Striking out in steroid debate

First things first: I am not in favor of athletes doping with steroids.

I am also not in favor of junk science, junkier legal procedure or, junkiest of all, emotion and hysteria driving intelligent thought out of the debate over performance enhancement in sports. Yet these are the central components of our national anti-doping policy. All of them are featured in the latest doping “scandal,” the case of New York Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez.

Baseball is big business, so the way it handles this particular incident is worth examining -- particularly against the backdrop of the Barry Bonds steroids trial, which is set to get underway soon in San Francisco.

In 2003, A-Rod was tested for doping along with every other major league ballplayer. The idea was to provide baseball with the basic data it needed to craft an anti-doping policy -- indeed, to determine if it needed a policy. To secure their cooperation, the players were promised that the testing would be anonymous, the results not individually compiled, and the samples promptly destroyed.

Instead, the players union hung on to identifying documentation long enough for it to be subpoenaed by the feds. In due course A-Rod’s anonymity was breached and his results leaked to the press. Prosecutors possess the names of the 103 other major leaguers who flunked the 2003 screen, so undoubtedly more violations of confidentiality lurk around the corner.

What does this mean?

It doesn’t mean that all baseball statistics from the early 2000s should be tossed because of steroids. Nor does it warrant tossing out A-Rod’s stats from the period 2001-03, during which he now admits to having used the substances. There is no evidence -- none -- that steroid use in general produces any consistent, measurable improvement in baseball offense, or that A-Rod’s use produced any improvement in his own performance.

By 2001, after all, Rodriguez was already marked as the best player in the game, with the potential to become the greatest ballplayer ever. He had been named an All-Star in three of his five previous full-time seasons. He had already received the richest contract in baseball history. As for the numbers he racked up under the juice in 2001-03, they were equaled or exceeded in 2007, when there’s no evidence he was still doping. Sure, at one time he thought steroids would help. Sure, he was stupid about it . . . almost as stupid as people who say he consequently should be barred permanently from the Hall of Fame.

The A-Rod case reminds us that neither major leagues nor the government is serious about addressing the issue of artificial performance enhancement -- at least if that involves doing anything more than grandstanding.

Plainly, no anti-doping program can succeed without the athletes’ cooperation. Yet the league owners persistently treat anti-doping policy not as a goal to be reached in accord, but a cudgel to hold over the players’ heads. The union, accordingly, views with suspicion all talk of a testing and discipline regime. Members of Congress? They’ll continue to honk away about steroid abuse because toughness on drugs is a surefire election-year crowd-pleaser.

To be sure, these parties aren’t alone in avoiding a reasoned discourse about performance enhancement in sports. Everyone avoids it.

Thoughtful public discussion about performance-enhancing technologies, pharmaceutical and otherwise, is nonexistent. The extremes of sentiment are represented by knee ligament reconstruction (acceptable) and steroids (despicable). Between those poles lies a whole world of performance enhancement, with no clear principles by which to judge it.

Human growth hormone is thought to build strong bodies 12 ways, like Wonder Bread. No evidence exists that it’s harmful in the long term if taken under the guidance of a physician. Should it be banned? Give your reasons, keeping in mind that using the word “cheating” as your entire argument is, well, cheating.

What about physical mutilation? Athletes line up for laser eye surgery by the thousands, striving for vision sharper than 20/20 -- in other words, better than what nature gave them. What’s the verdict on Tommy John surgery, which involves grafting a new tendon in the pitching arm?

Possibly the best argument against allowing steroids in high-level sports, even under a doctor’s supervision, is that prep coaches will emulate the pros by pumping the stuff willy-nilly into schoolkids, whose bodies can suffer long-term damage as a result. (That’s why I’m not comfortable with their pro-league role models doing it.) But kids as young as 14 are being subjected to the Tommy John procedure, whether as preemptive bionics or because their arms have been blown out by parents or coaches hoping to give the little leaguers a head start on a pro career. How long will it be before we hear about promising prep players getting their eyeballs etched?

Whenever a big-name player gets hit with a doping charge, the quality of the public discussion, such as it is, plummets. Baseball could have been heading for a reasoned and cooperative effort to gauge and address its doping problem. Then A-Rod’s results leaked, and the issue got summed up as a front-page headline in the New York Post reading “A-Hole.” Not that anybody turns to the Post for nuance.

What’s overlooked amid the invective is the shallowness of the science underlying the anti-doping crusade. It’s not uncommon for a chemical to be placed on the prohibited list of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) -- the bible of athletic sin -- only to be reclassified as innocent a few years later, after scores of athletes have been branded as cheaters for taking it. (That happened with Sudafed and anti-baldness pills.) Nor are laboratory standards particularly consistent: Whether an athlete’s sample is branded clean or dirty sometimes depends on which of WADA’s 34 official labs did the test.

Even worse is the standard of legal procedure in many doping cases. Last week, the federal judge in the Bonds trial tossed out several drug tests that were to be used against him because prosecutors can’t verify their authenticity. (Prosecutors are appealing her order.) Under the rules for WADA disciplinary hearings, which apply to Olympians and other world-class athletes and in which evidence standards are as loose as Manny Ramirez’s uniform, those samples would almost certainly be accepted with no questions asked. WADA, which designed its procedures so its prosecutors would have the upper hand at every step, almost never loses a case, big surprise.

Some might argue that such harsh measures are necessary to eradicate the scourge of doping. But the truth is just the opposite.

Unless we define with clarity what’s acceptable and what’s not, and unless we demand from our doping police the same pristine integrity we demand from their targets, sports will never be free of doping issues. Innocent athletes will be stigmatized, and those who step foolishly or briefly over the line to give the people what they want -- more homers, more baskets, harder hits at the snap of the ball -- will be pilloried.

A good place to start would be funding more basic research into the effects of performance-enhancing substances and methods, both in competition and over the long term; most grant money currently goes into developing new tests. That would give the debate over steroids and other technologies the solid factual foundation it lacks today.

And the WADA disciplinary code should be overhauled to give athletes a real, not imaginary, right to defend themselves, as well as the right to demand that judges review rulings that go against them. That would go far to clean up the alarming sloppiness of some WADA labs, which have an undeserved reputation for consistent accuracy. It would also ensure that the legal protection of defendants in sports doping cases matches that in the non-sports world. When athletes’ dreams, reputations and livelihoods are on the line, they, their teammates and their fans deserve nothing less.

--

Michael Hiltzik’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays. You can reach him at mailto:michael.hiltzik%40latimes.com and read his previous columns at www.latimes.com/hiltzik.