gene into one leg of a group of lab rats and subjected them to an eight-week weight-training regimen (imagine rats scurrying up ladders with weights strapped to their backs). Result: The injected leg became twice as strong as the uninjected leg. After the training stopped, the injected muscles lost strength at a much slower rate than those on the unenhanced leg.

Scary thought. We've arrived at the Brave New World of mega-sports.

- Art Neuro


- Art Neuro