the Mind of Jack

           In this video, CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen describes why professional athletes take performance enhancing drugs (PED’s), and the negative side effects of them. Cohen explains that there are multiple types of PED’s, each that have different effects. Cyclists, for example, will choose a PED that improves their stamina. Baseball players will choose PED’s that will give them more strength so they can hit the ball farther. Cohen explains that while some PED’s are legal with a doctor’s subscription, some sports ban those PED’s anyways. Some PED’s, such as Human Growth Hormones (HGH), are given to children by doctors in order to help them grow or gain weight. Athletes get their hands on PED’s and abuse them, using them for the wrong reason. Athletes are tempted to take PED’s because often times it is very difficult for organizations to catch them. Since the 1960’s, professional sports have recognized the need to stop drug use and have begun implementing the ...

Article #1 Mathew A. Cabot, Associate Professor at Whitworth University, offers a unique perspective on steroids and performance enhancing drugs (PED’s) in her article, Barry Bonds vs. The Media; Sour Barry. Whitehouse shows baseball player Barry Bond’s evolution of career. Whitehouse explains Bond’s time with major league team, The San Francisco Giants. Bonds signs, at the time, a record deal for a free agent. He signs to play with the Giants for 44 million dollars. During his first few years with the club, he lacked the type of play he was hyped up to. He was arrogant and infatuated with himself. He refused to talk to the media, and the media hated him for it. By the spring of 1999, Bonds looked entirely different. His body had transformed to the point where his teammates called him the Hulk. Later he broke Mark McGuire’s single season home run record. He was close to approaching Hank Aaron’s all time record. Following these few seasons, Bond’s agent tried work an endorsement d...

        This blog is intended to show the research I have been doing for my college persuasive writing class. I will be researching PED's (performance enhancing drugs). I hope to have an understanding of what exactly PED's are, what they do, and how they work. I hope to understand the differences between different PED's, and also to look into how often they are used. Specifically, I want to research the role of PED's in sports over the past thirty to forty years. I want to know if they should be legal in sports, and research the ethics behind them. I want to dig deeper into examples of past athletes who have been caught using PED's, and learn about their trials. As I become more learned on the subject, I want to answer questions pertaining to future use of PED's, and the legacy left by great athletes that have used them. I will research why athletes choose to use them, and how quickly drug use has diffused from teammate to teammate, team to team, and sport to sp...