Quest for magic bullet paints a sorry picture

Just between us, have you used performance-enhancing drugs?

Seemingly, a lot of people are linked to the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. We're not just talking professional athletes named in the recent Mitchell report. The Times Union newspaper of Albany, N.Y., has reported that some R&B musicians, rappers and authors may have also received or used performance-enhancing drugs.

The attraction among performers isn't to get bigger, faster and stronger. They're lured to steroids and human growth hormones for their purported anti-aging qualities. Heaven forbid anyone age gracefully anymore. Nope. We've got to go kicking and screaming, fighting Mother Nature every step of the way.

That's a sad statement, isn't it? Unless entertainers are fit and youthful, they're not marketable. Professional athletes have the added pressure of winning. There's no room in our culture for second place.

So we try to cut corners. We rationalize that everyone else is doing it so why not? We can't get commercial endorsements unless we're on the top of our games.

Until we get caught.

Just ask Marion Jones. Last week, she traded her Olympic track togs for a prison uniform. The shining star of the Sydney Summer Games lost her medals, her career and her freedom. She will spend six months in federal prison, separated from her two boys, including an infant son she's still nursing.

Jones wasn't sent to prison for a dirty urine test, though. She's going to prison for lying to federal authorities.

On the one hand, Jones told the truth. Finally. And there are surely many others who, like Jones, weren't caught using steroids outright. They have been implicated in the use of these substances by other sources and investigations. Will they step up and take their lumps?

What's most disturbing about it is, when someone reaches great athletic heights such as Jones or baseball's Barry Bonds, are we to believe our eyes? Are we to trust that some people have such tremendous physical gifts that it is humanly possible to win multiple Olympic medals or shatter the home-run record?

It's hard to know what to think. Are professional athletes really so pampered that "trainers" could slip them agents without the athletes knowing what they were or inquiring why they require repeated injections of "vitamins"? It's possible. But who knows their bodies better than professional athletes? Wouldn't they start to wonder when their performance eclipses what it was a month or two ago?