A Sad Day: Olympians Tout Botox

[DogPoundPup]

It is a sad day when two superb Olympic athletes - whose performances earned a total of 14 gold medals combined - prostitute themselves for undisclosed amounts of money to help Allergan sell Botox. Instead of tens of millions of people watching the athletes’ performances in the past as they strived for their personal best, people will now be able to watch videos of doctors’ performances as they inject former swimmer Mark Spitz and former gymnast Nadia Comaneci with Botox.

This sends a terrible message to athletes, young or old, and to others that they should not accept the way they look as they age but, rather, should try to look their "personal best" by the Botox-enhanced pretense that they are younger than they really are.

Another trouble with this slick marketing campaign is that botulinum toxin (available as Botox and Myobloc) can cause life-threatening adverse reactions. In January, Public Citizen petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to immediately increase its warnings about Botox and Myobloc; adverse reactions can include paralysis of the respiratory muscles and difficulty swallowing (dysphagia), a condition that can allow food or liquid to enter the respiratory tract and lungs, causing aspiration pneumonia. While the data in our petition mainly related to problems associated with the medical use of Botox, adverse reactions can occur with cosmetic use as well. Since when did "personal best" involve subjecting oneself to a risky procedure?

Two weeks after we filed our petition, the FDA issued a press release warning of the dangers of injecting botulinum toxin but stopped short of forcing drug makers to send out warning letters to doctors or putting a black box warning on the drug as we had requested.

By peddling a product that can seriously injure people, these athletes are tarnishing their past athletic achievements. Botox is nothing to play around with. The public should not be lulled into a false sense of security by Allergan’s outrageous caper.

To read Public Citizen’s petition to the FDA, go to: http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7559.
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2695

[aspergris]

1. As an athlete

"Since when did "personal best" involve subjecting oneself to a risky procedure?"

fwiw, athletes routinely subject themselves to risk, danger, even death in pursuit of their sports.

I read a study once where they asked olympic caliber athletes if they would be willing to give up 5, 10 years etc. of their lifespan to get a gold medal and the responses were overwhelmingly yes.

Not that Botox which is a cosmetic procedure is directly analogous to sport, but my point is that elite athletes (and even non-elites like myself) accept that in the pursuit of sports excellence we take risks, we subject ourselves to danger (more or less depending on the sport), discomfort, risk, injury, etc.

I feel the same way about botox that I feel about breast implants. As long as the risks are clearly explained, it's an individual choice.

Decisions in life we make are often about tradeoffs risk vs. reward. Sports is DEFINITELY about that. Some athletes sacrifice friends, family, romance, and years of their life in pursuit of an olympic dream that very few make.

Again, sport is noble in a way that smooth skin (botox) isn't. But it's natural for elite athletes to understand that we often risk when we seek to better ourselves. Does making ourselves look younger "better" ourselves?

that's arguable, but I do my utmost to retain a youthful appearance. I strength train relentlessly - which definitely involves risk although it also makes me safer in many ways so it might be an even trade - so I don't begrudge people botox