He and his lab at UCLA appear in the news almost daily, thanks to Barry Bonds, Floyd Landis, and a crew of athletes who stand accused of cheating the system by using performance enhancing drugs. He is vilified by fans who believe their favorite athlete is picked on; he is honored by those who want to clean up sports. He is an endocrinologist by training, and a sleuth by necessity. He is Don Catlin, proprietor of the UCLA anti-doping lab in LA. Story here at NBC.
Chemist Don Catlin has taken down hundreds of cheating athletes since he started testing their urine for drugs during the 1984 Summer Olympics here.
Catlin played a key role in the mystery still unfolding known as BALCO.
His discovery of THG, a mysterious steroid specifically designed to evade detection, was largely behind the biggest sports doping probe in the country's history. That ongoing federal investigation - dubbed BALCO after the now-infamous Northern California lab at the center of the probe - has tainted the reputations of elite athletes from baseball sluggers Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi to track star Marion Jones, though none has been charged with a crime.
"Dr. Catlin's expertise in performance-enhancing substances and drugs has been an integral component in the BALCO investigation and prosecution,'' says U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan, who heads the inquiry. "He is a world-renowned expert in the field of doping in sports.''
Catlin works in urine, and blood, and doubters. Ask Victor Conte.
Victor Conte, who founded the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, and served four months in prison last year for distributing steroids, says Catlin is fighting a losing battle.
"Dr. Catlin knows full well that doping in sport is a cat-and-mouse game, and that the mice continue to be ahead of the cats,'' says Conte, whose lab distributed THG to elite athletes. "There are several performance-enhancing drugs that athletes are using which remain undetectable.''
Ah, but Dr. Catlin is a clever combatant in this war.
Even the mild-mannered Catlin concedes his side is usually a step behind cheating athletes, who often have the means to buy the newest and hardest-to-identify drugs.
"You have to test for a couple of thousand steroids to stay ahead of the game,'' says the 68-year-old Catlin. "If we don't know what to look for, we aren't going to find it.''
But he doesn't concede defeat.
"We have a bunch of secret weapons,'' he says, declining to elaborate. "There is a game to this - why give anything away?''
Interesting reading for those who enjoy a good forensic mystery.
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