The reality is the drug industry makes billions pushing drugs, many of which are beneficial and many of which can be harmful. If the Player’s Union can’t take the time to warn athletes about the side effects of each drug, they should deal with the most-prescribed drugs, or at least explain to their athletes that a lot of these drugs do have harmful side effects, and that they should be aware of those side effects before taking them.

Remember, not all these athletes are Stanford grads, and there’s a lot of misleading info on the internet. Even some doctors have financial incentives to prescribe certain drugs. The one group that has the players interests in mind is the Player’s Union, and that group should take the initiative to keep the athletes safe.

But no they arent dangerous they are only illegal because it makes baseball players better.

This is a story because Jonathan Papelbon didn’t bother to look before he lept – into the arms of the Phillies organization, and now he seems to be whining about it.

Those “freaky drugs/medications” are also meds that can be greatly helpful to many, many people. That’s a calculation that every doctor goes through before suggesting/recommending/prescribing anything. That’s also a point that too many people want to ignore in favor of “oh, that drug is so dangerous, it can cause you to faint” or whatever. When they do so, the ignore the good that can be done for them by that drug. It’s a thought process that prevents too many people from accepting the legitimate help that is available for their specific health challenges. That seems to be your thought process here. I have three types of arthritis, one of them inflammatory, and I’m here to tell you that your thought process is wrong.

And as to your final point, that’s the role of a pharmacist. All that anyone has to do is to ask their pharmacist. Of course, the same information can be found on the internet. One only needs to look, and then, if you still have questions, ask your pharmacist.

I only know of one way to spell “could” and it’s right there in my original post.

I’m not saying we should look to baseball for what’s right and wrong at all. Stating that steroids and HGH are harmless with few long-term effects isn’t a comment on right and wrong; it is a statement about medical science, not morality.

The problem with the “MLB’s PEDs List” is that it doesn’t make a lot of sense in some cases. HGH is a good example. Its not a performance enhancer. What’s it doing on that list?

Toradol use seems to be the other side of the coin: its potentially harmful and clearly being used as a PED but not on the list.

Given MLB’s woeful history with drug use, their wilful blindness towards HGH, and their “image first” stance on drug use some of us don’t trust them and their list. Common sense seems to not play a role in it and we’d rather not see some nice talented kid drop dead because of a flawed list.

1) If the emphasis was COULD be then it should have been spelled out that way. And if that were the case, I’d probably agree.

2) If, as a society, we are looking to baseball to instill right and wrong into young kids then we’re probably doing something wrong.

The study you linked two is a questionnaire based study from 1993. As a scientist doing bench research, I have a really hard time believing these types of studies- mostly because we cannot account for how truthful all responders may be and what impact they may have in skewing data. Interesting though is that after having health classes on risks,a lower percentage of users shared needles and one would assume that these classes have come a long way especially in our understanding and control of disease transmission. This might suggest that if people are using, we can at least educate them on ways to cut down on disease transmission.

The Players Union should be advising its players on the dangers of Toradol, and working with MLB to get it banned. Other writers should be raising awareness about its harmful side effects, just as Craig has.

By the way, last year, Mark Teixeira was taking a widely prescribed medicine (overprescribed, actually) called Prednisone that has some weird side effects, including bad vision, depression, etc. The medicine might have hurt Tex’s performance more than it helped. There are a lot of freaky drugs/medications out there, and the Players Union should be helping athletes understand their side effects and which ones they might be wise to avoid.

Kudos to my Phillies for banning Toradol, something I have taken a few times in the past with no consequences. But if they want to BAN it on their team, then that’s their right.

However, if Papelbon used it on the Red Sox, and it wasn’t BANNED by them or MLB, then who am I to question him on his usage of it? I trust that baseball would ban it if it was dangerous enough, and it obviously is not. Just because we have one case of a guy who may have gotten ill because of it or because it is banned in some other countries, doesn’t make it something that needs to be banned by MLB.

There’s a very good parallel with concussions that illustrates this point nicely. Before we had the current rules, education, and understood how long a person might take to recover from concussions, many players came back too soon. They were urged to do so by all around them, even though the player KNEW he was off. He had nothing to back him up to say “hey, this isn’t safe for me”.

Some things should be banned. Banned if only to give players and those concerned for player well-being something firm to stand on if they do not agree with the course of action.

Toradol is different in that it is indicated for moderate to severe pain and only for short term. High doses or extended doses of the drug is thought to be the culrpit of the nasty side effects.

I think some of the disconnect is that everything is available at the click of a mouse now, and because of that we all feel like we can play scientist. It’s not true, so we need to be careful in our comparisons and commenting.

Next week? Some are actually reporting… tomorrow!! Later this week, I’m going to check out some practices. That’s my Valentine’s Day present to me.

I’ve already started working on the draft. I’m really looking forward to it.