A Visit to the Body Shop

Photo (from the Simply Madonna: Materials Of The Girl exhibit in London): Getty Images

If you're a professional baseball player with a multi-million dollar contract and a passionate soul-connection with Madonna, the news that you used steroids comes with enough stigma (and criminal consequences) to seriously sidetrack your career. That stigma is so strong, in fact, that you'd feel it even if you were an everyday guy just trying to look and feel your best, and found that steroids improved your overall health and quality of life.

As Jordan Heller reports in the current issue of Fanzine, some doctors, who believe the health benefits of moderated anabolic steroid use outweigh the (often unsubstantiated) risks, are trying to change this. "If it was legal, and no one had any moral or ethical objection, I'd say 'Go for it.' Why not? They're drugs," one physician aruges. "They can be misused, but they can be used properly, too. Let's face it, if all the objections were removed, there would be very little difference between prescribing steroids to an adult male and prescribing birth control pills to a woman."

It's true that we chemically redesign our bodies all the time, from Ambien and Botox to Viagra and Zoloft. (And by "we" I mean me and Madonna.) What do you think? Do steroids deserve their bad rap?