With the Winter Olympics just concluded and baseball's spring training in full swing (ouch, sorry about the pun), there have been a lot of feel-good stories in the press these days. But count on a not-so-pleasant subject to crop up regularly in the news as well: Performance-enhancing drugs.

You may know them simply as steroids, but there are plenty of other substances and procedures that some athletes use to try to improve their performance. It's sad, but a fact of life. When millions of dollars or gold medals are on the line, some people are willing to cheat to win.

It's not a new story—athletes have actually been doing it for over a century. But medical science has made the drugs more powerful, harder to detect, and better at targeting specific parts of the body. There are more types of these drugs available than ever before, and new ones are being developed every day. The Internet makes them very easy to obtain.

There will undoubtedly be even more focus on the issue this spring as baseball slugger Barry Bonds approaches Babe Ruth's career home run total. Bonds has long been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, and even admitted to taking a steroid-laced substance at one point, although he claimed he did not know what it was. There was also the sad spectacle of baseball stars such as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa testifying about the problem in front of Congress last spring.

Encarta recently produced a new article on this phenomenon (see link above). Written by science writer Christopher King, the piece not only discusses the controversy but also the science behind the story. How do steroids work? What is blood doping? What about stimulants such as ephedra? And what kinds of steps are sports organizations such as professional baseball taking to combat the problem? Read the article and find out.

David Hirning

Encarta Reference Editor