HGH in the NFL: Welcome back my friend to the show that never ends

The New York Post carries a special story on the HGH problem in the NFL.  The author Matt Chaney points out the pervasive abuse of HGH by athletes, rappers, old duffers, and most likely the NFL.

The American freak show is on, in GH chic.  The buff and tough are everywhere, countless adults, all ages, popping shots of recombinant human growth hormone, the DNA-based enhancer of cultural choice.  Actors use "Growth," and so do singers, baseball players, cops, teachers and doctors.  Sixty-five-year-old men use the stuff to gain lean mass, renew the skin, quicken the step.  So what about football, our beloved blood sport in holy Super Bowl Week?

Do the Giants and the Patriots have a problem with undetectable HGH?

It would be unusual if they didn't.

The author gets it right.  HGH in combo with other PEDs (like testosterone) appears to enhance muscle size and strength.  HGH remains undetectable.  Thus HGH users like  Romanowski, Rodney Harrison, and Tim Couch continue to freak-up with the drug.

Athletes in Super Bowls have abused HGH for years without prudence, as they have throughout the National Football League and much of NCAA football: The Carolina Panthers just happened to be hapless enough to be the only ones to get caught, exposed in the Dr. James Shortt scandal involving illicitly prescribed HGH, steroids and associate chemicals.

Growth hormone builds power, size and speed, especially in synergy with low-dose testosterone, and, despite much misinformation afloat, synthetic HGH cannot be reliably detected in a blood or urine PED screen.

In the doping detection world, anabolic steroids come out 'easy' (nothing is easy as the Floyd Landis case shows); 'growth' because of the short half-life and verisimilitude to the athlete's own HGH, evades reliable detection.  Furthermore, HGH will be detected in blood, an invasive acquisition which constitutes a sticky wicket among civil libertarians.  (UCLA's Don Catlin's remarks about testing after the jump).

So enjoy those huge biceps at the Superbowl, courtesy of some real 'growth'.

In fact, no such test is forthcoming, blood or urine, according to experts worldwide, including Dr. Don Catlin, the master engineer of conventional screening technology, which he also labels as inherently flawed. HGH testing currently purported by world anti-doping officials lacks critical clinical data and independent scientific review.

"Any test that I do in my lab, I will be all over (documentation of reliability)," Catlin said a year ago, having already waited three years for information he'd been assured was forthcoming, "because if I report a positive (for HGH), I have to go to court. I have to defend the test.

"You've got to have hard-core evidence of (valid testing): ‘Here's the study. Here's what we did. Here's what we found. Here's the (data) on false-positives. Here's the false-negative.'"

Catlin is still waiting to hear from WADA types, as he works to develop effective urine screening, with funding for his independent research courtesy of the NFL players' union and MLB.

But he's not optimistic.

Who gives a damn, anyway, right?

Comments

[Michael San Filippo]

Suggestion ... to avoid confusion, maybe you should clarify that the "Romo" you refer to is Romonowski, not Tony Romo? Maybe everyone will get it, and maybe it's just because I'm over-tired, but on first glance I thought my EIU alum had been somehow implicated in the whole HGH thing. (He hasn't, has he?)

Thanks! Keep up the good work.

[G]

That's because we cannot spell Romonowski.

Thanks

[Michael San Filippo]

Neither can I ... it's actually "Romanowski."