Clapp Trap

Let's look at an article on Robert Clapp, perhaps the world's best looking enhanced grandfather.  It is taken from this site, and originally published in the Arizona Republic.  My comments indented and italicized.

Ill effects can't be proven, unrepentant 40-year user says

Kent Somers
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 27, 2005

Before the interview starts, Robert Clapp has a few things to get off his chest, which ripples underneath a T-shirt hanging by two thin straps.

He's 69, he says, and an anarchist and an atheist. He's done time in prison. He believes in "body sovereignty," which he defines as a person's right to control his body. That includes ingesting anabolic steroids, which Clapp says he has used, safely, for more than 40 years.

OK, 'body sovereignty' is fine.  But don't use your insurance coverage to pay for the doctor/hospital bills that you incur as a result of your steroid use.  That money comes from our pooled money.  If you feel you have 'body sovereignty' then have 'pay as you go' too.

He checks off a list of notes. It's rare, he says, that the "mainstream media" listens to him, and Clapp doesn't want to overlook anything.

He lays bare his past so people can get past the messenger and concentrate on his message: Nearly everything the public has been told about anabolic steroids is a lie.

A lie?  Not really a lie.  Perhaps over-stated risks.  And, by the way, who has THE TRUTH?

Clapp believes, fervently, in their benefits. In the early 1990s he spent more than two years in federal prison for smuggling, selling and possessing them. That didn't shut him up. The government and medical community are lying, he said, when they say anabolic steroids are dangerous.

Here is this lying again.  And again, I wanna know who has THE TRUTH?

For proof, he points to himself. He'll turn 70 this summer, yet his upper body is still shaped like a "V," and it's so taut that you could strike a match on it. Clapp says he's suffered none of the side effects that doctors say come with use.

"I'm supposed to be dead," he says. "At least I should be impotent and bald."

He is neither, he says.

Well, there is the complete story now.  This one guy isn't impotent or bald SO THE MEDICAL PROFESSION IS LYING ABOUT STEROIDS.  I love this logic.  Good lord are our schools failing this badly in education about scientific method?

A retired teacher, Clapp lives in Phoenix and works part time as a personal trainer. He's the father of three, all conceived while he took anabolic steroids.

Damn.  Steroids penetrate to the DNA in the nucleus of the cell.  I sure would not want these things to be on-board when I conceive a child.  God knows what might happen.  We see tons of problems with parents who used alcohol, smoked, or other drugs.  Isure would not want steroids in there too.

There are thousands of others like him, Clapp says, guys in their 60s and 70s who have used steroids for years. This is what galls him. All he hears and reads in the media are horror stories associated with steroids.

Because his point of view is never represented, he has taken up the crusade. He's written a 16-page "White Paper" outlining his position and mailed it to numerous media outlets. There is no proof, he says, that the prolonged, proper use of anabolic steroids causes cancer, liver damage, impotence, psychological imbalances or any of the other side effects commonly associated with the drugs.

All science has to do, he says, is study men like himself.

Guys like Clapp don't understand science.  They don't understand that although valuable, single case studies are certainly not the gold standard when it comes to pharmacological studies. It is about risk.  Not everyone shares the same risk based on genetics, and environmental exposure. And a case of one doesn't prove anything.  What is needed is long term double blind placebo controlled studies.  And that isn't going to happen with steroidsd soon.  Thus some other substitute study needs to be done.  Serious scientists will admit that the data isn't in, that is true.  However, a lack of evidence doesn't indicate safety.

"When they talk about what's going to happen to these guys now in their 30s and 40s when they get into their 50s and 60s, the answer is there for them," Clapp says. "If they pull their heads out of the ground and look, they'll find us."

There are few, if any, long-term studies of the effects anabolic steroids have on the body, but that doesn't mean they are safe, said Dr. Linn Goldberg, a professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. Studying the long-term effects of steroids is tricky. Many substances are illegal, and people have taken a variety of drugs in different doses.

 

But there are plenty of studies, Goldberg says, that show anabolic steroids have numerous negative effects. And what about Clapp, who is nearing 70 and seemingly in perfect health?

"I have patients who have smoked all their lives, too, and they don't have cancer or emphysema," Goldberg says. "I have other patients who smoked all their lives and gotten emphysema and cancer, and they're dead. Maybe he (Clapp) has been on it for a long time with no problems. That would not make me think, 'Oh, these things are safe.' "

Clapp began taking steroids before hardly anyone knew what they were. He was a skinny kid who started lifting weights as a teenager. His body changed a bit, but nothing like it did when he started taking steroids.

Clapp was introduced to them in the early '60s, he says, while working out in a weight room in the basement of the downtown Phoenix YMCA. A guy who looked like Adonis came in from California selling "super vitamins" in little blue bottles, 100 pills for $3.50.

Clapp bought some and was thrilled with the result. Within six months, he had gained more than 30 pounds while his waist size decreased an inch.

Over the years, he became convinced of what he sees are the benefit and safety of anabolic steroids.

In 1991, after he was arrested, he told a reporter that he had saved enough anabolic steroids to give to his three grandsons.

All three excelled at football. The middle grandson, Nick Clapp, is a linebacker at Arizona State. And the youngest, Matt Clapp, was one of Arizona's best players last season at Paradise Valley High School and has signed a letter of intent with Oklahoma.

Today, their grandfather says he was just trying to provoke prosecutors with his statement about saving steroids. He advised his grandsons not to take steroids, he says, because he didn't think they were prepared to face the scrutiny that he has received.

However, Matt Clapp was among the first signers to a petition in support of his grandfather's viewpoint on bodily sovereignty.

It also accuses the media of lying about anabolic steroids. The petition was sent to the media with Robert Clapp's White Paper.

Attempts to reach Matt Clapp for comment were unsuccessful. The anabolic steroids issue, Robert Clapp says, obscures a more important message: People should be free to make decisions about their bodies.

"It's a stupid issue, how someone gets a bigger bicep," he says. "In this world filled with problems, it shouldn't be on anyone's agenda."

Fair enough on that point.  His opinion.