If you followed the Summer Olympics in Athens Greece, you heard about Ukraine's bronze-medal-winning rower Olena Olefirenko testing positive for stimulants after finishing third in the women's quadruple sculls event. Olefirenko and the Ukraine team were stripped of the bronze medal. You also heard a lot about steroids and performance enhancing drugs. President Bush, former owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, called for pro sports leagues and athletes to set better examples for children and "get rid of steroids now." Why all the fuss? Should steroids and performance enhancing drugs be legalized, and should athletes be allowed to use them?
             The writer Joan Ryan attempts to sway the reader by suggesting that since the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs are widely being used among a great number of professional athletes, it may be time to legalize them. She argues that because performance in professional sports is how an athlete is measured, athletes find them selves doing what ever it takes to reach higher and higher levels of performance or risk someone taking their place. Ryan states that athletes are not chosen because they are good a person is but by how well they perform. She even suggests that President Bush who once owned the former Texas Rangers did not recruit players because they were good people but only chose those that stood out above the rest, letting those go that could not.
             Ryan does make a good argument regarding the use of steroids and human growth hormones by doctor to safely treat many kinds of illnesses and diseases. She justifies the safe treatment because the doctors monitor that use. She discusses the many dangers in the misuse of steroid and performance enhancing drugs and the link to physical and mental problems, even death but she emphasizes the fact that these dangers come with misuse. She leads the reader to think about the athletes that take these drugs they buy from...