Like just about everything now adays, Wikipedia has a good article on hGH (that' the current "official" acronym).

I thought that I saw somewhere that some doc's were using it to promote bone healing, but I can't  seem to find a good reference.  I may have been wrong about that, in which case my defense of Mr. Ankiel may also be wrong.  Sorry

Something that stands out in my memory of the article was that one of the earlier HGH compounds, in very high dosages, caused unusual late jaw growth in adults, which may be why so many Olympic sprinters were wearing braces.

You seem to be interested in the actual effects and side-effects on performance. I've never seen anything official. You may want to hunt through some back issues of GQ -- a few years ago it had a terrific anonymous profile with a flamed-out minor league pitcher who said he had lost his 90+ heat one off-season and was in the last year of his deal. It was very descriptive of the casual, "cost of doing business" attitude baseball had (has?) toward PEDs. Anyway, he never got his fastball back, but he said the roid rage / shrunken testes stuff was vastly over-rated. It wasn't so much that he could suddenly leg-press half a ton, but he said he finished sets that had previously exhausted him, and that he would wake up the next day ready to hit the weight-room after workouts that used to demolish his bathroom.

It's probably worth noting, as so many have, that lots of people take PEDs; that doesn't change the fact that there are only a few hundred people in the world who are physically qualified to play major league baseball. What makes Bonds, Bonds, for example, was never his raw power, but his vision and depth perception, which I've read is among the best ever measured. I seem to recall an expert saying that Barry's steroid use, ridiculous though it must have been, at best added ten, maybe fifteen feet to his better-hit balls.

I guess the best answer to your question is that PEDs, like everything else in baseball, are about marginal improvement. The guys who can throw 100 don't need drugs to do it; the ticker-tape shots have a lot more to do with timing than with muscle. But coming out of the bullpen for the third day in a row, or pushing warning track shots over the wall -- that's where the chemicals have made a difference.

I apologize for my hang-over rant, here. I like the topic.

That shit is the bomb. Give you 5-10% more on your bench press in 4-6 weeks.  Bulk you up and give you shorter recovery times.  Not the same caliber stuff as the diabinol congeners - but great stuff nonetheless.

But then again a steady diet of T-bone steaks'll bulk you up too.

Prolonged use - 8 plus weeks - is a bad idea.  Some evidence that it can impare renal function and leads to muscle cramps, but no neoplastic or hormonal side effects.  

Shoulda added to the discussion that Alonzo Mourning lost a kidney over-using OTC analgesics.  Tylenol will kill you dead from liver failure if you take a fist full of 'em.  Lotsa stuff is dangerous as hell - if you use them improperly.

I got a call into a buddy of mine who's an endocrinologist in St. Louis - bet his phone is ringing off the hook with local reporters wanting to talk about Ankiel - to get his take on this "super" hGH fleerdon's heard about.  I'll let you'all know what he's says when I hear back from him

I still don't like Bonds, because of the tainting of the Game's records. Hank Aaron is the home run king, IMO.

Yeah, I'm less concerned with the choices themselves as made by the athletes, which I think you've elucidated perfectly by putting them in economic terms, than with the mentality of condemning PEDs. What drives it? Any sort of argument about the purity of the sport or the legitimacy of the statistics strikes me as ludicrously impractical and hypocritical.

Is it wrong because The Babe didn't have it? If that's the case, we might just as well lash out at elective surgery, or video analysis, or MRIs. How do Jhonny's LASIK or those screws in Betancourt's elbow qualifiedly differ from Sheffield's clear, Ankiel's HGH, or Neifi's amphetamines? What -- and, more important, who -- decides what is and is not acceptable performance-enhancing behavior, and under what rationale?

I'm especially skeptical of the argument that pro athletes ought to be role models -- that if Giambi takes andro, so will a Little Leaguer. If you're really worried about your kid behaving like Jason Giambi, drugs would be a comparatively lesser concern.

To me, it's an even more strained distinction than we try to draw between enshrining Mickey Mantle and ostracizing Pete Rose: "We will honor any nature of douchebag except the one who TARNISHES THE INTEGRITY OF THE SPORT!" What does that even mean?