The Ramble: Cold Medicine for Kids, Dropping Home Runs, Lance Armstrong and the NFL’s Drug Problem

There’s some controversy surrounding giving kids over-the-counter cold remedies, Major League Baseball sluggers hit fewer home runs, Lance Armstrong is back and at the center of controversy and the NFL has a performance-enhancing drug problem even though nobody seems to care.

Cold Medicines for Kids. Pediatricians are pushing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to pull all over-the-counter cold medicines for kids stating that there is no evidence to support their use.  Doctors feel that children from the ages of 2-6 years do not derive any benefit at all from these remedies, and that as a result there’s no reason to market, sell or give them to kids.  It makes sense that since there are no proven benefits from taking these substances, only known side effects, these OTC cold products shouldn’t be given to kids.

An outside panel of advisors to the FDA agrees with the pediatricians, but the FDA has been resistant to issuing a recall of these products.  The FDA’s concern is that without these kid-sized doses, parents would just give their kids the adult versions of these remedies.  This makes no sense to me, and if these OTC products do not provide benefits the FDA should not permit their sale.  You don’t have to wait for the government to do the right thing, just stop giving this stuff to your kids.

Home Runs Production Was Down in 2008.  You don’t need to be a statistician in order to figure out major league baseball players hit fewer home runs this year.  As a matter of fact, this downward trend started during the 2006 seasons when former New York Met clubhouse boy and drug dealer Kirk Radomski was pinched by the feds, taken out of circulation and turned state’s evidence.

The top 10 home run hitters in the American and National Leagues accounted for about 15% fewer home runs this year than they did in 2006.  It isn’t drug testing or bigger stadiums, and you don’t have to go back 15 years to establish this trend.  Guys have hit fewer homers because their supply of human growth hormone and steroids has dried up since the Balco Labs and Radomski busts. Since MLB doesn’t employ and testing measures that can detect HGH use, you can’t point to the league’s testing vigilance as the reason for the power drop off.  You can point to the increased attention being paid to the drug trafficking trade and the drying up of sources for these drugs as the reason for the power outage.

Lance Armstrong’s Comeback.  Cycling’s “Great One” hasn’t even slipped on his spandex and yet his comeback is already at the center of a doping controversy.  This latest bru-ha-ha started on the day he announced his comeback, when former rival and Tour de France winner Greg LeMond showed up and peppered Lance with a whole host of doping related questions.  And really this isn’t so much about cycling as much as it is about Armstrong.  Everyone who follows the sport knows it’s dirty with performance-enhancing drugs; it always has and it always will.   But Lance is one of those athletes that’s bigger than the sport in which they compete, and has yet to be totally nailed as being a drug cheat, so this story will continue to get a lot of attention.

Well, a little attention.

 He’s getting back into the cycling game and saying he’s going to subject himself to rigorous drug testing, willing to freeze his present day samples so they can be subjected more advanced tests in the future.  However, he declined an offer by the French anti-doping authorities to retest his controversial 1999 Tour de France urine samples.  As long as Armstrong is around the debate will continue about whether or not he won clean, and every great athletic achievement will be suspect.

The NFL’s Continuing Drug Problem.  How is it that so many NFL players have been embroiled in performance-enhancing drug controversy, and yet baseball is considered to be the sport with the biggest PED problem?  Sure we know a lot of the sluggers – and probably just as many pitchers – were using PEDs over the past 15-20 years, but where’s the widespread condemnation/interrogation of the NFL?  The Mitchell Report named 100 names of baseball players involved with PEDs, but the NFL has had 185 players from every team and every position get busted for PED use.

People are kidding themselves if they think NFL guys get bigger, faster stronger from nutrition, legal supplementation and weight lifting.  And sure enough, this past week it was announced that Darryl Blackstock – a back-up linebacker – of the Bengals has been suspended 4 games for violating the NFL’s steroid policy.  As our pal Gary Gaffney over at Steroid Nation points out, Blackstock wasn’t suspended for using whey protein.

If the PED ever hits the fan in the NFL, the scandal will dwarf what has happened in major league baseball.

Related Posts:

1. Barry Bonds Should Have Been Able To Hit 800 Home Runs
2. The NFL’s Drug Problem Rears its Ugly Head, Again
3. FDA May Ban All Cold Remedies for Children Two Years Old and Younger
4. Pro Tennis Has The Toughest Anti-Doping Policy
5. Report: Alex Rodriguez Used Steroids