Steroids and Baseball

I do not want to distract us from the “heavy” (no pun intended) issues to which we have devoted our attention recently, but, what with the opening of baseball season and all, I thought I’d ask you to think about the following. Steroids (of the sorts used by some players and other athletes) apparently have serious health side-effects. For that reason it certainly seems reaonable to ban their use. But now suppose our wonderful pharmaceutical companies could develop side-effect free steroids–comparable medicines with (by stipulation) no bad health effects. Under such a scenario (admittedly implausible), would it still be reasonable to ban their use? Why exactly?

I believe that John and Ken had the distinguished Kant and baseball scholar Allen Wood on Philosophy Talk to discuss baseball, but unfortunately I haven’t yet listened to that episode; I’ll check out the archive at Philosophytalk.org.

Meanwhile, cheers, and Play Ball!