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Is the next generation of steroids here?
It sounds too good to be true. Nothing so fabulous should be quite so easy to attain. There must be a catch.
Researchers at the Salk Institute in San Diego have found two drugs that greatly increased the athletic endurance of laboratory mice, converting lazy mice and their more athletic brethren into marathon runners. One drug, fed to relatively sedentary mice, increased their endurance on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment. The other drug had no effect on sedentary mice but raised endurance by 77 percent in mice that exercised regularly.
As described by Nicholas Wade in The Times on Friday, the pills trick the muscles into thinking they have been working out furiously, thereby generating more high-endurance fibers. If the pills work the same way in humans — a very big “if” — this could be great news for those who want to exercise without actually exercising. And for athletes looking for yet another chemical boost.
Of course, there could be downsides. Harmful side effects might turn up unexpectedly. (Muscle-bound brains? A life of sloth waiting for the next miracle pill to turn ne’er-do-wells into overachievers?)
Any Olympian caught using the drugs would most likely be expelled from the Games or lose ill-gotten medals. The researchers have already devised a test to detect use of the muscle-enhancing drugs and have made it available to doping officials who police the Olympics.
If the drugs work, and the tests do too, at least cheating-prone athletes will be able to stay in shape while watching the Games from their couches.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/op...ml?ref=opinion
It sounds too good to be true. Nothing so fabulous should be quite so easy to attain. There must be a catch.
Researchers at the Salk Institute in San Diego have found two drugs that greatly increased the athletic endurance of laboratory mice, converting lazy mice and their more athletic brethren into marathon runners. One drug, fed to relatively sedentary mice, increased their endurance on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment. The other drug had no effect on sedentary mice but raised endurance by 77 percent in mice that exercised regularly.
As described by Nicholas Wade in The Times on Friday, the pills trick the muscles into thinking they have been working out furiously, thereby generating more high-endurance fibers. If the pills work the same way in humans — a very big “if” — this could be great news for those who want to exercise without actually exercising. And for athletes looking for yet another chemical boost.
Of course, there could be downsides. Harmful side effects might turn up unexpectedly. (Muscle-bound brains? A life of sloth waiting for the next miracle pill to turn ne’er-do-wells into overachievers?)
Any Olympian caught using the drugs would most likely be expelled from the Games or lose ill-gotten medals. The researchers have already devised a test to detect use of the muscle-enhancing drugs and have made it available to doping officials who police the Olympics.
If the drugs work, and the tests do too, at least cheating-prone athletes will be able to stay in shape while watching the Games from their couches.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/op...ml?ref=opinion
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