"‘Roid rage is a popular term suggesting that users of anabolic steroids might show impulsive unprovoked ultra-aggressive behavior. It is not a scientific concept. In fact, among scientists there is little agreement on the causal relationship between anabolic steroid use and aggressive behavior and many have concluded that it does not exist.

     "Aggressive responding or tendencies are assessed by using questionnaires that ask about behavior, either in general, the past, or in specific situations. The resulting scores are used to compare groups to each other, evaluate changes within groups over time or both. Laboratory tasks involving simulated interactions/competitions provide scores for certain types of aggressive responses that also can be used to compare groups or evaluate changes over time. Lastly, naturally-occurring aggressive behavior can be assessed by asking others in the person's environment (e.g., family, spouse) to observe and report on their behavior. 

     "In anabolic steroid research, surveys use questionnaires to assess large numbers of users who self-administer anabolic steroids. As a group, users report levels of aggression that are higher than non-users (recall that this is not “’roid rageâ€�). However, users may be different to begin with, i.e., they may have been more aggressive than non-users prior to beginning anabolic steroid use. Steroid use does not occur randomly in the population and such surveys cannot tell us about cause because co-occurrence does not prove causation. Users who show increased aggression with anabolic steroid use may be characteristically more aggressive.

     "Experimental studies administer steroids to randomly assigned participants (most often with no history of use), which controls for prior differences. The findings of these studies are not consistent, but at most suggest minimal increases in aggression with steroid administration. Questionnaires indicate either no change or minimal change in aggression. Laboratory analog tasks assessing changes in aggressive responding may show some small effects, but similar responding has been found among marijuana users in withdrawal. Significant others report minimal if any changes in aggressive actions among those administered steroids. Notably, at least one study reported that those receiving a placebo but told they received a steroid, showed increases in aggression, suggesting that expectation or anticipation are also important in steroid effects. Also of note, levels of steroids in the blood are not necessarily correlated to behavioral symptoms. The above research paints a complex picture of the rare occurrence of aggression that might be seen in anabolic steroid users, one that includes existing individual differences, social and contextual factors and the expectations and psychological state of the individual.

     "The use of anabolic steroids by adolescents has drawn attention as of late. Adolescence is a time of increased involvement in many risky behaviors, including the use of many types of drugs. Thankfully, steroids are used by far fewer teenagers than are other major drugs of abuse, such as marijuana or cocaine. Using any drug during this period when the brain is developing toward its adult configuration might have lasting behavioral effects. Animal studies suggest that high doses of anabolic steroids taken for extended periods by adolescents might lead to behavioral changes that last beyond cessation of use, presumably by affecting brain organization at this crucial time. Similar long-lasting effects with other drugs have been reported for several years.  We must differentiate adolescent drug use from adult use. Adolescents are not simply smaller younger adults. The application of such findings to this case seems unwarranted.

     "The Chris Benoit affair, although a case study in tragedy, cannot inform us about the nature of steroid effects nor does the science suggest that steroids caused this event. It is a dramatic demonstration but impressions based on such case studies exaggerate relationships and are subject to a number of biases. It is normal to seek reasons for such events to manage our anxiety and horror by assigning cause or blame. But that is the role of society, its media and the legal system. From a scientific point of view, such jumping to conclusions creates biases that once established can be hard to overcome. Once our mind is made up, we heavily weight confirming evidence and ignore conflicting information. For instance, in cases like this, when a professional wrestler or bodybuilder is involved, the potential connection to steroids is immediately and inevitably offered; it appeared in this case before reports noted that prescription steroids were found in the residence. It persists after reports of a negative test in April. And, although toxicology reports provide no definitive causal information (again the science has not shown correlations between blood levels of steroids and behavioral effects), it likely will only increase at that point.

     "Science works with groups of participants and offers probability statements not absolute conclusions. No scientist can say with certainty what caused this event. And science does not prove negatives; hence it cannot prove that anabolic steroids were not involved. But the science, in this case, suggests that if steroids were involved, they were one piece of a much more complex picture. Too many other factors are unknown and may never be known and behavior is simply too complex."

There is an elite athlete who wakes up with mirrors in his home gym and a closet full of lucrative endorsement deals. The sports star has a paid trainer who administers steroids so he can find an edge to shatter records and gain wealth.

Where does a police raid take place -- health club or clubhouse? Whose home is ransacked by the police -- the gym rat's or the sports star's?

''It's the truck driver, the guy working at the Stop & Shop -- as narcissistic or misguided as they might be,'' said Rick Collins of Long Island, who specializes in steroid law. ''These are the lives destroyed by the steroid laws.'' Collins's clients are not sports icons, because athletes haven't been the targets of steroid possession laws, even though their using prompted the Anabolic Steroid Act of 1990 and 2004.

Players are the cause of steroid criminalization by the Beltway gang, but aren't treated as criminals. Instead, politicians treat them to scoldings and threats and timeouts in the corner. Once again yesterday, members of Congress feeling frustrated by the inaction of pro leagues in strengthening antidoping policies reintroduced Olympic-style legislation to standardize testing and toughen suspensions. Suspensions are not based on the legal system, but on a morality code for elite athletes who are idolized by malleable youth.

''It's political,'' Collins said. ''It's easier to go after the regular guy rather than expose our heroes.''

Sports icons are not granted immunity everywhere. Italy is one example. And this scares the O-rings off the International Olympic Committee just 100 days before the Winter Games in Turin. The same I.O.C. leaders who trumpet zero tolerance for drug cheating spent last week pleading in futility for Italian authorities to relax their punitive antidoping laws, which send offenders to jail for three months to three years. ''It is a question of sporting ethics,'' the I.O.C. president, Jacques Rogge, said Friday, ''rather than a question of crime and criminality.''

If true, then why did Dick Pound, I.O.C. member and chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, rip into the light prison sentence Victor Conte, steroid designer to the stars, received in the Balco case? In one reference, Pound called Conte's plea deal a potential ''cop-out on a cosmic scale.''

Pound has spent a career mocking cheating athletes for blaming dastardly opponents and tainted supplements for the fly in their soup. But now he is offering his ample breath to conspiracy theories, openly fretting about potential setups by saboteurs who would lure police officials to a competing athlete's steroid stash.

Why the use of selective paranoia and desire for boutique-style justice? It goes to self-preservation. First, the I.O.C. doesn't want its pristine Winter Olympics tarnished by images of pixie skaters removed from the ice in leg irons or of snowboarders escorted from the halfpipe in handcuffs. Second, the I.O.C. can't fathom losing control over its antidoping program after pouring years into the creation of the W.A.D.A. All that time creating a uniform drug standard. All that effort to get every national Olympic committee on board. And now the W.A.D.A. is irrelevant? And now the police want to police? ''The Italian law criminalizes sports cheating,'' Collins said. ''It hits the intended target.''

No one wants to see athletes forced to turn in their U.S.A. berets at the police desk. No one wants to see a sports figure working out in a prison yard. ... But shouldn't a doping violator -- whether he is in the N.F.L. or whether she is a figure skating star -- have to answer to authorities? How about answering one question: Who is your supplier? This is not about the steroid law itself, but about the equal application of it for everyone, from the anonymous store clerk hooked on vanity to the visible sports star hooked on glory. ''It's incredibly hypocritical,'' Collins said. ''It's a bait-and-switch. The very people the laws were enacted to apply to are now asking to be exempt. There is something wrong with that. The antidoping officials pushed for tougher laws as long as the laws didn't affect the athletes. ''I can't think of one elite athlete who has been prosecuted on steroid possession. There is clearly a disconnect." This disconnect is in the mirror of the steroid user. One reveals an athlete, the other a criminal.