Losing an Olympic medal because of illegal drug use could be the least of an athletes’ worries. University of Missouri-Rolla biological sciences professor Robert Brown says performance-enhancing drugs do long-term damage to athletes. The steroids used can cause liver damage, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other serious health problems. Brown fears young athletes are too infatuated with bulking-up or increasing speed for competition now to worry about what illegal performance-enhancing drugs will do to their bodies in the future. A handful of athletes lost their medals during the Olympics this year.
