Why Do Peds Use Performance Enhancing Drugs In Professional Baseball?

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Recommended: Effects and dangers of performance enhancing drugs in sports

To a sports fan, it might seem as if every news broadcast brings another suspension; some athlete, old or young, loses half of his or her season after failing a drug test. In professional sports, where athletic performance is the primary factor in an athlete’s salary and is practically the only aspect of the athlete that sports fans and owners care about, many professional athletes turn to performance enhancing drugs to gain a competitive edge. One sports organization in particular that has been overwhelmed with the use of performance enhancing drugs, commonly referred to as PEDs, is Major League Baseball, or the MLB. PEDs have been a long-standing issue in the MLB, keeping several of the most famous names in baseball, such as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Roger Clemens, out of the Baseball Hall of Fame despite their stellar careers because of their admitted PED use. Before this season has even started, there have already been a multitude of players suspended for nearly a third of the season for breaking the MLB’s drug policy. But now, many people are insisting that the MLB should drastically alter its drug policy by allowing players to access PEDs to ensure that players are all on an equal footing and to make baseball more exciting. Others believe allowing PED use will ruin the integrity of baseball and will have major …show more content…

However, the benefits of PEDs are far from exaggerated. Researcher Dr. Shalender Bhasin and his colleagues from Boston University of Medicine examined the benefits of PEDs in a recent study. This study aimed to determine the effects of testosterone supplements, a common PED in sports including baseball, on the average man. The subjects of their study were forty men from ages nineteen to forty with standard body weights, who had experience with lifting

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