In the past couple of days, there's been a new effort to parse the issues behind doping. The naming of so many seems to have created a dawning sense that rabid prosecution can create worse miscarriages than the original offense. There's an uneasiness with evidence that came from prosecutors chasing big-name players like antlers for their walls, cutting deals with informers to name as many names as possible. Should we judge all 92 people on the list as the same, when the evidence against some is clearly flimsy, others were merely one-time users and scores aren't even named? Pettitte says he used human growth hormone just twice, in an effort to recover from an elbow injury. What should we make of that?

Is there legitimate therapeutic use for some of these things? Should we judge on a sliding scale? If so, that invites a world of problems in terms of telling right from wrong, fair from unfair, pure from impure, natural from artificial. But maybe we should address those problems rather than subscribe to the draconian World Anti-Doping Agency code, which treats all transgressors the same, punishes an Andy Pettitte no different from Marion Jones and tolerates errors in labs but not in humans.

The whole nature of the enhancement and artificiality in sports needs more candor. Not an investigation that unfairly criminalizes the issue, but rather seeks to truly understand the motives and problems of athletes. Are there dosages that aren't harmful to one's health? What does, and doesn't, actually enhance performance? Why did Marion Jones's times actually get slower on Balco products? Why did Miguel Tejada's slugging percentage decrease for three straight years? If an aging player uses HGH simply to recover from injury, or to prolong his career, to keep his job, is that really cheating?

Athletes sacrifice their long-term health on a daily basis -- they train to the point of breakdown, play hurt and are gnarled by arthritis and other inflammatory diseases. Maybe they need some help. Maybe "performance enhancement" is a nonsensical term that doesn't describe most of what's going on.

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Here's a fear. One day we might look back over our shoulders and realize that we created our own generational versions of Jim Thorpe. In 1912, Thorpe was singled out and punished for "sullying" the Olympics. He was found to be "impure" and stripped of his medals because he wasn't an amateur, but rather had played two summers of baseball for money. The practice was utterly pervasive. But Thorpe was the only one disgraced for it, because it was easier, and more emotionally satisfying, to punish an Indian than all the Yalies who did the very same thing. Thirty or fifty years from now, let's hope we aren't similarly ashamed.

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