Anti-Steroid Crusade Dangers And Risks
Friday, July 28, 2006
The Michael Scally Case: How Political Subversion of the Law Reaches the Professions through the Anti-Steroid Crusade.
Political use of the law is particularly implicated in steroid prosecutions of police officers, because cops on steroids are a damning indictment of the current policy and regime of drug enforcement in this country, representing the hoax of prohibition falling in upon itself. That, however, has not stopped the prohibitionists: instead, they have grown even more determined to adopt increasingly draconian enforcement schemes.
The selective prosecution of police officers for steroid use and selective parading out of beefed-up baseball players share several features with the topic this article will explore, i.e., the professional decertification of Dr. Michael C. Scally by the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners. My interest in Dr. Scally's case is a natural extension of my interest in the topic of politicized steroid, prosecutions generally. The imposition of the sanction of professional decertification functions in much the same way as the imposition of sentence in a criminal proceeding: its purported design is to protect public safety. It also, however, makes the sanctioned person a social and professional pariah.
In the author's view, Dr. Scally, like police officers, is being selectively targeted for professional discipline, because he challenges the foundational policy upon which current therapeutic, legislative and enforcement practice is shakily built: that anabolic steroids are unqualifiedly bad drugs without legitimate therapeutic application. Put more bluntly, his research and work does not conform to the doctrinaire mindlessness of current dogma. His professional disciplinary proceeding also served specific political ends for the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners, political ends that portend to pose a tyranny of a highly misinformed majority, guided by an unchecked executive, upon the discretionary, professional practice of medicine, the kind of autocratic authority bicameral representative government and an independent judiciary is supposed to prevent.
http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/sweitzer/anti-steroid-crusade-against-michael-scally.htm
Political use of the law is particularly implicated in steroid prosecutions of police officers, because cops on steroids are a damning indictment of the current policy and regime of drug enforcement in this country, representing the hoax of prohibition falling in upon itself. That, however, has not stopped the prohibitionists: instead, they have grown even more determined to adopt increasingly draconian enforcement schemes.
The selective prosecution of police officers for steroid use and selective parading out of beefed-up baseball players share several features with the topic this article will explore, i.e., the professional decertification of Dr. Michael C. Scally by the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners. My interest in Dr. Scally's case is a natural extension of my interest in the topic of politicized steroid, prosecutions generally. The imposition of the sanction of professional decertification functions in much the same way as the imposition of sentence in a criminal proceeding: its purported design is to protect public safety. It also, however, makes the sanctioned person a social and professional pariah.
In the author's view, Dr. Scally, like police officers, is being selectively targeted for professional discipline, because he challenges the foundational policy upon which current therapeutic, legislative and enforcement practice is shakily built: that anabolic steroids are unqualifiedly bad drugs without legitimate therapeutic application. Put more bluntly, his research and work does not conform to the doctrinaire mindlessness of current dogma. His professional disciplinary proceeding also served specific political ends for the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners, political ends that portend to pose a tyranny of a highly misinformed majority, guided by an unchecked executive, upon the discretionary, professional practice of medicine, the kind of autocratic authority bicameral representative government and an independent judiciary is supposed to prevent.
http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/sweitzer/anti-steroid-crusade-against-michael-scally.htm
posted by Frank Mori, Friday, July 28, 2006
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