ring the Olympic Games, the world gazes admiringly upon athletes with preternatural musculature and athletic ability — and then laments every tainted urine test, every revelation of doping. In the mind of the public, this is the problem with anabolic steroids: They undermine fairness in competition between elite athletes.
Damaging the spirit of sport, however, is a minor concern compared with how anabolic steroids impair the health of those who use them — not only Olympians and professional athletes, but also high school football players and rank-and-file weightlifters.
Last month, as more than 100 Russian athletes were banned from Olympic competition for doping, federal investigators revealed that Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people at an Orlando nightclub on June 12, had a long history of steroid use. That detail had a chilling echo: Norwegian killer Anders Breivik deliberately used steroids to fuel his 2011 attack that killed 77 and injured hundreds. It received little attention in the American news media at the time, but Breivik methodically experimented with the drugs and, as documented in his diary, carefully selected the steroid and dose for his “mission.”
These cold-blooded killings should tell us that even the direst health warnings about steroids — damage to the heart, liver, and reproductive system — don’t go far enough. It’s what anabolic steroids do to the brain that can be truly terrifying.
HENRY KOTULA 