A special interview with Will Brink, John Berardi, Will Carroll, Rick Collins, Bruce Kneller, Bill Lewellyn, Anthony Roberts and Caleb Stone.

On behalf of all Mind and Muscle readers, the M&M staff would like to thank each of you for being so kind as to participate in this roundtable discussion. Each of you brings to the table a wealth of knowledge on the subject of steroids and sports, and are regarded as experts in your respective fields. We could not be more pleased to have you share your diverse views with us today on the following reader-generated questions.

1) Let's start with everyone's favorite question: Why, in your opinion, is the average person so adamantly against steroid use, both in terms of recreational and athletic use? What do you think the almost visceral public aversion to AAS is grounded in?

Rick Collins: The average person's opinions are shaped by the media. Consistent with the media-fuelled ‘culture of fear' that defines our times, anabolic steroids have been portrayed in a scary, negative light, and the public has come to see them as, 1) ‘dangerous' and, 2) ‘cheating'. Both points are debatable. The health risks associated with AAS use in mature adult males have been overstated or outright misrepresented, and the fact that androgens have beneficial medical uses has been suppressed. The ‘cheating' argument only applies to competitive athletes, not to the millions of ‘cosmetic' users who make up the vast bulk of the AAS population. So, basically, the visceral public aversion to AAS is grounded in ignorance.

Will Carroll: It's mostly propaganda. They haven't done their research and don't have any interest in an educated and nuanced approach. Jose Canseco sold a million copies of is book because he was big and told juicy stories with small words. Howard Bryant's look at the problem didn't sell 1/10th of that because that would have required more thought than dialing in a vote for American Idol.

There's also the top down approach - if AAS are ‘bad' for professional sports, they must be bad in every other use. Again, there's no room for a middle ground in a faith-based world.

Bruce Kneller: Both questions are patently easy to answer – in a nutshell, people fear the unknown. If you asked the average ‘Joe or Jane' to name just four anabolic steroids, how many of them would be ale to do so? If you asked them what the difference between an aromatizable and a non-aromatizable anabolic steroid, how many physicians could even answer the question?

Historically, humans fear what they do not understand. The fact (and it is an absolute fact), is that 99% of journalists writing about anabolic steroids in the mainstream media usually do not give a damn if what they are reporting is factual or not. They are mostly interested in getting some sort of international/national recognition or reward for their publication or themselves. This doesn't help to educate people about AAS. It's all about headlines and sensationalism. So we have a combination of factors working to create and maintain this ‘visceral aversion' to anabolic steroids based on half-truths and myths, rather than facts. The public at large does not understand what anabolic steroids really are and the information they are usually fed (at least superficially), is that all anabolic steroids are ‘dangerous drugs' with no real medical purpose. They only see them as substances that athletes abuse in order to cheat.

The general public's failure to truly understand what these compounds are capable of doing or not, sits squarely on our shoulders as a social subgroup. We need to educate the masses with honest and objective scientific proof in a manner they can understand and digest. This will allow them to come to an informed opinion regarding the use, safety and accessibility of AAS, rather us as a sub-group continually whine on internet bulletin boards and in chat rooms saying, “they [the general public] just don't get it, they're like…so stupid”. This does nothing and is of no real value to anyone! It has to start with our subculture dispelling the bullshit myths and acknowledging what is really not known or understood. Then we need to move this information into the mainstream.

Will Brink: The public is viscerally against what ever the media and ‘powers that be' tell them they should be against. As one man said, "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." If AAS had been presented as the best thing since the invention of the clitoris, most people would think they were wonderful drugs. Of course, as is usually the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle. AAS have applications in medicine and can actually improve the health of some populations (e.g. men with low T, people with AIDs, people with some forms of wasting diseases, etc.). They can also, as we know, have negative health consequences for people using high doses for long periods of time (e.g. bodybuilders, etc), though the side effects are generally overstated.

John Berardi: First of all, it's pretty hard to make sweeping generalizations about what the ‘average' person thinks (especially with respect to this issue), since it's not the ‘average person' we hear speaking out most often against steroid use – it's the media, politicians, sport governing bodies, etc. It's my impression that most ‘average people' don't think much about steroid use at all.

However, I do see the point that you're driving at – if you make most people think about steroid use (as the media is doing right now), they'd likely shoot off about how bad steroids are; whether or not they know anything about them at all is irrelevant. They've been told that they're bad and that's good enough for them. After all, steroids are absolutely irrelevant in their own personal lives – they can't see any reason why they should personally take them – so there's no incentive to learn more. So they just accept what the media tells them.

So, in my opinion, although some experts wax philosophical on the public's fear of muscle, masculinity, etc, I believe the public remains negative about steroids for two reasons:

1. Steroids have no relevance to their lives.

Unlike recreational drugs which offer an acute and short-lived ‘good time' or ‘escape from reality', steroids are drugs that you have to take chronically in order to serve one or both of two specific purposes – a) improve cosmetic appearance: they make users more muscular and leaner; b) improve athletic performance: they make users stronger, and more athletically adept. As the average professional adult doesn't necessarily place primary importance on either (sure, they'd like to look better but they know they don't need steroids to look like a thin, lean Men's Health cover model), steroids are a non-issue for them. So why bother investigating them any further? Why not just listen to media experts? And can you blame them? Would you go out and investigate all the scientific evidence on a topic completely irrelevant to your life? Probably not.