Steriods in Sports

George Louis-Jean ENC 11011 Persuasive Essay

I can remember growing up hearing older people talk about how before the 1990’s athletes were unique. They were able to capitalize on their God-given talents, and make themselves famous based on their skill. But then something happened. Steroids began to play a bigger and bigger role in sports. No longer were the most naturally gifted athletes becoming the stars. Now, it can be said that whoever has the best pharmacist can be the best athlete. As the amount of performance enhancing steroids increases in professional sports, many athletes are gaining an unfair advantage over their competition. Should steroids use in sport really be banned or legal in sports?

First, to trace the history of steroids as we know today we must first go back to 1931, to a German chemist Adolf Butenandt. By this point it was understood, Butenandt was the first to found a way to pin point and purify the hormone androstenone. He did so by extracting the hormone from a mere few liters of urine. This was a ground breaking achievement and only the beginning of the breakthrough, as the next several years would see anabolic steroids truly birth and evolved. Anabolic steroids or more precisely, anabolic androgenic steroids are the synthetic derivatives of the naturally occurring male anabolic hormone testosterone. Both anabolic and androgenic have origins from the Greek: anabolic, meaning "to build," and androgenic, meaning "masculinizing."

Second, although anabolic steroids are derived from a male sex hormone, men who take them may actually experience a "feminization" effect along with a decrease in normal male sexual function. Some possible effects include, reduced sperm count, impotence, development of breasts, shrinking of the testicles, difficulty or pain while urinating. Women often experience a "masculinization" effect from anabolic steroids, including facial hair growth, deepened...