Baseball and Steroids

A very few fashion shows have started requiring a health certificate for models to participate and are using a BMI (Body Mass Index) in the 17-18 range as a guide. A person with a height of five foot seven inches and a weight of one hundred fifteen pounds has a BMI of 18. A normal BMI is 18.5 to 24.5. When a person gets below 17 the risks escalate. Below 17 it gets very risky. These rules are a good start but because they are not universal and there are still shows that will not only hire women below 17 BMI, they tend to give preference to them so there is still pressure to be overly thin. I dislike government intervention but something should be done. I would prefer the modeling industry police itself but I would also prefer those who consider robbing banks police themselves but that is a vain hope. Government intervention is sorely needed.

Look at the Hollywood women (and men) and the amount of plastic surgery that is being done in the quest for perfection. Many have had breast enhancement. This has pressed the need for perfect sized breasts to the point that in 2005 over 330,000 girls eighteen and under had breast enhancement in the United States. There are approximately two million girls of each age in the U.S. If you assume that only those fifteen through eighteen would have breast enhancement that means about one third of a million girls out of eight million or one of twenty four girls have the procedure each year! With this incidence several anesthesia deaths a year is expected if the screening of candidates for he surgery is stringent. With the press for this beauty corners are cut, both by surgeons and by patients not telling the doctor everything which is even more dangerous because the doctor cannot anticipate problems. In addition to this there are other surgical risks, bleeding, infection to name two. The incidence of these problems is low but remember, this is not a procedure to save a life, it is to make the person more attractive.

But this is only part of the equation. Many celebrities misuse drugs including alcohol. Many of them do it publicly and many do it while driving. Too often this misuse is treated as something humorous or a desirable part of their persona. The substances are detrimental to their health and they set a tone for impressionable fans. Shouldn’t these be treated the same as athletes who used drugs? Why shouldn’t an actor, actress or singer who is caught DUI or fails a drug test be prohibited from being considered for any award for a year, and longer on second offense? Maybe they should be stripped of past awards. Why shouldn’t they be prohibited from performing publicly for a year or two? The media could help with this, they could easily quit inviting them as guests on shows. But ratings for the media override the public good.

How about taking awards from entertainers who commit despicable acts, who commit assaults against others? How about recording companies and production companies refusing to use people who have recently been convicted of felonies. How about stripping them of past honors or preventing them from being considered in the future?

Are these in baseball being singled out? Unless this is taken across the board, yes.