Regular readers of this column (bless you and happy holidays) know that one of your Medicine Men has two great passions in life, besides family, country, medicine, and a great cup of coffee every time: justice and sports.
Or, for purposes of this column, lawyers and athletes using steroids.
It has long been apparent that greed has suborned the purity of both justice and athletics. Greedy lawyers and predatory lawsuits; greedy athletes and their agents and employers and the corporations who pay them obscenely to shill, i.e. to endorse their products. But it wasn't until the release of the Mitchell report on the use of steroids in professional baseball that we got to thinking more deeply about what justice and sports, lawyers and athletes have in common besides greed.
The American legal system, as it has evolved, aims at an abstraction called justice through the creation of an artificial universe in which two sides contend. Although there are fundamental differences between plaintiffs and prosecutors and defendants, the same rules apply.
In a courtroom, where procedures are rigid and rules are clear, the clash of opposites is presumed to yield truth, as determined by an impartial judge or a jury of peers, and truth in turn makes justice possible.
All fine in theory. But as the adage goes, never confuse the rulebook with the game.
It is not presumed that both sides have lawyers of equal ability or equal resources to bring to the task. It is not presumed that some lawyers won't work closer to the edge of the permissible than others.
It was once presumed that lawyers, while fighting for their sides, will keep in mind the fragile and precious nature of the artificial universe in which they operate. They should not regard the courtroom merely as a way of making or "extorting money, or of scoring political points or staging spectacles to play on the ignorance and biases of juries.
And if you believe that . . .
In like measure, the playing field is an artificial universe, bounded by strict rules and procedures. As in law, there is no assumption that the contending individuals or teams have equal abilities or resources. There is an assumption that their competitive clash will produce a result as hard to define as justice: excellence.
In the past, this excellence has gained its practitioners everything from the favor of the gods to the favors of the cheerleaders, and wealth has often been part of that excellence. But the purpose of the contest remains within itself and in the hearts and minds of the players and observers.
Sports ideally should be a competition based on athletic meritocracy and eventually decided by inequalities. But the field must be kept level for all athletes.
Which brings us to steroids and why they're bad for athletics at any amateur or professional level.
First, let's rebut the standard argument, "It's my body and I can do what I want with it." Yes, so long as no one else is involved. By taking steroids, some athletes force others to do so in order to compete. At the highest levels, the difference between making the team and going home, between superstar status and merely being very good, is often astonishingly small.
Steroids provide an artificial edge, but an edge that exacts a terrible price off the field and later in life, inevitably affecting others.
And there is a fundamental difference between accepting the risk of injury, even death, as part of the game, and taking drugs that will inevitably destroy long after the game is over.
Then there's the economic argument. The rewards of professional athletic success are now so obscenely large that an athlete can "rationally" choose them over long life, a choice especially popular among the young and strong who've yet to conceive of their own mortality. In different contexts, Achilles, Faust, and others made similar choices. But how many of us, I wonder, would consciously make such decisions in our own lives: wealth and fame in exchange for a truncated mortality.
Is it heroic? Does it matter what you do to succeed, so long as you do?
Currently civilization says yes. A tragic choice that we all need to think about.
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Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., comments on medical-legal issues and is a visiting fellow in economics and citizenship at the International Trade Education Foundation of the Washington International Trade Council.
Robert J. Cihak, M.D., is a senior fellow and board member of the Discovery Institute and a past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
Comments may be sent to drglueck@roadrunner.com.
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