At Least A Thought On hGH

Okay. Human Growth Harmone....

It's not illegal to take the stuff. It's illegal to take the stuff, much like steroids, without a prescription. It is, however, currently banned by baseball. And we all (I hope) understand why. But here is my problem: much like any other 'performance enhancing substance', hGH has been a banned substance in baseball for a while. A short while.

Before then, it wasn't a banned substance. Therefore, if before 2005, when it became a banned substance by major league baseball, even if prescribed, if a person had a legal prescription for hGH, and used it for a relatively short period of time, that would mean that they did something within the legal and professional parameters.

I'm utterly sick of the complete bastardization of the 'sports news' when it comes to this particular substance as well as steroids. While neither are currently allowed in any sport, both have a place in this world as a prescription substance that people have taken to recover from injury. If you ask your doctor to give you a prescription for a medication to improve your life, then you're doing something that many, many Americans do. They watch the television, they listen to their friends and they find out what will make them feel better. What some athletes did was the very same thing. I'm rather certain that if you were an athlete and were told: this can help you recover from injury faster, and it's legal (with prescription), you would take the medication. Seriously, it's your career you are concerned about. And if you discovered it was bad for you, or you realized that taking something would be bad for your career... you would stop taking it. Some athletes did that.

I'm just saying, if what a person did was legal, why the hell does it matter now? If a person did what was not banned by their workplace (baseball, football, etc) then who gives a damn about the fact that they took a legal substance to aid in recovery from an injury?

Now, I'm not a Pollyanna who believes that all of the players accused of taking hGH and steroids were trying to get over an injury (not the intended use of hGH) or that they did it legally, but a few players in the last few months have been highlighted as taking an illegal substance. But in the stories, after the hyperbole and the accusations, I have begun to realize that they aren't taking an illegal substance, they took a substance by a legal prescription from a legal doctor prior to it being banned. I'm not proclaiming their innocence, since I don't know the whole story, but I am saying we are rushing, way too fast, to castigate these people and then discover that there is nothing there. So, the next time you wish a few people would 'just go away' because they are linked to an illegal, banned substance, do me the favor of trying to learn the whole story before you throw around accusations.