Steroid education expert Linn Goldberg is in the news again. The NFL recently earmarked $1.4 million for Goldberg’s ATLAS and ATHENA steroid education programs. The programs do have some empirical support showing that they reduce teen steroid use. However, we are concerned with some of the inaccurate side effects promoted by Dr. Goldberg in the media, like the “fact” that steroids cause “paranoia.”
“Unlike many other drugs, kids don’t admit it because it’s not cool to be on steroids, not to mention the fact that it makes you paranoid,” explained Linn Goldberg, professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.
The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and Ad Council have teamed up to create a new, interactive multimedia anti-steroid public awareness campaign targeted at teenagers. The anti-steroid campaign was funded by United States Olympic sponsor Johnson & Johnson and created pro bono by Omnicom’s TBWA\Chiat\Day agency (”USOC and Ad Council take on roids,” August 18).
The ad agency had a lot of fun creating DontBeAnAsterisk.com anti-steroid campaign and so can you! They created an interactive flash-based soccer game where visitors try to score goals while avoiding the “asterisks” (which represent anabolic steroids). Unfortunately, it is a whole lot more fun to run into the asterisks and get “juiced up” because your soccer player’s muscles magically increase in size to bodybuilder proportions! This is according to my six-year old who kept running into the asterisks explaining that ”it’s fun to watch [the player] get bigger.” Cute. This certainly will send kids the message that steroids are bad.
“You’re hitting your body with a biochemical sledge hammer and you’re pushing things way beyond where they were designed to be,” Runbeck said.
Dr. Runbeck should consider directing an anti-steroid public service announcement. Perhaps use a raw egg to represent the brain. And the the sledge hammer could represent steroids. And maybe hire Rachel Leigh Cook to star in the commercial. She could go into “roid rage” and proceed to use the sledge hammer to destroy the egg and everything around her as she lists the evil side effects of anabolic steroids. That would be hot. … Read the rest of this entry »
.jpg)
