He’ll clearly get some negative publicity for his endorsement of medically supervised steroid use for athletes who are recovering from injuries, but in Mark Cuban’s world any publicity is good publicity. Publicity aside, I find nothing wrong with what he is saying.
There are currently millions of Americans who are taking steroids for various medical conditions. And yes there is a gray area with athletes who, if Cuban has his way, may be prescribed steroids for conditions and injuries that are not life threatening. But, it seems reasonable to allow an athlete who makes his/her living pushing his/her body beyond its physical limits (training and conditioning, games, injuries, surgeries, etc.) year after year, to use a medically approved and medically monitored substance to speed up healing.
There are some obvious regulatory issues associated with implementing such a program and defining what specific dosages are medically appropriate for what athletes (for instance the amount of steroids a long distance runner would need may not be the same amount of steroids that a three hundred pound professional wrestler needs to receive a therapeutic benefit); perhaps requiring a medical board to review an athlete’s use on a case-by-case basis. But, as many of us know a bureaucracy rarely get things done in a timely manner. By the time a medical board approved a hypothetical steroid regimen for an athlete, such a regimen may not even be necessary since the athlete may already have healed on his own.
Whether such a program could be instituted at this point is irrelevant since the powers that be in athletics are terrified to even entertain the thought of such a program in light of the recent Major League Baseball steroid scandal. But, kudos to Mark Cuban for bringing up the issue and at least starting the conversation.
