Keep drug out of public's hands

Good news for couch potatoes and everyone else who hates to workout but wishes he could magically have a nicely defined body. It may be too good to be true, but now with just the swallow of a pill you can have ripped and defined muscles. Sounds like a cheesy infomercial, right?\nResearchers at Duke University and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have discovered the way in which muscles build their strength and endurance, and now it may be possible in the near future simply to take a pill to get your body looking fit. In their study, researchers used a group of mice and provoked the physical changes that occur to muscles during exercise. They found the mice with higher levels of CaMK, a signaling protein, developed more mitochondria in their cells and had increased amounts of the types of cells found in most marathon runners. High levels of CaMK in the mice resulted in healthy muscles without the exercise. The protein had an effect similar to that of a high-powered workout.\nPeople suffering from heart disease and other conditions that prevent them from engaging in vigorous activity would benefit from using this potential drug, and the drug would increase endurance levels in older people. While researchers set out to discover this drug to help those people who physically can't workout, it may be potentially dangerous if released to the general public.\nIf this were to become an over-the-counter muscle enhancer, the drug would likely be abused. Athletes would be lining up to buy this miracle pill because not only would it improve their overall performance, but it would increase their endurance and muscle definition as well. Researchers are expecting to work in conjunction with pharmaceutical companies to discover how to set off the CaMK muscle-signaling pathway. \nThis drug -- if put on the market and approved by the Food and Drug Administration -- should not be readily available or accessible to the public. Like many other products that have hit the market claiming to enhance performance, define muscles and tone your body, there will most likely be a price to pay. Often the true side effects of drugs are not discovered until it is too late. Fen-Phen, an over-the-counter diet drug that was released and promoted as the great new way to lose weight, was yanked off the market after many people suffered serious side effects. \nThere is no miracle diet, no fool-proof plan to fix your body and reach perfection. You can't even be perfect by today's standards. Some of the most beautiful people have tried everything from starvation diets to plastic surgery in attempts to reach that level of perfection. \nEven little Miss Britney Spears herself will tell you -- she works out a good two or three hours and does somewhere around 500 sit-ups a day. She looks good, but what normal person has time to devote himself to three hours in the gym every day? Or better yet, who has that kind of self-motivation? \nWhile researchers at Duke and Texas Southwestern should be congratulated for making such an advancement, I encourage them to keep this drug away from the general public. In our society, most of us are looking to move into the fast lane and cheat our way to the top without actually lifting a finger. But it is a dangerous path to take.