President-elect Barack Obama has selected Phil Schiliro as the Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. Schiliro will play an important role in the Obama-Biden administration as Obama’s top White House Congressional liason. Phil Schiliro was Chief of Staff to Representative Henry Waxman, the chairman for the House Oversight Committee (“Philip Schiliro, Veteran Congressional Aide, Named To Obama’s Staff,” November ).
Phil Schiliro, as Waxman’s Chief of Staff, is given most of the credit for initiating the Congressional hearings on anabolic steroid use in baseball after reading Jose Canseco’s book Juiced. The Congressional grandstanding at the steroid witch-hunt was also known as “Restoring Faith in America’s Pastime: Evaluating Major League Baseball’s Efforts to Eradicate Steroid Use” (“Persistent Schiliro Back as a Co-Pilot for Oversight,” February 1, 2007).
His biggest PR coup occurred in 2005 when Congress investigated allegations that Major League Baseball players were using steroids. The committee subpoenaed seven players, including the Baltimore Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro and St. Louis Cardinal Mark McGwire, who broke the home-run record in 1998. Those hearings were marked by McGwire’s refusal to say whether he had taken steroids and Palmeiro’s firm statement that he had not. Several months after the hearings, Palmeiro tested positive for steroids and was briefly suspended from baseball. Barnett said the hearings contributed to eventual changes in the league’s drug policy.
He said that Schiliro brought the steroid issue to Waxman and Davis after the publication of Jose Canseco’s book, “Juiced,” in which the former slugger said he and other players had used performance-enhancing drugs. A baseball fan, Schiliro worried that use among the sport’s heroes would convince young people that they had to use drugs to be competitive. He got the committee into the act when he concluded that Major League Baseball wasn’t taking the book’s allegations seriously.
Viewers of the documentary “Bigger Stronger Faster*” know that Rep. Henry Waxman is completely clueless about about anabolic steroids and steroid law in particular. So, it would come as know surprise that someone else, his chief of staff Schiliro, pushed their own anti-steroid agenda through the House Oversight Committe.
The Obama-Biden administration’s appointment of anti-steroid crusader Phil Schiliro as a role as the President’s top legislative liason to Congress certainly dims the already faded hopes of steroid law reform. Obama’s statements about the government’s obsession with steroids notwithstanding, the appointment of two anti-steroid crusaders, Joe Biden and Phil Schiliro, is discouraging for advocates of steroid legal reform. Some people feel Schiliro may actively use his new position to influence national policy on anabolic steroids and performance-enhancing drugs to appease international anti-doping agencies.
About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
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