Surgery is OK, but Substances Are Banned?

“Blink” author Malcolm Gladwell applies his unique reasoning and questioning to ask, in athletics, why is “this” allowed but not “that”?

It is a fascinating discourse and can be found by clicking here.

Gladwell provides examples of athletes genetically predisposed to excellence due entirely to the providential gifts they have inherited, then he discusses the multiple legal surgeries that are allowed professional baseball players in order to up their game, while questioning why pharmaceuticals, at the same time for the very same purpose in professional baseball, are not allowed.

I personally have always been fascinated by the rabid emotional outbursts of people expressing their outrage and bile toward medical testosterone replacement therapy or the administration of steroids under a doctor's care, not just among athletes, but even within the general population. Only fear makes people scream, so it would be interesting to know what they are so fearful of.

I also question, with so many psychologists running around, why we don’t hear their take on this from their professional perspective. What makes a screaming anti HRT or anti-steroid lunatic so unhinged about something that has nothing to do with them personally? Going one further, as an aside, the media is crammed full of opinions about Donald Trump, yet none of these assessments are coming from mental health professionals who are disturbingly silent on what should be a lively discourse on the emotional / mental stability of this candidate, as well as the sort of people who are so excited about having such a vengeful, lying, thin-skinned whiny man-baby as their leader.

Anyway, take a flying read at Gladwell’s New Yorker piece and see if it doesn’t expand your reasoning.