That Great American, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, stopped a bill that would ban the drug, DHEA, which the body converts into steroids, although all of the major sports, including the Olympics, already ban its use. He wants major league baseball players to have the right to continue to use it.

Hatch's son, Scott Hatch, is a lobbyist for the National Nutritional Foods Association, a trade association for the dietary supplement industry, and has represented supplement companies themselves, including Twin Laboratories, which sells DHEA.

Drug manufacturing is a major industry in Utah, of course. Hatch is just looking out for his constituency, and his family's welfare, regardless of the cost to the rest of us.

DHEA is produced in the human body, although its production usually peaks around the age of 25. Its use as a drug is advertised as an anti-aging drug, and most of the artificial production comes from China, which sells about $47 million worth to the U.S.

In 1985 the FDA banned the over the counter sale of DHEA, but Hatch got a bill passed in 1994, which re-classified the drug as a food suppliment, effectively placing it into the hands of your teenage son.

Hatch is, as you should know, the same senator who has supported the use of ephedra, which has been linked with more than 100 deaths.

Genocide in Darfur—What Are We Doing about It?