Al Bello, Getty Images A young fan Mets fan at Shea Stadium during a game featuring the San Francisco Giants and suspected steroid user Barry Bonds. Click photo for larger image. About this series This is the last story in a four-part series on the history of steroids and how they spread throughout athletics. SUNDAY: An experiment in York, Pa., plants the seed for the steroids epidemic. Read more ... MONDAY: A Pittsburgh attorney put the government on trial to get his client acquitted of steroids charges. Read more ... YESTERDAY: Random drug testing is part of life for today's NFL players. Read more ... TODAY: The ethics of steroids use will continue to perplex society as researchers explore its age-defying benefits. Audio insights A conversation with author Robert Dvorchak: Few people know how the steroids epidemic in sports really started. On Day One of the series, he introduces readers to the first U.S. athlete to use steroids to enhance his performance. On Day Two, he explores how steroid use outpaced government regulation. On Day Three, he examines the history of steroids in the NFL and Steelers. On Day Four the series explores why some Baby Boomer-aged doctors are taking steroids themselves and the enduring difficulty of banning steroids in a culture that readily accepts taking a pill for just about anything. Your Views Join the series' author, Robert Dvorchak, for an online chat about the issues raised in his reports. The session is scheduled from noon to 1 p.m., Friday, Oct. 7. Log-in as early as 11:30 a.m. that day to post your questions ahead of the session.

Among the doctors who condemn the use of artificial testosterone by athletes is Alan Mintz. Yet he takes a derivative of testosterone himself as part of a regimen that he believes restores vitality in aging men and women.

Confusing? Like everything else about steroids, it takes some explaining. But essentially, hormonal overload in a healthy body can lead to serious health and ethical issues, while replacing hormones that are no longer produced naturally can lead to a healthier life.

"We are totally against the use of steroids to boost athletic performance. A 25-year-old athlete has no need for them. The price is too high," Dr. Mintz said. "But we really need to understand the difference between abuse, for which I have no tolerance, and the appropriate use of sex hormones to maintain health.

"It gives you the power to have a healthy life in your later years," he added. "There's a tremendous benefit if you go about it the right way. It's very exciting medicine."

A former radiologist from Chicago, Dr. Mintz is the founder of the Las Vegas-based Cenegenics Medical Institute, which takes its name from the Greek for "new beginnings." Of his 25,000 patients, 1,000 of them are medical doctors and their families.

Now 67, Dr. Mintz has been taking testosterone cypionate for 10 years in combination with daily workouts and a tailored diet. A body-builder and marathon runner, he describes his program as age management through hormone replacement therapy, although Baby Boomers commonly refer to it as an anti-aging fountain of youth.

While there are skeptics and critics, the theory behind the medicine is based on the complex chemical components that make up the body's circuitry. The body's production of sex hormones starts declining around the age of 40, which wasn't much of a concern 100 years ago when life expectancy was about 45. Now that life expectancy is in the 70s, replacing the hormones no longer made naturally can improve the quality of life in later years.

"Hormones are like members of a symphony orchestra. You need all the instruments to play Beethoven's Ninth," Dr. Mintz said. "Under strict medical supervision, study after study has shown that steroids taken in low doses do not cause health problems. Nothing is going to make you live longer, but age management can help you live better."

The current climate of demonizing and criminalizing steroid use by athletes and adolescents, however, is muddling the medical research about their legitimate use, according to Dr. John Baxter, professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and former president of the Endocrine Society, a group of medical specialists devoted to hormone study.

"The concern I have is that hysteria over steroids use will cause people to lose sight of the potential good side of these hormones. It's really going to scare people away from legitimate medical use," Dr. Baxter said.

"I don't want to say there's nothing bad about them because there are side effects, especially in younger people. But putting them in a league with cocaine and heroin is way out of perspective," he added.

"Sports is a game. You need to play by the rules. If the rules aren't being followed, that to me sounds like cheating. But that's not a medical problem. Barry Bonds doesn't look like he's ready for the nursing home," Dr. Baxter said. "I think a lot more science needs to be done to verify what we should do."

Age and testosterone

Testosterone is produced in both men and women from cholesterol, a two-sided steroid that is considered "good" if it scrubs out arteries and "bad" if it clogs them up.

Testosterone affects almost every bodily function, including moods, and has multiple and sometimes conflicting personalities. It plays a role in well-being but it can also be a mischief-maker.

Take, for example, the case of the steroid testosterone cypionate.

In 2003, 10 football players from Buckeye Union High School in Arizona were suspended for taking it to build muscles. Their coach, Bobby Barnes, was part of the congressional hearings on drug-free sports earlier this year and was told the players bought veterinary grade testosterone cypionate from Mexico.

But Dr. Dan Hamner, the former ring physician for the New York State Boxing Commission and former medical director of Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn, takes a 100-milligram injection of testosterone cypionate each week to maintain his vitality.

The difference is that he's 65, not an 18-year-old whose hormones are raging naturally.

"It does wonders, but it's critical to monitor it. It's just remarkable how it changes everything," said Dr. Hamner, a world record holder in the two-mile relay for 60-to-69-year-olds. "It gives you a sense of well-being. I want to keep my youth. My libido is still healthy, although it gets me in trouble a little bit."

He replaces the stuff no longer made by his body with Depo-Testosterone, an Upjohn product. That would seem to be legal under the law, but Dr. Hamner isn't sure it's a crime or not.

"I don't know. I hope not. They're going have to arrest us all if it is. Most doctors my age take it," said Dr. Hamner, owner and founder of the Peak Energy Program in New York City.

Drawing the line between legitimate and illegitimate steroid use is a gnarly issue. So Dr. Hamner has proposed a radical idea: Create a separate league for steroid users or those suspended for taking them but who still want to compete, just as some body-building organizations have done.

"The main part of mainstream anti-aging medicine is based on hormonal replacement. The steroids issue isn't going to go away. It seems to me it will not be long before professional sports will have to accept them," he said. "How can we blame them for wanting to use it ourselves?"

A pharmaceutical culture

The Age of Steroids has a beginning and a middle, but there still is no end despite the stated efforts of sports federations and leagues around the globe to ban steroids and penalize athletes who test positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

For many who have invested years studying the issue, the bottom line is society's attitudes about drugs and sports, which author Russell Baker once described as the real opiate of the American masses.

"This is a societal deal. We embrace instant gratification. Society is embracing its own addiction to bigger, faster and stronger and winning at all costs. We expect medical technology to give us drugs that make us perform better in everyday life," said Steve Courson, a former Steelers lineman who went public with steroid use in the NFL in 1985 and later wrote a book about his own experiences with steroids.

"Sports is a diversion to entertain the masses," he added. "The spectacle is reminiscent of Ancient Rome. Instead of the gladiators and chariot races in the Circus Maximus, we have football and NASCAR and all kinds of sports on TV. People don't care how athletes train. They want the illusion. And we're feeding our youth into that myth."

After taking steroids through college and his nine-year NFL career, Mr. Courson developed such a severe heart condition that he was told he would die if he didn't receive a heart transplant. He believes that carrying so much extra muscle, along with a hard-drinking and risk-taking lifestyle, contributed to the stress on his heart.

A program of diet and exercise reversed the heart condition. Now steroid-free for 17 years, Mr. Courson is a toned and svelte 240 pounds. Not only does he counsel high school kids on the dangers of steroids, but he also tells them of the pressure they will face to be tempted to take them in order to compete.

"There's a whole minefield of problems, and the minefield doesn't go away," Mr. Courson said. "If they're going to be tempted by the glory and money, I can at least tell them where the mines are. People wonder why athletes take the risk, but the risk is going out on the football field in the first place. Even if you're not taking them, steroids have had a profound impact on sports. Some juiced-up beast is trying to blast you out of the stadium.

"Athletes didn't invent this stuff," Mr. Courson noted. "We opened Pandora's box. We're still trying to figure out how to close it. It's bottomless. It's impossible to eliminate them. Let's accept it's inevitable. But don't put athletes on a moral pedestal when it's an absolute joke. Don't speak of purity and ideals. There's too much money invested in performance."

Chuck Yesalis grew up following sports figures like Red Grange, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. It strikes him as ironic that some talk of wiping record books clean of achievements turned in by those on performance-enhancing drugs, especially since the sports leagues benefitted from record-breaking performances.

And the fans have their own role in the saga.

"The reason fans don't care is they want bigger-than-life people doing bigger-than-life things. They want to see records broken. That's what entertainment is all about," said Dr. Yesalis. "Fans don't want the athletes to use steroids, but they love the outcome of the drugs. Ask yourself what would happen if they cleaned up performance-enhancing drugs and amphetamines from sports. What would you be looking at, and would they be able to charge $100 a ticket to watch it?"

The whole issue of athletes taking substances to make them bigger and faster speaks to the pharmacological or herbal choices that Americans make every day. There's caffeine in the morning and sleeping pills at night. People pop a pill for a headache or joint pain and maybe take something else for high blood pressure. College kids call Ritalin Vitamin R because it helps them focus for tests and suppresses appetites. Prozac takes the edge off everything. There are medications to reverse male pattern baldness. And if you imbibe a cocktail or two over your limit, pills are available to eliminate hangovers. Products such as Viagra, Levitra and Cialis are commonly advertised during athletic events along with products touting penile enlargement.

"Increasingly, this is a society that consumes pharmaceutical products for a variety of purposes. It's a drug culture to a very great extent. Athletes are a group of people for whom performance is everything. Ethical concerns tend to take a distant second place," Dr. Hoberman said. "There really is no culturally sanctioned reason to practice self-restraint."