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Steroids in Professional Athletics Essay

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Steroids in Professional Athletics

Just take the shot! It will help you this season; you will be able to do things that you never would have thought possible. Will taking steroids really help your performance as a professional athlete? Many professional athletes find that this is the best way to enhance their athletic abilities but it only promotes physical damage in the long run. If the use of steroids isn't stopped by professional leagues it just shows that they don't care about their athletes and will continue to watch many of them drop like flies from physical damage caused by steroids. The use of anabolic steroids on professional levels should be banned, and any athlete that chooses to use them should be suspended from their …show more content…

?When late football player Lyle Alzado contended in 1991 that anabolic steroid abuse caused his inoperable brain lymphoma, which ultimately killed the retired football player?? (Denham 63) Yet athletes continue to disregard warnings of the harmful affects and persist on abusing the illegal substances. I think Barry Bonds current injuries can be blamed on his use of designer steroids. This just goes to show that he had his time to shine in breaking many professional baseball records but now he is paying the price for the abuse of steroids. The journal of the American Medical Association has tested many illegal steroids and has found that they give you mass results like all athletes look for in using steroids; however steroids do cause adverse effects such as breast enlargement, heart disease, and cancer. (Denham 64) A group of athletic trainers were brought together and began a 6 to 18 week study of the affects of steroids on several athletes; at the end of the study they came up with result of massive gains in strength but there were signs of cardiovascular disease developing in most of the athletes. (Hartgens 5) Most athletes have knowledge of these side effects. Nearly all the side effects are printed on every bottle of illegal substances athletes buy, yet they continue to abuse steroids. Athletes know of these effects but they continue to use steroids, they get the results in strength that they are looking for but eventually all

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