After the PED scandal in Major League baseball, right at the start of the NFL season there is renewed talk about HGH testing for football players. This first round of testing will be what they are calling a "survey test" to find out how many players have elevated HGH levels and if there really is a problem. I think there is-while sports are self-selecting (football players are generally the big fast guys, basketball players the tall quick guys, bicyclist/triathletes the endurance guys) the fact is most football players are far too big and fast to be all-natural.
While talk of a "level playing field" sometimes makes sense (Lance still had to ride his bicycle around France....Barry and A-Rod still had to hit pitches Clemens et al threw....) my real concern is the message we send young athletes, and the long-term repercussions on their bodies. One of my EOD school friends admits to having used synthetic HGH for 20 years before switching to a natural alternative (and marketing it) and he definitely has maintained a noteworthy physique. My fear is what is the long-term consequence of making your body think it is younger than you are? I know there are natural problems caused by aging-I'm enjoying one of them, presbyopia, for the first time now-but what happens to cancer cells that are exposed to HGH or natural alternatives that rev our body up to late teen or 20s type metabolisms?
Not sure we've really thought out what this will do, and while human experimentation has real ethical concerns, we're running a big experiment on ourselves.
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