Steroid Nation

Whithered testicles: Brits say boys as young as 11 use 'roids to impress the ladies

In a shocking expected (of course kids emulate their idols) new study, The British Council on the Misuse of Drugs announced that boys as young as 11 use steroids to get that slugger's physique, to impress the girls and win friends.  Worse yet, some emulate boy band members. From the Daily Mail:

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs said there was increasing evidence of youngsters injecting the bodybuilding drug, which can lead to rapid muscle growth. It came as they confirmed they are reviewing the legal status of ecstasy as well as cannabis.

A survey found one in every 200 11-to-16 year olds had tried steroids.

Committee member Lord Adebowale: "These are being used not just by athletes but by people who want to be in boy bands and get girls."

 

The British Govt expresses extreme consternation about the most serious of all steroid effects:  acne, breasts, and whithered testicles"

The advisory council will write to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to warn about the trend, which can lead to long-term health problems for children – including sterility, acne, liver tumours and the growth of breasts in boys.

"It can also make the testicles wither – which is probably not what the users want," said Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, the chairman of the committee.

"Even more worrying, there is emerging evidence that anabolic steroids cause aggression.

"I am really very worried about that. I shall write to the Home Secretary explaining our very grave concerns about this."

If the current state of bullocks weren't bad enough, think of all the potential shrinkage in the years leading to the 2012 Olympics in London:

 

They also fear a boom in use of the drug by athletes in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. The figures revealed that 200,000 people in Britain have tried anabolic steroids, with 42,000 saying they had used them in the last year.

 

London Bridge ain't the only thing  falling down across the pond.

German researcher documents tragic effects of steroids on German athletes and their children

Faust's Gold documented the former East German doping machine that produced an incredible number of world records, and Olympic gold medals including the women's 400M world mark held my Marita Koch.  The doping regime culminated in 13 women's swimming gold medals at the 1986 Montreal Olympics.  The systematic doping also produced birth defects in their children, and emotional problems in the former GDR athletes.

The doping machine isolated gifted German Democratic Republic athletes for intense training, surreptitious administration of anabolic steroids, and biological testing done to beat the anti-doping tests.  The doping machine included trainers, physicians, coaches, government officials, the Stasi (GDR secret police), and politicians to the highest level.  Now it appears that the doped athletes continue to suffer heinous consequences from the covert anabolic steroids they ingested or injected.

German research physician Giselher Spitzer, presented evidence to the Play the Game conference in Iceland, that documents the horrific results of anabolic steroids given to teenage women.  The Sydney Morning Herald carries the report.  Most striking was the high rate of birth defects suffered by these athlete's children:

THEY are the 69 children of a small part of the drugged generation of sporting stars. But instead of inheriting their parent's athletic ability, the children have been shown to have serious medical issues at rates much higher than that of the general population. Seven have physical deformities and four are mentally handicapped.

Frightening damage from East Germany's systematic doping of two decades of elite and promising sports stars in the 1970s and '80s has emerged in the next generation, according to the German researcher Giselher Spitzer.

A recently published two-year study of 52 Olympic and elite-level former East German athletes, now aged between 40 and 60, conducted by the Germany University, Humboldt, has revealed shocking medical consequences of the forced consumption of anabolic steroids.

Dr Spitzer said in addition to the high rate of physical and mental handicaps in the offspring of the 52 athletes, more than a quarter of the children have allergies and 23 per cent have asthma.

He said the risk of miscarriage and stillbirth in the athletes was a staggering 32 times higher than in the normal German population.

The athletes themselves suffer consequences from the past steroid abuse:

...38 per cent had severe depression with suicidal tendencies and 32 of the 52 had had therapy for psychiatric issues. Dr Spitzer said the study revealed a quarter of those studied had suffered some form of cancer.

As Robin Parisotto states in Sportigo:

It seems that for some athletes the rewards totally outweigh the risks. This drug is the one that was force-fed to thousands of East German athletes as part of its state-sponsored doping program; anabolic steroid. These anabolic steroids are still producing unintended consequences further compounded by the fact that off-spring of athletes involved in the massive doping program are now suffering as well. Dr Giselher Spitzer from the Humboldt University in Germany has just released the frightening numbers above, ones which echo many previous stories.

For the protagonists of legalized doping, take a good hard look at Dr Spitzer's report and try and convince the public that legal doping would overcome the current problems. In any case why should the rights of the cheats trample over the rights of athletes who do not want to take drugs which may cause real medical problems later in life? Have the cheats lost sight of the fact that sport is in this bloody mess because of their actions, not the actions of clean athletes. When the ‘corporates’ invaded sport and waved the cheque books in front of them they could have said no to doping.

Remember, Victor Conte designed BALCO along the lines of the East German doping machine.

EPO anti-doping slippery slope: Cyclists use soap to beat test

EPO. the deadly doping drug of choice for cyclists seems to have slipped through the testing protocols.  A report from Bloomberg says that athletes have been sliding by the tests by using soap.

      Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- A few grains of household soap powder can destroy the banned drug EPO in an athlete's urine sample, wrecking a test that cost $2 million to develop, said Mario Thevis, an anti-doping researcher in Cologne, Germany.           

Scientists made the discovery after a former Tour de France cyclist said he was given an unidentified powder to sabotage surprise tests, said Thevis, who works at the World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited biochemistry unit of German Sports University.

Seems that the drug-cheats can whitewash the anti-doping tests with some suds. Listen to my co-author (Gene Doping) Robin Parisotto:

"Cheats appear to have found a way around the test with backyard science,'' said Robin Parisotto, a researcher in Canberra, Australia, who helped develop the test for the drug. The International Olympic Committee and the Australian government spent $2 million to develop the test, he said in a telephone interview Oct. 26 from his home.

EPO, or erythropoietin, is the kidney hormone that induces bone marrow to produce more red blood cells.  In endurance sports (and in sprinting sports too -- see Marion Jones) producing more red blood cells, increases the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, which increases the production of the muscles. An obvious advantage.

In May, Bjarne Riis, the 1996 Tour de France winner, said he took EPO for five years during his career. Cross-country skiers Johann Muehlegg and Larissa Lazutina gave back their Olympic gold medals at the 2002 Winter Games after testing positive for EPO.           

Jesus Manzano, a former Tour cyclist who left the sport in 2003, said athletes still use EPO while training because it leaves the body quickly.

  The disadvantage to using EPO -- other than cheating -- is that it is often fatal.  Thick blood will sludge up the circulatory system, causing heart attacks among other problems.

Pro cyclist Jesus Manzano says soap will dissolve any traces of EPO in the cheating athletes urine.  In fact, it destroy all EPO, natural and synthetic.  Thus the absence of EPO, while not 'illegal' is de facto evidence of a drug cheat.

Manzano said in 2004 that he used EPO when he was competing. He was given a red powder to use if anti-doping officials came to his home for a surprise test. He said in an interview in April at his home in Madrid that he didn't know what the powder was.

His former team, the now-defunct Liberty Seguros, has denied wrongdoing and said Manzano acted independently.           

Thevis said using soap powder would destroy all EPO in urine, both synthetic and what is produced naturally by kidney cells.           

No EPO was found in 17 percent of 3,050 athletes' urine samples examined between 2003 and 2006 by the Swiss anti-doping laboratory in Lausanne, said Neil Robinson, who helped compile the study published in this month's edition of medical journal Clinica Chimica Acta.

As we said in the past, anti-doping testing can be considered a mild success, or a moderate failure, depending on your cynicism that day. Obviously EPO is out there, and obviously cheating athletes continue to beat the current system.

Curve balls from steroid and HGH apologists

The revelation that Cleveland Indian Paul Byrd used HGH for several years hit the press the evening of the Tribe's huge game against Boston.  Conspiracy theorists immediately pointed to the timing of the San Francisco Examiner's release of the story and the time frame of the playoffs.

While it is true that George Mitchell is a Boston Red Sox executive, we would suspect that former Senator Mitchell's sense of fair play and his integrity were not compromised by leaking the material to the Chronicle to sabotage the Tribe.

Often when discussing PEDs, the facts become harder to find than a knuckle ball in a rainstorm.  Example: The Baseball Prospectus distorts the facts on HGH and PED use in sports.  This report says Byrd used HGH to treat a HGH deficiency.

Byrd was using hGH under doctor’s orders after the discovery of a small, non-secreting pituitary tumor that may have resulted in lower-than-normal levels of hGH.

The majority of pituitary tumors secret excess hormones.  A minority (called 'clinically nonfunctioning pituitary adenoma') do not secrete excess hormones, but rather impede the secretion of hormones because of the LARGE size of the tumor.  These 'tumors' become invasive to surrounding tissue, presenting with symptoms such as severe headache, visual field cuts, and hormonal problems.  After a complete medical workup these tumors should be removed - which then may also cause hormone deficiencies.

The 'Prospectus goes on:"

Was Byrd’s use illegal?

First, we must note the difference between the terms “illegal” and “banned.” Illegal denotes a use contrary h governmental laws or regulations. Byrd’s use, by prescription and for an FDA-approved condition, was not illegal.

Sigh.  There is no 'FDA-approved condition'.  First the FDA approves 'indications for marketing', and does not mandate medical practice.  Second the FDA does not 'approve conditions (diseases)'.

There is little evidence for 'Adult Growth Hormone Deficiency', beyond what we outlined above.  Any other definition borders on fad, used as marketing by Anti-Aging Clinics.

The Prospectus piece contains other errors: a misunderstanding of Internet pharmacies, and a misunderstanding of controlled substances.   It is not legitimate to prescribe a drug based on a phone contact or a questionnaire, without a face to face meeting.  (note the smoke coming from our computer at this point)

----------------------------------------------------

The practice of medicine does not adhere to the principles delineated in press reports, press conference, and excuses contrived by athletes who use banned substances.  Thus, we are incredulous that by virtue of the excuses athletes use, some writers/fans accept that standard treatment of a sore elbow requires HGH.

Standard treatment of tendon or ligament injuries does not consist of HGH.  Medical practice does not mandate HGH for the recovery of athletic injuries.  A strong statement of the uses and abuses of HGH can be found from the British Medical Journal.

An athlete may be prescribed a banned drug with the recommendation of a physician,  If that is the case, the physician and athlete fill out a TUE -- Therapeutic Use Exemption.  Drugs banned by the sports administrations -- WADA, MLB, NFL, NCAA -- may be legitimately used if the athlete files a TUE.  For instance an athlete with ADHD could file a TUE for dextroamphetamine use.

If the athlete does not file a TUE while taking the banned drug, he is in violation of the rules, and in fact engaging in drug abuse, with regard to the sport.

Furthermore, another curve ball thrown out to the public is the 'Banned in 2005'.  The fact of the matter is that MLB banned PEDs in 1991, and reiterated the ban 1997 well before 2005.  Furthermore, it is CLEARLY illegal for any physician to prescribe HGH or anabolic steroids, or amphetamines for the purpose of athletic enhancement.  In the case of anabolic steroids and amphetamine, both of which can enhance performance, medical tradition has determined that the nonmedical use of these drugs to enhance athletic performance is unethical.  (In the case of HGH, there is little evidence that the drug enhances healing of sports-related injuries such as tendon injuries)

Study of Oregon high schools show drug testing deters few

The New York Times and William Rhoden report that a study conducted in Oregon shows that we we contend about anti-doping measures in pro sports extends down to high school:

The Saturn (Student Athlete Testing Using Random Notification) study used six schools with no drug-testing policy and five with random drug and alcohol testing.

The researchers found that the presence of a drug-testing program was a minimal deterrent to drug use.

“If drug testing was so great, if it was so wonderful, we wouldn’t have anybody test positive,” Goldberg said. “People would be scared of testing positive and being thrown out; you have a lot of people who test positive.

Ii appears that many administrators believe that drug testing solves all problems:

“Here’s what I see is the big problem,” Goldberg said. “If you put in drug testing and you think it works, then you’re not going to put anything else in. You’re not going to care about anything else because you probably feel, ‘We’ve taken care of it.’ ” Goldberg cited one school in the study that used hair samples as a test for drugs. The tests did not turn up any users.

“Then we gave our surveys,” he said. “They had a ton of drug users; they’re just not catching them. They’re happy as can be that they think they’ve got just a wonderful program. In reality, kids are using just as many drugs and the administrators are walking around in their dream world.”

We say a deterrent for drug cheating would consist of several steps:

• Clear rules and consequences
• Drug education programs
• Drug testing, if financially and scientifically viable
• Almost Draconian punishment if any drug-cheating is discovered
• And #1 - providing an environment that promotes fair competition, no cheating, and an ethic of honesty

News flash: Preliminary results just in on 2006 Tour de France; Landis loses

In now the world's longest race, Floyd Landis appears not to be the winner of the 2006 Tour de France.  Spain's Oscar Pereiro, who crossed the finish line second, could be named the 2006 winner (Pereiro experienced his own doping troubles in 2006-7).  MSNBC timeline of Landis episode here.

You will recall in July of 2006, Floyd Landis finished first in the Tour de France (we didn't say won).  However, his urine showed a high testosterone:epitestosterone (T:E) ratio, which not only voided his first place finish for the time being, but also started a joke a world wide obsession on T:E ratios.  The 2006 Tour title hovered out there (in absentia we guess) until arbitration, which interesting enough took place at Pepperdine California not France (we said it was a long race).

In the meantime, Landis published a book about how the French anti-doping lab sucked, and David Walsh published another book on how much Lance Armstrong sucked.

The Landis hearing went into deliberation in May, with promised results in a couple weeks, or at least before the 2007 Tour began.  The decision, however, did not make opening day of Tour 2007.

Now, in September 2007, Stage 2 of the Floyd Landis 2006 decision appears decided; Landis loses this stage.  AP Story here.  Also note Landis will receive a 2 year ban from pro cycling events.

Floyd Landis lost his expensive and explosive doping case Thursday when arbitrators upheld the results of a test that showed the 2006 Tour de France champion used synthetic testosterone to fuel his spectacular comeback victory, The Associated Press has learned.

The decision means Landis, who repeatedly has denied using performance-enhancing drugs, must forfeit his Tour de France title and is subject to a two-year ban, retroactive to Jan. 30, 2007.

Landis may have won Stage 1  (the race), lost State 2 (The USADA hearing), but may push on to Stage 3 -- The world court of Sports Arbitration.

If Landis doesn't appeal, he'll be the first person in the 105-year history of the race to lose the title because of a doping offense.

According to documents obtained by AP, the vote was 2-1 to uphold the results, with lead arbitrator Patrice Brunet and Richard McLaren in the majority and Christopher Campbell dissenting.

The ruling, handed down nearly four months after a bizarre and bitterly fought hearing, leaves the American with one final way to possibly salvage his title — an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Of course, the US Anti-Doping Agency considers the verdict a victory for anti-doping.  Floyd Landis considers the loss a loss for athletes.  And lawyers all over just consider it more compensation.

"Today's ruling is a victory for all clean athletes and everyone who values fair and honest competition," U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said.

It's a devastating loss for Landis, who has steadfastly insisted that cheating went against everything he was all about and said he was merely a pawn in the anti-doping system's all-consuming effort to find cheaters and keep money flowing to its labs and agencies.

Landis didn't hide from the scrutiny — invited it, in fact — and now has been found guilty by the closest thing to a fair trial any accused athlete will get.

Landis, who has a month to file his appeal, is still weighing his legal options, according to a statement released by his legal team.

"This ruling is a blow to athletes and cyclists everywhere" Landis said. "For the Panel to find in favor of USADA when, with respect to so many issues, USADA did not manage to prove even the most basic parts of their case shows that this system is fundamentally flawed. I am innocent, and we proved I am innocent."

We provide more information on this decision after the jump, as the day goes on...Landis will hold a news conference later today to announce his future plans.

Illegal performance enhancing drugs -- anabolic steroids and HGH -- banned by MLB as early as 1991

In the discussion of HGH use by the Cardinals' Rick Ankiel, media and baseball pundits say that performance enhancing drugs were not banned before 2003/4.  If that statement is accurate, then MLB allowed illegal drug use.  Professional sports, although not following through with a comprehensive anti-doping testing program, long ago prohibited the use of anabolic illegal drugs in players and other personnel.

Also heard frequently, and just as inaccurate, is 'HGH is used for injury rehab'.

Baseball clearly banned illegal drugs (logic tells you illegal drugs are 'a priori' banned anyway) in 1991 (see image of memo) when Fay Vincent reigned as commissioner.  Commissioner Vincent stated "the use of illegal drugs by players, office personal, trainers or anyone else involved in the game cannot be condoned or tolerated" (see image to the left; reference here).  That means any black market drugs, such as cocaine or anabolic steroids are prohibited.  That includes illegal use of unethically prescribed drugs like HGH for faddish 'recovery' indications.  The Vincent memo says violators are subject to unspecified discipline.

In 1997, Commissioner Bud Selig, essentially  copied Vincent's memo reiterating that illegal drugs are prohibited in the pro baseball.  The memo specifies the policy, testing, and possible punishment (to the right, and above reference).

HGH is not approved for any PED use, nor for injury recovery.  (Reference here; see below)  A doctor's prescription for an adult athlete raises serious issues, and may lead to criminal prosecution (as with Dr Shortt who prescribed HGH to the Carolina Panthers' players)

Internet pharmacies also violate current FDA prescription rules (References here, and here.  There is no legitimate doctor-patient relationship in this prescriptions.

Signature used a quasi-prescribing scheme, noted here:

The document charges two people with conspiracy, illegal distribution of human-growth hormone and other steroids as well as health-care fraud. It also states Daniel McGlone of American Pharmaceutical Group in New Jersey peddled the drugs to bodybuilders and used Signature to fill prescriptions written by unlicensed or retired physicians.

"McGlone would forward these prescriptions via facsimile or mail to various large compounding pharmacies, including primarily Signature Pharmacy . . . to deliver human growth hormone, anabolic steroids and other prescription medications to customers all over the United States," the indictment reads.

We will develop a longer post on the prescribing practices and logic behind these drugs.  Suffice it to say that there has never been adequate research, nor an FDA indication, for using HGH as an aid when rehabbing athletic injuries.  The anti-aging clinic scams do not legitimize, nor legalize the use of HGH or anabolic steroids to rehab sports injuries (reference here).

The anti-doping milestone of 2003 (or 2004 when testing began), oft referred to in media reports, is simply the year that MLB decided to implement a more serious PED testing program.  The current anti-doping program is not perfect: As Victor Conte of BALCO fame says "You can drive a Mack truck through the current anti-doping program loopholes".  To say that HGH or anabolic steroids were allowed in Major League Baseball before 2004 is both inaccurate and misleading.

Here is an excellent reference on debunking the anti-aging effect of HGH.

Tim Couch: taking a plant steroid for menopause? (laxogenin)

As reported in Yahoo, Deadspin, and here at Steroid Nation, former Jaguar QB Tim Couch, consulted with a Florida nutritionist for his NFL rehab comeback, who promotes the plant steroid laxogenin as anabolic for his company called Maxim Rejuvenation.  (The write-up from the Maxim Website will be found after the jump).  The claims are nonsense. The supplement Couch took might be weakly helpful for menopausal women.  Likely any benefit Couch received at the clinic was from real steroids and HGH.

Yahoo has a video with Couch promoting Laxogen (go to Part 6).  Good for strength, pumping up the metabolism, and hot flushes.

The Maxim website says this compound was discovered by an American scientist in 1996.  Interesting because all publication are from Japan and China, the first in 1963: [Laxogenin, a new steroidal sapogenin isolated from Smilax sieboldi Miq.] Jpn J Pharmacol. 1963 May;83:557-8. Japanese.  No abstract available. PMID: 14041495 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE].

There are 7 medically indexed publications on the compound.  None look at the compound's anabolic use (Maxim claims found after the jump).  You would think that the National Institutes of Health has a full bore research program on this compound for use in the Olympic Games. Not true. The last official paper on it was from the 'Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry' and discussed the synthesis of laxogenin from diosgenin.

This compound appears to be a plant steroid.  Plant sterols might be interesting, but certainly untested for all the medical uses the Maxim website claims.  There are some naturalists, with little scientific training, who make overblown claims for these plant steroid products.

The actual compound in this drug labeled Laxogenin, as analyzed by Dr. Don Catlin's lab at UCLA, was diosgenin (so much for truth in labeling).  'Disgenin' pulls up 347 references.  This compound is called a sapogenin, and is found in yams.  The molecule is being researched for a number of uses, however ALMOST NONE in human clinical trials.

Here is one clinical trial: Effects of wild yam extract on menopausal symptoms, lipids and sex hormones in healthy menopausal women.  Climacteric. 2001 Jun;4(2):144-50.

Menopausal women?  Couch was taking a plant sterol for menopause?  Hope it helps his hot flashes.

The other paper was looking at a sports drink called SPORT.  There was no effect on performance parameters (reference found at the bottom)

This scheme sounds so Victor Conte and BALCO.

• Invent some bogus supplement as a covering ruse. 
• Use anabolic steroids, anti-estrogens, and HGH to deliver real results. 
• Market your snake-oil.
• Promote the product with athletes who obtained results from real anabolic drugs (Bonds, Romo, Marion Jones)

Fraud.  The FDA. the FBI, and Gov't fraud agencies need to hunt down these renegades.

---------------------------

Can J Appl Physiol. 2000 Feb;25(1):55-67. Links The efficacy of SPORT as a dietary supplement on performance and recovery in trained athletes. Timmons BW, Newhouse IJ, Thayer RE, McAuliffe JE, McIllwaine S.

 

Steroids aren't the only problem in public health

We blog about steroids as a public health problem here.  However, there is far more wrong in the USA public health domain than just steroids.  Recent reports show that health care in the US is #42 (by one measure) and falling. The New York Times editorial is found here:

Here's a wrenching fact: If the U.S. had an infant mortality rate as good as Cuba's, we would save an additional 2,212 American babies a year.

Yes, Cuba's. Babies are less likely to survive in America, with a health care system that we think is the best in the world, than in impoverished and autocratic Cuba. According to the latest C.I.A. World Factbook, Cuba is one of 41 countries that have better infant mortality rates than the U.S.

Since 1958, the infant mortality rate fell in the US.  However in 2002, the trend reversed.  Infant mortality rose.  It appears infant mortality is higher in New York than in Beijing China.  That's progress,  huh?

"America's children are at greater risk than they've been in for at least a decade," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and president of the Children's Health Fund. "The rising rate of infant mortality is an early warning that we're headed in the wrong direction, with no relief in sight."

The bad news continues with life expectancy.  New York Times again:

Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.

Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands...

A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.

We talk about the racial issue with regard to Barry Bonds.  Here is a worse situation: the mortality for black males in the country lags behind other groups...by almost 9 years.

Black American males have a life expectancy of 69.8 years, slightly longer than the averages for Iran and Syria and slightly shorter than in Nicaragua and Morocco.

This is about more than national health service, but about obesity and poverty, and a shift of money to the wealthy.  Clearly over 40 million Americans who don't have health insurance coverage (and thus receive less than optimal health care) is a factor, however there are other factors:

-- Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

''The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy,'' said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. ''We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times.''

-- Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.

-- A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.

Steroid and PED use is a public health problem.  Steroid abusers contribute to morbidity (high blood pressure, severe heat problems, hepatitis, infections, psychiatric conditions) mortality (pro wrestlers and pro cyclists who dope show a propensity to die young), and legal problems.  However, this is just a small part of the overall public health decline in the USA.

(Note: someone loves us: Thanks Slav!)

 

Cheat Wave at Sports Nation: ESPN Package

Wayne Drehs with the power of ESPN Sports Nation published a package (looks like an encyclopedia) on sports cheating at the website linked above.  Incredible range of topics over there from steroids to gene doping.  We looked at the article on gene doping, which was very interesting.  Overwhelming plethora of information on all sports compiled on the site.

Is there any doubt the story in sports in the 2000s is the story of doping, and PED use?  The technology and the chemistry raced past the ethics some time in 1950-something;  we are just now looking at the mushroom cloud aftermath of the pharmacologic revolution in performance enhancement.

This week Barry Bonds may be the point man taking the flak for PED use;  that only scratches the real issues.

Stay tuned.

Expert hands over the dope on Tour de France winner to German authorities

Renowned German chemist Werner Franke turned over evidence that Tour de France winner Alberto Contador's doping involvement in Operation Puerto.

It seems convoluted, however Franke turned over documents to German authorities on Spanish rider Contador, after his win in the French Tour de France. Expatica.com documents the news here:

German authorities said they have received documents from doping expert Werner Franke which he claims show Tour de France winner Alberto Contador was involved in doping.

Franke said he has documents from last year's Operation Puerto doping investigation in Spain which show that Contador, a Spaniard who won the doping-marred Tour on Sunday, had taken HMG-Lepori as a testosterone booster and an asthma product called TGN.

''We can confirm we have received the documents, and they will be incorporated into procedures of the district attorney's office,'' Christian Brockert, spokesman for Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, told The Associated Press.

Interesting that Franke clashed with the Gov't and with cyclists in the past.  Franke appeared to be right:

Franke, a molecular biologist, made his reputation by researching the systematic sports doping that turned the former East Germany into an Olympic powerhouse. He has clashed with Jan Ullrich, another rider linked to Operation Puerto.

A German court imposed a gag order on Franke for publicly disclosing how much the 1997 Tour winner paid the Madrid clinic, also based on documents from the investigation. It was believed there wasn't enough evidence establishing Ullrich, who has denied doping, as a customer.

But the case is headed back to court, because Ullrich's DNA samples since have been matched to blood bags seized at the Madrid clinic.

''They weren't doing that for free,'' Franke said.

Despite all the news about doping, young cyclists remain optimistic that the problem can be controlled.  Business Week link here:

Considering how the Tour de France limped into Paris—after three weeks of injuries, doping scandals, and threatened sponsor defections—the mood on the T-Mobile cycling team Sunday was surprisingly relaxed. Team leader Michael Rogers, forced to drop out of the race July 15 after a harrowing crash that injured his shoulder, slouched in a folding chair and watched the final kilometers of the race on a giant TV screen set up a near a VIP area. "This is much better than racing," Rogers, 27, quipped in his Australian accent, as the riders neared Paris and the finish line. "I might do this next year."...

But is it too late to save cycling? Stapleton doesn't think so, provided pro cycling undergoes a massive makeover. Step one, he says, is to implement a drug-testing regime that is consistent across nations and applies equally to all pro cyclists. Cycling could also become more TV-friendly, for example, by mounting miniature cameras on the bikes, to put viewers in the middle of the action and appeal to a broader audience. And the season should be rearranged to build toward the major events. "If you just have people watching [the Tour de France] in July, that's not much of a sport," Stapleton says.

Werner Franke, world's most respected anti-doping scientist, accuses Tour de France winner Alberto Contador of 'swindle'

(Subtitled 'Here we go again')

In a startling development, world respected German scientist, Werner Franke announced his absolute condemnation and outrage at the 2007 Tour de France victory of Spain's Alberto Contador.

Franke never pulled a punch in describing Contador's win as (MS NBC):

"the greatest swindle in sporting history," according to a report by Agence France Presse.

Werner Franke is a honored German biochemist.  In the 1990s Franke and his East German wife Brigitte Berendonk, exposed the East Germany doping machine, well documented in the book 'Faust's Gold'.  This expose' developed under great peril, as the GDR Stasi continued to operate.  Through perseverance, courage, and tremendous commitment Franke and Berendonk exposed the systematic doping of  young athletes, including many girls by the GDR Gov't.

When Franke claims Contador defrauded cycling, it is comparable to Carl Sandburg saying Chicago is a big city.  The world pays attention to people who accomplished great things.  From the MS NBC piece:

Werner Franke, a molecular cell biologist at the German Cancer Research Center and key whistleblower against doping in then-East Germany, said he has documents in his possession from the Spanish police's blood doping investigation named Operation Puerto involving Eufemiano Fuentes, the doctor credited with engineering doping programs for professional athletes.

"The name of this Mr Contador appears on several occasions on the court and police documents," Franke told German television station ZDF, according to AFP.

"All of this has been simply concealed and hidden under the carpet whilst the name Contador was erased from the list of supicious riders."

Franke also told ZDF that he has a detailed list of banned products that were used by Contador. Those products appear in sworn statements following the raid on Fuentes' medical offices, AFP said.

Franke claims Contador used:

• Insulin (anabolic)
• HMG-lepori (stimulates testosterone production)
• TNG (for asthma)

Franke continues:

"All of this has been covered up, at least in Spain."

Contador, meanwhile, has tried to explain his checkered past:
 

Contador, 24, has denied any connection to Fuentes.

After Saturday's time trial, he told reporters, "I was in the wrong team at the wrong time and somehow my name got among the documents, but the UCI corrected the mistake and now I've got no link to Puerto."

Contador missed last year's Tour when his former team Liberty Seguros was disqualified because he and four other riders were implicated in Operation Puerto. Contador said his name mistakenly turned up in the Puerto file, and cycling authorities attested to that.

Dick Pound and WADA appear to be getting involved in the Puerto issue:

"This investigation may have gone away in Spain but we are currently working with the UCI on going through 6,000 pages of documentation gathered from the Operation Puerto investigation," Pound said.

So, the Tour de France degenerates into a morass of charges, counter-charges, positive doping tests and excuses.  Sound familiar?

Since LeMond last won, doping has turned cycling and the Tour in particular to (as we said) a bag of blood, and a pile of syringes.  Each and every Tour winner carries suspicions of drug-cheating.

WADA is correct; the world needs a summit to restore the integrity and credibility of pro cycling.

Mutiple concussions and psychotic behavior

The New York Times carries a piece on the Benoit homisuicide today.  The Times outlined the usual situation details. However, it is worth reading and noting the thoughts of former pro wrestler -- and author of 'Head Games' -- Christopher Nowinski on Benoit's behavior. 

Nowinski suggests that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy may play a role in the wrestler's behavior.  Nowinski also urges the coroner to perform a detailed post-mortem examination on Benoit's central nervous system (CNS):

...Christopher Nowinski, a former professional wrestler who worked with Mr. Benoit, and who was forced to quit because of head injuries, said he believed that repeated, untreated concussions might have caused his friend to snap.

“He was one of the only guys who would take a chair shot to the back of the head,” Mr. Nowinski said, “which is stupid.”

Mr. Nowinski has written a book called “Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis” (Drummond Publishing Group, 2006), about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition that can cause memory loss, depression and “bizarre, paranoid behavior.”

Mr. Nowinski said that he had been trying to persuade the coroner examining Mr. Benoit to allow a brain exam to look for the telltale neurofibrillary tangles in the brain’s cortex, but that he had thus far been rebuffed.

“Part of me hopes there was something wrong with his brain,” Mr. Nowinski said. “The Chris Benoit I knew was always more concerned about everybody else’s well-being than his own.”

Often, aberrant behavior results from the culmination of factors.  It may be that a genetic liability combined with the chronic effect of steroids and multiple concussions leads to psychotic behavior.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is killing ex-NFL players

In the past, Steroid Nation looked at the excess of death in former Pittsburgh Steelers.  Many of the Steelers played on the line where a number of factors could add to morbidity and mortality: cardiac disease, weight gain, steroids, and concussions.  In new autopsy data, physicians are finding tangles of nerve cells in the brain of these players (neurofibulary tangles).  Similar neuropathological findings exist in the brains of patients with Alzheimer Dementia;  however this is a new finding in relatively young ex-pro football players.

An excellent story in the New York Times says the condition -- chronic traumatic encephalopathy -- (CTE) kills ex-NFL players.

The images on the screen were of magnified brain tissue from her son, the former Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman Justin Strzelczyk, who was killed in a fiery automobile crash three years ago at age 36. Four red splotches specked an otherwise tranquil sea — early signs of brain damage that experts said was most likely caused by the persistent head trauma of life in football’s trenches.

Strzelczyk (pronounced STRELL-zick) is the fourth former National Football League player to have been found post-mortem to have had a condition similar to that generally found only in boxers with dementia or people in their 80s. The diagnosis was made by Dr. Bennet Omalu, a neuropathologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. In the past five years, he has found similar damage in the brains of the former N.F.L. players Mike Webster, Terry Long and Andre Waters. The finding will add to the growing evidence that longtime football players, particularly linemen, might endure hidden brain trauma that is only now becoming recognized.

“This is irreversible brain damage,” Omalu said. “It’s most likely caused by concussions sustained on the football field.”

Dr. Ronald Hamilton of the University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Kenneth Fallon of West Virginia University confirmed Omalu’s findings of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition evidenced by neurofibrillary tangles in the brain’s cortex, which can cause memory loss, depression and eventually Alzheimer’s disease-like dementia. “This is extremely abnormal in a 36-year-old,” Hamilton said. “If I didn’t know anything about this case and I looked at the slides, I would have asked, ‘Was this patient a boxer?’

There were other complications with Strzelczyk too, including use of anabolic steroids:

Strzelczyk, 6 feet 6 inches and 300 pounds, was a monstrous presence on the Steelers’ offensive line from 1990-98. He was known for his friendly, banjo-playing spirit and gluttony for combat. He spiraled downward after retirement, however, enduring a divorce and dabbling with steroid-like substances, and soon before his death complained of depression and hearing voices from what he called “the evil ones.” He was experiencing an apparent breakdown the morning of Sept. 30, 2004, when, during a 40-mile high-speed police chase in central New York, his pickup truck collided with a tractor-trailer and exploded, killing him instantly.

The issue should be on the agenda of the NFL meetings next week.  The past few weeks have seen Gene Upshaw spare with Mike Ditka  and other retired NFL players over this issue, in part;  some  retired NFL players cannot pay their medical bills covering injuries suffered during their playing days.  CTE will add fuel to that fire.

New York Times report fails toxicology final

Murray Chass of the New York Times leads a story on the Sports Page with this bromide:

Alcohol last week killed one more major league baseball player than steroids ever have.

If you didn't get it the first time, he repeats:

I repeat: Alcohol last week killed one more baseball player than steroids ever have.

This story in the big paper in the Big Apple, doesn't get it Big Time.  I repeat, the Times spit the bit.

Alcohol constitutes a major public health problem.  Alcohol use, abuse, tolerance, withdrawal, and delirium all contribute to major morbidity and mortality.  Alcohol inebriation clearly causes fatal results if combined with driving, or boating, or swimming, or other activities requiring mental alertness.  Long term alcohol use causes psychosis, dementia, depression, hormonal problems, cardiac hypertrophy, liver cirrhosis, diabetes, gastritis, fetal alcohol syndrome, and other major problems I haven't mentioned such as job loss, marital strife and on.

Last time any scientist looked, steroid use and abuse can cause emotional changes, psychosis, depression, hormonal problems, cardiac hypertrophy, liver damage, tumors, diabetes, possible fetal defects, azospermia, acne, aggression, and crime.

So why would an author trash one public health campaign to bitch complain about MLB not doing enough about another public health issue and public fraud investigation?  Someone explain the logic. Please. 

More from the Times:

Yet Major League Baseball and George J. Mitchell and Congress and the steroids zealots are in a tizzy over the use of performance-enhancing substances in baseball. At least Mitchell is being paid to care about them, but he is in such a frenzy to get to the core of steroid use that he wants to run roughshod over federal and state laws barring an employer’s release of an employee’s medical records.

When baseball has addressed the issue of drugs of abuse and performance enhancement, it has always ignored alcohol. Alcohol, after all, is legal for most players of major league age...

But if players who use steroids serve as poor role models for children, so do players who drive drunk and kill themselves...

This and the rest that follows simply is silly.  Inane.

The morbidity and mortality from booze, and tobacco (how did that get into this discussion?) are significant.  Does that mean MLB is all wrong for initiating an investigation into steroid and PED use?

Take anabolic steroids.  A person does not inject some Deca then go out and drive inebriated. However, chronic use of 'roids makes one more aggressive.  Ask several experts who are testifying in steroid-tainted murder trials, including steroid expert Harrison Pope.  You don't have the immediate dulling of cognition, however the citizen in Florida shot by a juiced-up aggressive cop is every bit as dead as the next corpse.

Alcohol affects your brain.  Steroids affect your brain.  My friend at a New York research center will likely demonstrate some very interesting brain blood flow studies in the future looking at anabolic steroids affecting brain perfusion.

Alcohol causes cardiac problems.  Steroids are suspected of causing cardiac problems too (although HGH is the biggie in this category).

Alcohol attacks the liver.  Steroids attack the liver.

Alcohol can decrease testicular production of testosterone.  Steroids can decrease the testicular output of testosterone.

Anything alcohol can do, steroids can do better...

Yeah, but alcohol causes fetal alcohol syndrome.  Ask the German female swimmers if anabolic steroids caused the multiple birth defects seen in their children...then watch them weep.

In short, the use of anabolic steroids causes significant, if delayed, public health problems.  Google 'dead pro wrestler and anabolic steroids'.  There are 281,00 hits.  Not trivial.

Clearly alcohol presents a much more prevalent public health problem than anabolic steroids.  That does not mean the investigation into juice should be dismantled leaving all the funds for alcohol education.  Both are important public health issues.

That was the apples and apples, the public health aspect of the issue.

Now the apples and oranges: anabolic steroid use is sports-fraud, and drug-cheating.  Alcohol use is generally more recreational use.   If we discuss the morbidity and mortality from recreational drug use, then alcohol dominates a large part of the discussion; anabolic steroids do not sit at that discussion.  However, steroids partake of the discussion concerning morbidity and mortality of American drugs of abuse, and of America sports fraud.  Steroids and PEDs simply require more time to produce deleterious results.  The sinister deleterious health consequences of PEDs sneak up on a person, which is difficult for the instant gratification or instance annihilation people to understand

Make no mistake using simple-minded short term thinking; there are significant morbidity and mortality issues when discussing the PEDs.  We don't need to rob Peter to pay Paul.  We need to understand fully the issues behind any contemporary drug problem.  Even if those issues demand serious thinking.

Major League Baseball has made television commercials warning against the dangers of steroids, and dangerous though they may be for possible future ill effects, no baseball player is known to have died from using them. Ken Caminiti admitted using steroids, but he died at the age of 41 from a drug overdose that included cocaine but not steroids.

Putting steroids in perspective, since the Balco investigation began four years ago, 1.6 million people have died from smoking-related causes (400,000 a year, the United States surgeon general says) and about 150,000 (nearly half in traffic accidents) have died from alcohol-related causes.

How comforting it is to know that some people care more about baseball’s career home run record than the lives of hundreds of thousands of human beings.

How discomforting to know the New York Times makes no sense on this issue.

Don't blame baseball's power surge on steroid-induced shinking balls; this study says blame shrinking strike zones

Here from Live Science comes two Univ Nebraska-Lincoln's professor's take on MLB's power surge: Not shrinking steroid-induced balls; rather shrinking umpire-induced strike zones.

Benjamin G. Rader and Kenneth J. Winkle wanted to understand the hitting trends for the 1969 to 2006 seasons. The era following 1994–2000, which they call Baseball's Great Hitting Barrage of the 90s, has been the puzzling one. What cooled down the wild hitting bubble, with its home-run rallies and record-breaking performances?

Was it drugs that pumped up those figures and then drug testing, which began in 2003 (although anxiety, trial tests and awareness of being caught started years earlier) that brought them back down a bit? Some have concluded this from many reports, including Ken Caminiti's confession in 2002 to Sports Illustrated that he used steroids in the mid-90s and stated that it was "no secret" that at least half of all players were using steroids.

Bigger breasts, bigger muscles, bigger ego?

A new study looking at women's self esteem before and after breast surgery here, and discussed here.  Nothing like new fake breasts to enhance the bust and inflate the self esteem.

Cynthia Figueroa-Haas studied women before and after cosmetic breast surgery.  2.1 million women in 2005 decided bigger was better then enhanced their mammillaries.  This study at the University of Florida investigated the psychological outcome.

Figueroa-Haas studied 84 women who were 21 to 57 years old, assessing their perceptions of self-esteem and sexuality before and after cosmetic breast augmentation. Study participants had been previously scheduled for breast augmentation and were undergoing the procedure solely for cosmetic purposes. Eligible candidates were mailed a consent form, a demographic questionnaire and pre-tests asking them to rate their self-esteem and sexuality. They were then mailed a similar post-test two to three months after the surgery.

Improvements in the women’s self-esteem and sexual satisfaction were directly correlated with having undergone breast augmentation. Figueroa-Haas used two widely accepted scientific scales to measure self-esteem and sexuality, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the Female Sexual Function Index, which assesses domains of sexual function, such as sexual arousal, satisfaction, experience and attitudes.

Patrick Barrett, a grad student at Florida, doesn't like the bigger is better mentality:

First of all, the second round of analyses was done three months after the surgery. I wonder how the scores might change after a year or two, once the initial satisfaction wears off. Secondly - and much more importantly - if your self-esteem depends on how you look, then breast implants are only treating the symptom, not the cause, of low self-esteem.

Further, there is the guy who wants larger muscles for his self-esteem.  He takes anabolic steroids:

Imagine a guy named Steve. Steve feels bad about himself because he has little string-bean muscles. He decides that he'll feel better if he looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, so he starts taking steroids. If you have trouble imagining Steve, take a walk around the weight room at the Southwest Recreation Center.

Barrett has hit upon Body Dysmorphic Disorder (in a way).  In men the Adonis Syndrome (muscle dysmorphia)  In women, mammillary dysmorphia? (and here)

Hey if it gets you a job at Hooters (awful plastic surgery), or a shot at Hank Aaron's home run record, how can it be bad?  Or in Barry Bond's case, double good.

Best anti-doping chemist in the world, Don Catlin moves out of drug testing

Don Catlin, the preeminent expert in laboratory drug testing, is moving out of that endeavor to concentrate on research, the Washington Post reports today.  The Nation puts up some interesting posts, some amusing posts, but perhaps no more important post that this information.  Dr Catlin is a world class expert in detecting sports doping.  If he concentrates his efforts on research, odds are that some interesting innovative methods could be developed.  Stay tuned.

Don Catlin, widely considered the most respected chemist in the anti-doping community, has decided to leave the world of drug testing after more than 25 years to pursue research, he said today.

In a field in which testers have struggled to keep up with the innovations of cheaters, Catlin, 68, has been credited with nearly a dozen major testing discoveries and busts during the past decade, making him the most feared scientist among athletes who cheat with performance-enhancing drugs

Catlin was involved in:

• The BALCO investigation where he discovered the previously unknown steroid THG
• Devising a test for darbepoitin
• Developing the carbon-isotope ratio (CIR) test

Catlin's decision to leave the testing world comes a week after USADA CEO Terry Madden stepped down from his post, but the departures were not related.

Hiltzik Chat On Landis

(By James)

Michael Hiltzik, the LA Times reporter that has been closely following the Landis case, just finished a chat on the LA times website.  A full transcript can be found here.

Of the more interesting comments (in no particular order) .....

Positivity Criteria

Michael, can you comment on the positivity criteria and the differing standards at different labs?

Michael Hiltzik: Landis asserts, and I've confirmed this, that the positivity criteria for CIRMS at Paris and UCLA are different. Keeping in mind that testosterone breaks down in the body into four metabolites, which can be measured and their ratios compared to a control group of "clean" subjects (sorry for the technical mumbo-jumbo), UCLA measures two of these ratios and requires that both be positive to declare an athlete guilty. Paris measures all four and requires any one to be positive to declare guilt. These are radically different approaches. Think of it this way: Say you have a final exam in, oh, Scripture knowledge. Professor A's test has two essay questions, and he'll flunk you only if you get both wrong. Professor B poses four question, and he'll flunk you if you gent even one wrong. So a failing grade for Professor A (UCLA, in this example), is 0%. But Professor B (Paris) will flunk you even if you score 75% right. Plainly, professor B is going to flunk some students who pretty much know the material.....

A Look At Gene Doping

(By James)

The Sunday Herald has an interesting look at gene doping.  This is the "next big thing" which has the potential to be much more effective than 'roids and undetectable.  We had a post about myostatin last month, one of the leading applications to come from gene doping (and what was used to make the rats grow in the lead paragraphs).

For the moment this is science fiction, but how long until it becomes science reality?

Sins and needles

RECENTLY I read an interview with an American geneticist. It's not an area I can profess any expertise in, but the subject matter was compelling, albeit disturbing and, unfortunately, unsurprising. Having isolated a gene responsible for manufacturing a protein which boosts muscle growth, he had gone on to engineer a virus which carried the gene into mouse cells.

The result was muscle-bound rodents and, putting aside views on animal experimentation, the scientist's ultimate goal was a laudable one - to find treatments for those suffering from muscle-wasting diseases. However, as news of his work became public the geneticist suddenly found himself fielding phone-calls from athletes and coaches.

All were prepared to volunteer themselves or their charges to become human guinea pigs. After all, if such gene therapy could make mice 50% stronger, what could it do for a sprinter, an American Football player or anyone else where more power could make the difference between winning and losing or between gold and silver?

Steroids and Love: 'Roid romance

On this national holiday (Isn't everyone home, soaking in the hot tub with a lover, while the wife/hubby is at work?  No?) how can Steroid Nation not pay homage to the hormone that is the engine of libido.  No not chocolate, but testosterone.

While testosterone is responsible for primary and secondary gender characteristics in males, and estrogen plays the same role in women, testosterone is clearly the engine that drives the libido on both genders.  We will not tell you the correct dose to change that libido, but suffice it to say, that aspect has been researched, and researched well by scientists with smiles.

Here is an article in the St Petersburg (no pun intended) Times for your intellectual curiosity.

Myostatin - The Next Generation's Steroids

(By James)

Steroids were developed in the 1950s and powered East Germany and China to many Olympic feats in the 1970s and 1980s.  What is coming next?

You're going to hear the word myostatin a lot in the next few years.  Forbes has a good rundown on it in this article.

And by the way, their is no drug test for myostatin.  To test for it, you need to have a biopsy.  A medical procedure that costs thousands of dollars that involves taking a small core sample of one of your muscles.  It is painful, will leave you with a nice bruise, and disrupt any training schedule you're on.

Forbes - Superbaby Serum

A brawny infant's mutation has set off a hunt for a muscular dystrophy drug.

The child was the talk of the Neonatal Ward at Charite Hospital in Berlin, Germany. His biceps and and thighs were twice as thick as a normal newborn's despite typical height and weight. He looked like he'd been lifting weights in the womb.

This was in 2000. The child's doctor called in pediatric neurologist and geneticist Markus Schuelke. He thought the boy might have had a muscular disease but then remembered that Se-Jin Lee, a Johns Hopkins University geneticist, had produced overly buff mice by knocking out the gene for a protein called myostatin, which is supposed to slow muscle growth. Schuelke thought here was the first evidence of a myostatin mutation in a human.

Four years later the world heard about the boy for the first time, when a group of researchers including Schuelke and Lee proved the boy had a myostatin mutation. By then the child could hold a 7-pound dumbbell in each of his outstretched hands. One writer to the New England Journal of Medicine speculated that the mythical Hercules was a myostatin mutant, too.

The news about this rare mutation precipitated an intensive effort to design drugs--call them myostatin blockers--that would let muscles flourish without onerous side effects. The work holds the most promise for patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a debilitating and deadly disease diagnosed in 600 American children, almost all boys, every year. Corticosteroids and heart-failure drugs have allowed some patients to survive into their 40s, but they are still strapped to ventilators and require round-the-clock care.

"This is a like a bright light in a fairly dark tunnel," says Patricia Furlong, founder of Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy. She lost two teenage sons to Duchenne. The research also offers hope for patients with Lou Gehrig's disease and age-related weakening.

Myostatin was discovered in mice in 1992 in Lee's Johns Hopkins lab. In 1996 he proved its importance by showing that mice without the myostatin-producing gene got twice as big. The next year he discovered that the bulging Belgian Blue cow was a myostatin mutant, the first of eight prized cattle breeds later found to have the mutation. The company he had cofounded, MetaMorphix, is working on manipulating myostatin to beef up livestock. Wyeth picked up the rights to develop a drug for humans. Its experimental antibody drug produced bulked-up mice in 2002, and results of a trial in adults with muscular dystrophy are expected as early as March.

Already there are concerns that the drugs might be used by athletes as a kind of supersteroid, and dietary-supplement companies have introduced knockoffs made from sea algae for that purpose. "They don't work," says Schuelke.

Schuelke and Lee still see room for failure. Side effects could crop up, and Lee's work shows that real muscle growth may require a broader attack than the Wyeth drug's targeted approach, because there are a host of mysterious myostatin-like proteins that also dampen muscle growth. Lee doesn't know how many. Acceleron Pharma is set to begin human trials on a drug that mimics a cell receptor that could disable many of the myostatin-like proteins. The Cambridge, Mass. firm has raised $56 million from venture funds, including Polaris Venture Partners and OrbiMed Advisors.

Schuelke continues to see the muscular boy he found in Berlin seven years ago. Though there were fears that his heart might get too thick, the boy is completely healthy. He's strong but no longer abnormally so. It may be that myostatin's effects are most dramatic during fetal development, but that's one of many guesses in this genetic mystery.

Maybe athletes like Barry Bonds didn't use steroids after all (ha!) Rather it was the fine oils and body rubs

In a startling, shocking report, documented here in the AP, but to be published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, comes revelations about the effects of estrogenic substances on males.  Perhaps athletes like Bonds and Brian Cushing, with moobs, were simply using fine lavender oils and soaps.

BOSTON -- Lavender and tea tree oils found in some shampoos, soaps and lotions can temporarily leave boys with enlarged breasts in rare cases, apparently by disrupting their hormonal balance, a preliminary study suggests.

While advising parents to consider the possible risk, several hormone experts emphasized that the problem appears to happen infrequently and clears up when the oils are no longer used. None of those interviewed called for a ban on sales.

Incredible.  The lavender is a hormone-mimic, specifically estrogen.  That would induce breasts development in men (and women)

The study reported on the condition, gynecomastia, in three boys ages 4, 7 and 10. They all went back to normal when they stopped using skin lotions, hair gel, shampoo or soap with the natural oils.

It's unclear how often this problem might crop up in other young children.

These plant oils, sometimes called "essential oils," are added to many health-care products, usually for their scent. The oils are sometimes found in other household products or sold in purer forms. Tea tree oil is sometimes used in shampoos for head lice.

The suspected effect in this study is blamed on some chemical within the oils that the body processes like estrogen, the female hormone that promotes breast growth.

Thus, Bonds might have been right.  That wonderful lavender scent he frequently use in the bath, could have caused the incredible change in his physique we see in the photo.

Likewise with Brian Cushing.  The gynecomastia might be due to the exotic oils a USC linebacker would use in the locker room.  All over the world boys are showering to scrub the lavender off (most are, some kinky ones...), and teenage girls are soaping to achieve the desired effect.

This explains one thing.  The Nation's college daughter has long teased the Nation for moobs.  We contend it is simply the result of decades or regimented bench-pressing.  In the shower today, what shampoo did The Nation use?  LAVENDER.  We are calling the lawyers immediately to sue Suave...

Don Catlin, head of UCLA's anti-doping lab, and master detective

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.

Iowa State study shows high school linemen beefing up to possibly dangerous weights

Report here from AP, says a new study put out by our friends at Iowa State (Moo U) shows Iowa high school players beefing up, even to the point of obesity.  Study to be published in JAMA.

This presents all kinds of health problems from diabetes to risk of cardiac disease.  Many of these problems will not be evidence until years later for these athletes.

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- Heavy tackles and 300-pound nose guards are common in pro and college football. Now a study shows the trend toward beefier, overweight linemen is emerging at the high school level.

Researchers at Iowa State University found nearly half of the offensive and defensive linemen playing on Iowa high school teams qualify as overweight, and one in 10 meet medical standards for severe obesity...

For years at the pro and college level, teams have sought bigger, stronger linemen who are harder to budge. Players have responded by adding weight and muscle mass, making the 300-pound lineman fairly common, sports medical experts said.

Recently, however, the National Football League and players have taken greater note of health risks for heavy athletes because of two high-profile NFL player deaths and a 2005 study, which concluded that 56 percent of NFL players fit medical standards for obesity.

The size, bulk and ever-widening girth of the pros apparently has not gone unnoticed by those dreaming of one day playing at the next level.

"Sure I look at college players and pro players a lot and size them up," said Chad Wilson, a junior who started at center last season for Iowa City West High School. He wants to add at least another 20 pounds before next season.

(continues after the jump)

Anti-doping leader exhorts pharmacists to be alerted for contaminated supplements

Found here in the Winnipeg Free Press, an anti-doping official warned pharmacists.

SOME amateur athletes are doping without even knowing it by using muscle supplements and other herbal products, the chairman of the Drugs in Sport Program said Friday.

Dr. Dean Kriellaars, who heads the anti-doping group for the Sport Medicine Council of Manitoba, spoke to some of the 500 pharmacy students from across Canada at a University of Manitoba conference at the convention centre.

Kriellaars warned that pharmacists need to know as much as possible about the $40-billion "nutraceutical" industry to be able to tell athletes and consumers what isn't listed on the product label. Nutraceuticals are products that are usually sold as medicinal remedies that provide various health benefits from weight loss to immune system boosters.

In Canada, Kriellaars said regulations do not yet require health supplement and herbal product manufacturers to list all their ingredients -- many of which include stimulants or other performance enhancing substances.

That, he said, could spell the end of an athlete's career if a pharmacist doesn't counsel them on what they shouldn't ingest.

"Some (of the substances) are banned in sports and some are not and that's really confusing for athletes because they don't know what to take and what not to take," he said. "Nobody's there to help them through the dilemma."

The lecture also covered adolescent use of PED (who says kids don't emulate the pros; of course they do)..after the jump:

Cycling team trainer sentenced to jail for doping

In an interesting development, cycling team trainer Bogdan Madejak (the report  may have the wrong spelling) of Cofidis faces a jail sentence for doping team members. Report here from Australia:

A French court has sentenced former Cofidis cycling team physiotherapist Bogdan Medejak to one year in prison, nine months of it suspended, for his part in a doping case.

Seven other accused, some of them riders, were given suspended jail sentences of three to six months.

Briton David Millar and Italian Massimiliano Lelli were discharged as the offences were not perpetrated on French soil and they are not French citizens.

Most of the accused were charged with acquiring and possessing banned performance-enhancing drugs.

This is interesting because the profession/supplier of the drugs is given a sentence.  Although focus should be on both sides of the equation, the professionals should also be held responsible when an athlete dopes.

Bogdan Medejak of Cofidis

Starbucks to drop milk with bovine growth hormone (rBGH). Sammy Sosa's hat size to decrease.

Starbucks, the coffee chain and favorite pre-workout hangout of most bodybuilders, the Carolina Panthers, several MLB sluggers, and Jason Grimsely, announced that it will forgo products with 'bovine growth hormone'.  Report out here in the AP.

SEATTLE -- Starbucks Coffee Co. is ending its use of milk products that contain an artificial growth hormone, starting in much of the West and New England. Less than a month after announcing that the chain would stop selling items with trans fats in half its U.S. stores, Starbucks said Tuesday it had begun buying only milk products without bovine growth hormone in those areas...

For more than a decade, some advocacy groups have asserted that there has not been enough research on the effects in humans of milk products from cows that were given the hormone, which is administered to dairy cattle during the middle phase of lactation to boost milk production.

Large-scale dairy operators contend there is no scientific evidence to suggest any effect on humans from the recombinant bovine growth hormone, (rBGH), which is marketed as Posilac by Monsanto Co. of St. Louis, which obtained approval from the Food and Drug Administration for commercial sales beginning in early 1994.

"Growth hormones only work on their own kind. A lot of people don't understand that," said Blair Thompson, a spokesman for the Washington Dairy Products Commission.

Environmental groups have long protested against the use of artificially stimulated cow milk.  The groups say the rBGH  (bovine growth hormone) leaks into milk produced in these cows.  Milk producers on the other hand, says rBGH is inactive in humans.  There is concern that rBGH increases IGF-1 (link may req registration) and other peptides that may affect humans.  These peptides are not thought to increase human growth.   Sammy Sosa says he can't read English well enough to evaluate the arguments.

In other news, haberdashers have revealed that hat sizes have seemed to decrease since the Starbucks' decision..... 

Changes ahead for WADA?

Might the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) be on a crash course for changes in anti-doping policies?  Report in the LA Times says so.

Internaional sports officials, in apparent rebellion against an antidrug enforcement system increasingly regarded as harsh and inflexible, are calling for major rule revisions, according to documents released Monday by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Among their principal targets for change are rules that treat the unwitting ingestion of trace amounts of any banned drug the same as intentional drug use, often imposing identical penalties in either case.

The extensive report publishes new views on WADA indicating widespread dissatisfaction with the organization.

The previously undisclosed comments provide a rare picture of widespread dissent in the sports antidoping world. WADA officials have portrayed a united front in both its goals for drug-free competition and its enforcement methods.

Many of the comments filed by sports organizations parallel the findings of an investigation by The Times in December reporting that the international system "imposes severe punishments for accidental or technical infractions, relies at times on disputed scientific evidence and resists outside scrutiny."

Might the controversial Dick Pound take a hit?

Although no officials were mentioned by name, WADA Chairman Richard W. Pound of Montreal has been criticized for appearing to prejudge the guilt of accused athletes while their appeals were still pending.

Instead, many organizations are pressing to give enforcement authorities more flexibility to reduce sanctions — or impose none at all — on athletes whose drug violations are found to be accidental or trivial.

The current system, in the words of the Assn. of Summer Olympic International Federations, is "far too oversimplified" and can lead to "absurd" results.

The LA Times has published a series of stories and analysis of insight WADA policies. The Nation will try to compile these under one heading soon.

Gay sheep low on testosterone

We detour from the sporting world, to the sporting world for a moment.  Studies at the Univ of Oregon (Published in Endocrine, reported in Southern Voice)  found that sheep that prefer to mate with female sheep had a larger hypothalamus that sheep who preferred mating with male sheep.  The size of the hypothalamus in the male-preferring sheep was the size of the brain area in female sheep.  The researchers concluded that the hypothalamic differences were due to testosterone levels -- higher in heterosexual sheep.

The researchers observed that the preoptic hypothalamus — the region of the brain that influences sexual behavior and partner preference — in heterosexual rams contained higher levels of a group of neurons known as the sexually dimorphic nucleus, than the preoptic hypothalamus of rams who prefer to mate with other rams.

The researchers also concluded that the volume of the sexually dimorphic nucleus in gay rams is similar to what is found in female sheep, or ewes. Essentially, it means that heterosexual rams had higher levels of testosterone in their sexually dimorphic nucleus compared to gay ram and ewe.

The researchers began manipulating the level of testosterone in pregnant ewes to see if the level of the androgen affected sexual orientation.  Although those studies are inconclusive the group has come in for some harsh criticism, from - of all people - PETA.

But critics of the experiment, led by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, assign much more sinister implications to studying sexual orientation among sheep. In particular, they point to researchers’ follow-up studies that attempted to determine “whether sexual preferences can be altered by manipulating the prenatal hormone environment … [in order] to test their hypothesis regarding development of this area of the brain.

It was noted, however, that the gay sheep sported much sharper fleece than the heterosexual rams...

Writers suggests Schwarzenegger's steroid use related to leg fracture

Michael Awkley of the conservative site 'WorldNetDaily' comes out and says it:  California Governor Schwarzenegger's admitted use of anabolic steroids complicates the leg fracture he suffered skiing.

According to one witness, Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger broke his femur when he tripped and fell on his ski pole – not much of a tumble as ski accidents go.

This makes relevant a San Francisco Chronicle article a couple of years ago that quoted New York University Professor Gary Wadler, described as ''one of the nation's leading experts on steroids in sports.''

According to the article, Wadler said the widespread use of steroids would become clear in such risks as weak bones and elevated fracture risks as former muscle-builders get old.

Let us suggest that the governor, who has admitted taking steroids in his bodybuilding days (before they were outlawed), might use his mishap as a cautionary lesson for athletes tempted to use the drugs.

Is Waddler right on?

Australia Seeks to Map Minds of Cheats

As reported here in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority

The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority is hiring consultants to carry out detailed research on the proportion of sportsmen and women who may be contemplating using prohibited substances or methods.

And the authority has signaled that the research could be used to establish personal characteristics linked to a greater likelihood of using banned drugs. In tender documents issued for the research, the authority indicates its interest in a "robust and reliable" method that could "identify individual athletes … who may be at risk of, or susceptible to, utilizing prohibited substances and prohibited methods".

Sports psychologists have suggested that athletes with assertive or risk-taking personality types or who display traits such as pessimism, impulsive behavior and low self-esteem are more likely to consider using banned substances. Athletes going through critical career transitions, such as moving to a new grade of competition or nearing the end of their careers, are also more disposed towards boosting their performance artificially.

WADA has identified characteristics of athletes vulnerable to drug-cheating.  Perhaps this research can add to the body of knowledge.

...the World Anti-Doping Agency had identified characteristics associated with drug use, including: athletes struggling to recover from injuries; athletes on the cusp of winning selection to a new level of competition; and those training with people who had been involved in distributing prohibited substances.

Wonder if the NFL would add more psychological tests to the venerable Wonderlic?  I would bet the NFLPA and the MLBPA would fight any sort of predictive psychological testing.

New York Times on Dick Pound

If you follow 'performance enhancing drugs' stories, then you know about the NY Times article on Dick Pound from 7-January-2007 Times Magazine.  (registration required)

Pound has been dissected more than usual lately.  A piece in Wired turned cynical on Pound as it developed.  Wired's portrait of Pound journeyed from Pound the young swimmer, to Pound the lawyer, to Pound Ben Johnson's attorney, to Pound the pillar behind WADA, to Pound the loose canon who prejudges his athletes, thus bending his own rules.  Wired quoted Lance Armstrong, who called for Pound to resign:

Armstrong responded by sending a letter asking that Pound be removed as the head of WADA. "Dick Pound is a recidivist violator of ethical standards," Armstrong wrote. "Mr. Pound has depicted himself as the ethical conscience of the IOC, while failing to practice what he preaches."

The Times writer was with Pound the day the Landis controversy was launched.  Pound comes across as shrill:

On this particular day, Pound, who is 64, looked tired. His broad face was drawn, his complexion pasty. He had just returned from China, and his back hurt. Thinking about Landis seemed to enliven him. He spoke of the cyclist as if he were some sleazy perp just collared by the vice squad. “He was 11 minutes behind or something, and all of the sudden there’s this Herculean effort, where he’s going up mountains like he’s on a goddamn Harley,” he said. In the 2006 tour, Landis raced in pain while awaiting a hip replacement, went out to an early lead, lost it, then seemed to miraculously regain it. “It’s a great story,” Pound said. “Wonderful. But if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

While it is unfair of a writer to characterize the diatribe describing Landis 'as if he were some sleazy perp' (that seems calculated to get the Landis folks irritated) Pound does seem starkly frank in his assessment.

The piece refers to Pound's 'schoolboy delight'.  It accuses him of making up facts (eg Candian hockey players doping):

Pound is not a stereotypical Canadian, if you think of Canadians as reticent, nor is he very lawyerly: he assembles whatever facts he can gather, but when they’re not attainable, sometimes just makes them up.

Interestingly, the Times piece veers from a story on Dick Pound to looking at the future of doping - gene doping.

“Who is not braced for the first renegade human clone?” Joel Garreau asks in his book “Radical Evolution.” Garreau argues that the next frontier of technology will be aimed inward, toward human enhancement. This is Pound’s real challenge: The future.

Interesting read.  Considering the scandals that have revealed the determination, and the cleverness of the cheaters,  one realizes a tough man needs to stand at the top of an organization like WADA.  Someone to pound people into playing by the rules.  Right now, that's Dick Pound.

More on Rose Bowl Defensive MVP Brian Cushing

In his blog, The Boi from Troy defends Brian Cushing, whose pic last summer led some to question of steroid use.  In the photo a casual Cushing presents a 'dictionary entry' picture of gynecomastia.

You just know that Wizard of Odds waited until I was stuck on a plane for four straight days to drop this post in the queue. As the perfect evidence of the difference between “blogging” and “journalism,” The Wiz dredges up the photos and subject matter of a post from last summer by There’s Your Karma, juxtaposing high school photos of USC linebacker and BoiFromTroy favorite Brian Cushing with later pics whilst he was recovering from shoulder surgery. Asking, “what happened to Brian Cushing?” both blogs suggest that the Trojan from New Jersey is as juiced up as the Governor of California was about the time Cushing was born.

The Boi continues, pointing to surgery and weight gain as reasons for the spring 2006 pic of Cushing:

So what happened to Brian Cushing? Well, he had shoulder surgery last year, which probably kept him from going to the gym. When you don’t work out, you get fat.

What happened to Brian Cushing? Well, he was moved from runningback in High School to linebacker at USC his freshman year to Defensive lineman, putting on 35 pounds along the way. Put on 35 pounds in one year, and some of it is fat.

It is great that someone defends Cushing.  Both sides to every story should be presented.  However, in his defense, the blog posts another photo of Cushing that continues to show gynecomastia.

Compare the Cushing chest with the other player on the right.  You can clearly see breast tissue on Cushing.  That tissue can be the result of the estrogenic effects of anabolic steroids.  And that is the definition of the gynecomastia that plagues users of anabolic/androgenic steroids.

Landis supporters suggest lab procedures

This is from Dr. Arnie Baker, by way of the (excellent) Trust But Verify site.  The suggestions sound very reasonable.  As with the CDT and MLBPA lab practices in BALCO, some of these labs lag in standards.

I am surprised the testing labs do not utilize many of these procedures.  These events are of the highest profile in the world.

(Update.  See the submitted comment below. Some of the suggested procedures are followed.  Bar coding is a good idea.  Some of the other suggests are questionable)

The site contains direct downloads of many of the case documents, including translations of the slide show for Europeans. The new piece is a set of recommendations authored by Arnie Baker for improving the process in ways that improve transparency, accuracy, and fairness.    Bulleted:

• Public reporting of WADA committee minutes, test validity studies, and positivity criteria;
• Bar coded tracking, always.
• Check digits (an important technical point).
• Public Standard Operating Procedures for labs.
• Mandatory degradation reporting for markers.
• Mandatory percent error reporting.
• Unified standards for false positive rates
• Limit test exposure based on false positive rates.
• Flexibility in sanctions for fairness.
• Unequal jeopardy:  many parties may appeal for sanction vs. one athlete.
• Public reporting of Lab error rates, tracking of AAFs, and Arbitration decisions.
• Truly blind lab proficiency testing.
• Freedom for lab experts to testify.
• Oversight for WADA

Which doesn't seem like an irresponsible set of requests.

Details on the Floyd Landis Fund

Interesting details on the Landis Fund listed here, by way of TNV.

Save the Lancaster One

01:15, Jan 5th by Carlton Reid

Friends and supporters of Tour de France champion Floyd Landis have joined together to create the Floyd Fairness Fund. The fund is accepting PayPal donations to help Landis pay for the estimated $500,000 legal bill he will incur fighting against the all-powerful, rich, judge-jury-research funder that is WADA. Later the fund may evolve into an advocacy organisation for athletes' rights

The Floyd Fairness Fund is led by Michael Henson, the New York based communications consultant for Landis. A key fund trustee is Arnie Baker M.D., a friend of Landis and fierce critic of WADA's modus operandi. The fund's executive director – and chief financial backer – is New York based cycling executive Brian Rafferty, MD and co-founder of Taylor Rafferty, an international financial consultancy firm. He's no slouch: he's the 2006
New York State Road Race Champion in the 45+ age group.

The Floyd Fairness Fund website was registered by Jeremy Hayter of Hayter Creative of London. The site is also designed by Hayter Creative. This company, founded in 2006, has produced design work for many blue-chip clients, including the website for Taylor Rafferty.

The Floyd Fairness Fund - click the PayPal button via here - is "an initiative supporting Landis in his efforts to clear his name of unsubstantiated doping allegations," said Henson... 

The fund need not run for ever. A hearing in front of experts appointed by the US Anti-doping Agency could be held in February or March. Landis has requested this hearing be made open and public, a first from an accused athlete. However, this has thrown USADA and it is taking a long time to finalise hearing details, a delay that costs Landis dearly, both in cash and continued damage to his reputation.

The goal of any post-FFF fund would be to "establish a legacy of advocacy for athletes’ rights to compete in fair and clean sport by advancing best practice standards in anti-doping testing and enforcement."

The fund is seeking to raise $2m.

The FFF website – topped with an amateurish logo - is a hotch-potch of PDFs, the majority of which are presented better elsewhere. However, there are some fresh materials, including a new plea for fairness, transparency and scientific rigour from Arnie Baker.

The superlative Trust But Verify blog says the set of pleas don't "seem like an irresponsible set of requests."

Trust But Verify

The guys over at Trust but Verify are "whining" again. Re (discussing the new Floyd Fairness Fund):

Site bugs: The slide show file name is misspelled, and not a single mention of TBV, not even in the extensive press clippings. Sniff. We'll be better after a pint of Cherry Garcia.

Typical cyclists, "whining" all the time.  Let's try to cheer them up.

Anyone interested in Floyd Landis has to read Trust But Verify.  Very good defense of Landis,  Excellent suggestions on the anti-doping issue.  intelligent discussion.

There. Kudos.  Don't let it go to your heads.

(this is tongue in cheek;  the guys at TBV are great)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There has to be some positive results of this entire issue.  Steroid Nation needs some good karma, considering the world situation.

(and we need to somehow retrieve our vehicle from an airport far away...)

Genetic tweak improves endurance muscles

This release from Nature (the #1 science journal in the world) documents a genetic intervention that increases muscle endurance in mice.  The article also suggests that this will develop better runners.  Nice job, Nature, suggesting a way to gene dope.

A genetic tweak has converted mice into endurance runners by enriching a little-known form of muscle fibre. The discovery could help boost sporting abilities, or reveal ways to slow muscle wasting...

...Human muscles are made of four main types of fibre, including two 'slow-twitch'
varieties and one 'fast-twitch' muscle type that are suited to endurance and sprint activities respectively. Little has been known about the fourth type, called IIX fibre, because it is scattered throughout different muscles.

Now a Boston team has hit upon a genetic switch that converts almost all mouse muscle fibres into type IIX. The result is startling. "Damn, they're good athletes," says Bruce Spiegelman of Harvard Medical School, who led the team. The mice were able to run on a mouse treadmill for 25% longer than normal before reaching exhaustion.

Great, now we are going to suggest how to dope:

The discovery hints that the elusive type IIX muscle fibres are an underappreciated contributor to athletic ability. It is possible, for example, that world-class athletes are naturally endowed with more of these fibres than the average person — or that hard training generates more of them.

If so, notes study researcher Zoltan Arany, also of Harvard Medical School, future athletes might try to take advantage of the discovery. It is possible, he predicts, that "someday we'll have drugs that switch on the production of these fibres and they'll be abused by sportsmen".

Sometimes we in science seem like nerds...well often I guess.  Why not just suggest that athletes dope?  Go ahead, dare people.

(more after the jump)

Soy is making your child gay

(Disclaimer:  this is posted as a 'fun item';  also posted for the content of crap in the article.   Original link from Ergogenics.)

The latest in steroid hormone developments comes from the World Net Daily.  This is from Jim Rutz, who says Soy is making you a boi.

F-L-A-W-E-D

There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular...

...The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore...

...I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of good things. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you're also getting substantial quantities of estrogens.

Estrogens are female hormones. If you're a woman, you're flooding your system with a substance it can't handle in surplus. If you're a man, you're suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your "female side," physically and mentally.

In fetal development, the default is being female. All humans (even in old age) tend toward femininity. The main thing that keeps men from diverging into the female pattern is testosterone, and testosterone is suppressed by an excess of estrogen.

If you're a grownup, you're already developed, and you're able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren't so fortunate. Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. A baby's endocrine system just can't cope with that kind of massive assault, so some damage is inevitable. At the extreme, the damage can be fatal.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

Unbelievable.  Where do guys like this get their science?

.

McGwire 70th Home Run Ball Juiced?

Is this serious?   A report found here at PRS Newswire says that a CT scan of Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball is juiced.  Not only will there be concerns about McGwire on 'roids, but that the baseball itself was juiced.

CLEVELAND, Jan. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball from his record-breaking 1998 season contains a synthetic rubber ring or spring ("the ring") -- a material not outlined in official Major League Baseball ("the League") specifications. The ring and enlarged rubberized core of the baseball are clearly visualized in a computed tomography (CT) scan of the baseball conducted by Universal Medical Systems, Inc. of Ohio (UMS), a worldwide innovator of diagnostic imaging technology for various industries.
 
 
UMS, with assistance from Dr. Avrami S. Grader and Dr. Philip M.
Halleck from The Center for Quantitative Imaging at Penn State University, utilized a CT scanner to study additional League baseballs from 1998 and found the baseballs have significantly enlarged cores in a variety of shapes and sizes.

Is this report real?  We will follow it.  The press release says this:

According to the League's specifications, "the pill of the baseball shall consist of a compressed cork sphere surrounded by one layer of black rubber and one layer of red rubber." The League does not specify a synthetic rubber ring or any additional material.

"Examining the CT images of Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball one can clearly see the synthetic ring around the core -- or 'pill' -- of the baseball," states David Zavagno, president of Universal Medical Systems. "While Mark McGuire may or may not have used illegal steroids, the evidence shows his ball -- under the governing body of the League -- was juiced."

Again, we don't know if this is a hoax or is real.  This story has been picked up by some media outlets, like the Cincy Post and ABC News.

Update #3.

We see ESPN (late as usual. LOL) has something on this story.

   "Examining the CT images of Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball one can clearly see the synthetic ring around the core -- or 'pill' -- of the baseball," UMS president David Zavagno said. "While Mark McGwire may or may not have used illegal steroids, the evidence shows his ball -- under the governing body of the league -- was juiced."

Schwarzenegger's surgeon says leg fracture not related to steroid use

In a very unusual statement, Arnold Schwarzenegger's physician released a statement  disavowing that anabolic steroids contributed to the unusual break.  I would suspect the skiing accident had quite a bit to do with the fracture;  however to make a statement is unusual.  Link here at Hoovers.  We joked a bit about steroids and Arnold a few says ago here.  We were kidding, ok?

The Terminator suffered a terrible accident -- he fell, standing still.

The injury, which occurred while the governor was standing still on a ski hill, has fueled speculation that the Austrian Oak's limbs may be brittle because of his admitted past use of muscle-building steroid drugs.

     The governor's surgeon dismissed the theory and maintained that Schwarzenegger's broken leg bone is otherwise strong.

"Any suggestion that Gov. Schwarzenegger's injury was sustained as a result of anabolic steroid use is wrong and has no basis in fact," said orthopedic surgeon Kevin Ehrhart, in a prepared statement. "His bone was completely healthy and rock solid."

     Still, doctors said broken femurs are relatively rare, even among skiers.

"It's uncommon," said Dr. Noah Finkel, an orthopedic surgeon in Huntington, N.Y., avid skier and sports medicine specialist. "The most common cause for a femur fracture is someone crashing into you on the slope."

Adi Erber, a ski instructor who was with Schwarzenegger at the time of the accident last Saturday, said the governor was standing still when he tripped over his pole, which was caught under his ski, and fell.

I was going to explain that corticosteroids are related to osteroporesis (or bone thinning) not anabolic steroids.  The article explains it however:

Osteoporosis, the loss of calcium in the bone, can weaken bones and make them more prone to fractures. Prolonged use of some steroid drugs such as corticosteroids -- including prednisone and cortisone -- have been linked to osteoporosis. Taken to reduce inflammation from diseases such as asthma and arthritis, corticosteroids increase the risk of fractures because they decrease calcium absorption.

Anabolic steroids are synthetic derivatives of the male hormone testosterone. Because they promote muscle growth, they are often used illegally to enhance athletic performance. Schwarzenegger admitted using steroids during his bodybuilding days decades ago.

Ironically, some research has demonstrated that anabolic steroids can help stimulate new bone formation in patients suffering from osteoporosis.

Sometimes, me thinks ye protests too much...

Russian President Putin signs anti-doping bill into law

Russian Vladimir Putin took time off his busy day poisoning ex-secret agents, to sign an international anti-doing bill.  The report is here in Tass.

MOSCOW, December 29 (Itar-Tass) -- President Vladimir Putin has signed the federal law “On the ratification of the International Convention Against Doping in Sport,” the presidential press service reports.

   The law was adopted by the State Duma on December 8 and approved by  the Federation Council on December 22.

The federal law provides for the ratification of the international Convention against Doping in Sport, which was adopted by the UNESCO General Conference on October 19, 2005.

This bill appears to be along the lines of the UN's resolution we posted here.  Putin wondered if the doping tests covered Polonium-210;  experts are checking.

The purpose of the Convention is to prevent the use of doping in sport and to step up work for its eradication. It assigns the signatory countries to take appropriate measures on the national and international level in line with the World Anti-Doping Code, to develop international cooperation aimed at protecting athletes against doping, to stick to the ethical principles in sports, to jointly use the results of scientific research in that sphere and to promote international cooperation between the signatory countries and organisations in the war against doping in sport, specifically cooperation with the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Welcome Aboard Ricca

Steroid Nation is very pleased to welcome Ricca509 A Bodybuilder's Life. Linked here.  I have tried to translate from Italian to English by using Babel fish to describe Ricca.

Ricca tells me he is a natural bodybuilder from Italy.

About Ricca:

My history leaves from far away...: -) In short, study Engineering of the Telecommunicationses and I train myself by now from years. The training is something of fabulous second me and creed that that that you wheel round merits attention and respect. For this I have decided to create this blog that I hope to carry ahead with the seriousness that this sport deserves.

From Ricca's Site:

   

I guerrieri sono perseveranti  

 

Essi sanno che devono allenarsi alla lunga. I guerrieri valutano ed amano persino il loro sforzo e la loro lotta. Sopportano il disagio sapendo che quello è proprio il momento in cui stanno ampliando se stessi fisicamente e mentalmente. Spingono continuamente se stessi verso le proprie frontiere di crescita e sviluppo. I guerrieri accettano i fallimenti ed imparano dalle proprie delusioni per migliorarsi in quello che fanno.    
 
Da Cultura Fisica & Fitness

Filosofia: The guerrieri are perseveranti They know that they must be trained in the long run. The guerrieri even estimate and love their effort and their fight. Sopportano the uneasiness knowing that that one is just the moment in which they are widening if same physically and mentally. They continuously push if same towards the own frontiers of increase and development. The guerrieri accept the failures and learn from the own disappointments in order to improve themselves in what they make. From Culture Fisica & Fitness

Steroid Nation also links to, reads, and communicates with the guys over at Ergogenics.  Great people as well.

All are excellent colleagues.

Welcome again.

World Steroid Shorts

1. Korea develops Anti-Doping Agency.  Korea, who is making a bid for the 2014 Olympic games signed into law, anti-doping measures.  Report here in Sports Features Comm.

A partially revised Legislative Bill of National Sports Promotion Law for Anti-Doping suggested by Ministry of Culture and Tourism was submitted to the plenary session of the National Assembly and was passed on 22 December 2006. It provides Korea an anti-doping policy and launches Korean Anti-Doping Agency (KADA) through approval from the Minister of Culture and Tourism. It is an attempt to conduct various projects and activities related to anti-doping. The bill will come into effect in three months.

Korea is positioning itself to make a strong bid for the 2014 Olympics, and thus must have anti-doping measures in place.

2.  Indian is feeling the pain from drug-cheats, especially in weight lifting.  From the newwindpress:

If there was an year Indian weightlifting could drop veil to hide itself from posterity, 2006 could well qualify for that after drug cheats heaped shame on the country, inviting their second ban in recent past.

In fact, weightlifting has become the dirtiest sport pursued by the country and the dope menace has tainted the laurels it brought in the international competitions.

Bodari Prameelavalli, Sailaja Pujari, Edwin Raju(photo) and Tejinder Singh were tested positive for banned stanozole (winnie) -- the first two in a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) random test conducted in Patiala ahead of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in March and the last two in doping test during the Games

3.  As reported in The Hindu, WADA is putting pressure on cricket authorities to re-suspend the Pakistan bowlers.

Karachi, Dec. 29 (PTI): A top official of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has asked the Pakistan Cricket Board to immediately suspend fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif from playing in national or international competitions.

PCB should conduct fresh dope tests for two bowlers and until a decision is reached by WADA on the issue both players should be suspended from playing national or international cricket, Dr Waqar Ahmed, WADA's representative in Pakistan, told a news channel yesterday night.

 

Not just steroids: Computer games also contribute to decay of society

Report from the Telegraph screams at readers about the dangers of video games:  They rot the mind, and sicken the soul.  "The writing is on the wall – computer games rot the brain", Telegraph.co.uk.

Steroid Nation has reported on anti-doping measures for gamers here and here.  Their minds may be too far gone for even such drastic measures:

It's the snarl that gives the game away. It's the sobbing and the shrieking and the horrible pleading — that's how you know your children are undergoing a sudden narcotic withdrawal. As the strobing colours die away and the screen goes black, you listen to the wail of protest from the offspring and you know that you have just turned off their drug, and you know that, to a greater or lesser extent, they are addicts.

And it's bad out there:

We demand that teachers provide our children with reading skills; we expect the schools to fill them with a love of books; and yet at home we let them slump in front of the consoles. We get on with our hedonistic 21st-century lives while in some other room the nippers are bleeping and zapping in speechless rapture, their passive faces washed in explosions and gore. They sit for so long that their souls seem to have been sucked down the cathode ray tube.

Here is a call to action:

So I say now: stop just lying there in your post-Christmas state of crapulous indifference. Get up off the sofa. Can the DVD of Desperate Housewives, and go to where your children are sitting in auto-lobotomy in front of the console.

Sounds like it might be too late already...  :-)

Don't screw with Dick Pound

Wired has a story on Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).  He is the tough guy who makes WADA work.  Here is how it started at the 1988 Montreal Games:

THE 1988 OLYMPICS IN SEOUL GOT OFF TO A GOOD START FOR DICK POUND. As vice president of the International Olympic Committee, he had helped return the games to glory...To top it off, Pound – a Canadian – was in the stands at Olympic Stadium when his countryman Ben Johnson sprinted his way to a gold medal in the 100-meter final...

The day after Johnson's victory, Pound was still glowing, soaking up congratulations at a lunch with Olympic sponsors, when Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the IOC and Pound's mentor, burst into the room. Samaranch, known for his aristocratic manner, was in a panic.

"Dick," Samaranch said, "have you heard the news?"

"What is it?" Pound asked. "Somebody died?"

"No, no, no, it's worse," Pound recalls Samaranch saying. "Ben Johnson has tested positive." More precisely, Johnson's post-race blood sample showed evidence of stanozolol, an anabolic steroid used to boost lean muscle growth.

Incredible as it seems now, Pound represented Johnson in court.  Back to Montreal:

Pound pulled Johnson aside in the only private space they could find – the bathroom in Pound's hotel suite. "Ben, are you on anything?" he asked. Johnson looked Pound straight in the eye. No, he said. He had no idea how the drugs could have ended up in his system.

Pound took the case. In the hearing, he argued that someone had sabotaged Johnson's sample or that it had been accidentally contaminated. But the scientific evidence was overwhelming. Blood tests showed that not only did Johnson have stanozolol in his system, his adrenal function was suppressed, indicating long-term steroid use. This was no glitch.

The verdict was swift: Johnson was stripped of his medal and suspended for two years. Three days earlier, Johnson had been a champion. Now he was a cheat.

The Johnson case was doping's mortal sin. Other Olympians had tested positive, but never a gold medalist in the premier event of the games. It was undeniable that drugs had permeated sports to their highest level and that sporting officials were lagging far behind.

Pound was drastically affected by this episode.

The case also marked a turning point for Pound, who overnight went from romantic to cynic. "Most athletes, when they're caught, lie," Pound says today, the disappointment still fresh on his face. "Their coaches lie. The people around them lie. They just deny, deny, deny."

Pound went on to become the head of WADA, which sets the standard for the anti-doping effort.  Although he is about the retire, he continues to fight the doping scourge, even with a new book on the subject The Inside Dope.

The issue is intensely personal for Pound, a blunt, sarcastic tax lawyer. In his view, the ongoing drug scandals are more than a disappointing symptom of a win-at-all-costs culture; they're antithetical to the essential nature of athletic competition. "I think in sports, when somebody's cheating, it destroys the whole exercise," Pound says. "It's not fair, and it's not right. It's outrageous."

Much more here, on Marino Jones, Lance Armstrong, Justin Gatlin, and of course, Pound's stuggles with WADA.

Short Version of 9th Appeals Court Ruling

This post contains a short versions of Steroid Nations take on the 9th Court of Appeals BALCO decision announced today.  (long version here) This involves BALCO, which *surprise* is not all about Barry Bonds.  BALCO is about a conspiracy to distribute illegal drugs including anabolic steroids.  BALCO is about interstate fraud.

The issue occurred following Govt raids of CDT and Quest labs who contractually anonymously analyzed MLB players urines for a MLBPA study in 2003.  During raids on CDT and Quest Labs, the Govt obtained hard copy and computer files of code numbers and doping test results of 1000s of pro athletes (not just MLB players).  The Govt also found another list (a key) of names for the code numbers.  There were 10 MLB players of BALCO interest.  However ~100 urines were dirty with anabolic steroids.

MLBPA argued that the Govt took too much data (and surprisingly did not argue against taking the 10 BALCO player's data).  There were issues concerning subpoenas and search warrants obtained for the same data.  And lastly a member of the press wanted to view the data.

A majority opinion reversed a lower court's decision that the subpoenas with concomitant search warrants were abusive.  The appeals court sent the data to a district judge who will separate out the data appropriate for the Govt, and data that goes back to the lab.  The appeals court remanded the press request to see the data to a lower court.

The Nation's view is that CDT erred in keeping the code book with names matched to numbers in the same location as the data.

One judge objected strongly to some of the decisions in a dissenting opinion.  In our view, however, he erred in considering the urine samples medical data.

If anything, an individual player could hold CDT liable for poor lab practice.

We also don't believe this affects Bonds much.  He would not have known the results of the testing, since individuals were not notified of their results (if he actually gave a sample).  And lastly, we don't believe that more names will be named.  Security will be tight.

Innocent skier has problem. Keeps testing high hemoglobin

Found here at Eurosport, it appears a German cross-country skier is cross ways between her body and the anti-doping agencies.

Olympic silver-medallist Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle has cast doubt upon her future in the sport, due to ongoing problems with FIS testing procedures.

The 26-year-old German has naturally high levels of haemoglobin present in her blood, and after being found with a haemoglobin level slightly above that permitted by the FIS at the Turin Olympics, was handed a five day ban, preventing her from competing in the 15km pursuit.

"There has to be a solution, otherwise there's no real point for me in continuing," she told German news agency sid. "Psychologically, the situation is very wearing. There were moments when I had no desire to carry on in the sport."

The skier has never tested positive for drugs like EPO, yet her high hemoglobin always raises concerns.

"The worst thing is that she can't do anything to prove her innocence. That frustrated her," Germany coach Jochen Behle explained.

Nightmarish.  Sachenbacher-Stehle must have a natural variation of hemoglobin that give a high level.  High hemoglobin can be the result of steroids or EPO, but could also be the result of living at high altitudes, or a condition known as polycythemia vera.

One would think that her physician could explain the condition to the regulatory agencies.  Or like a patient I knew with polycythemia vera, get bled off.

Update on Indian runner

Here is an update on Santhi Soundaraja, the Indian runner who won the silver medal at the Asian Games, only to later 'fail a gender test'.  We posted information here.  However, there is an update at ChannelNewsAsia.

Doctors at the Sports Authority of India say Santhi could be a victim of congenital hermaphroditic symptoms which she has been diagnosed with before.  (see this post)

Further, she may need surgery:

   

NEW DELHI: The Indian athlete who was stripped of her Asian Games silver medal after failing to clear a gender test is likely to need surgical treatment, say doctors.

Officials and the medical fraternity have, however, absolved Santhi Soundarajan of any deliberate wrongdoing.

However, there are political consequences of the Indian government.

This incident is a tightrope for India which is eager to display keen adherence to rules and checks in the run-up to the 2010 Commonwealth Games that it is hosting.

Without knowing the exact information of her syndrome, however considering that all news stories that say this was not intentional fraud or cheating, Santhi should be given her medal back.  Period.

More on Indian runner who failed 'gender test'

Steroid Nation's focus is on the use and abuse of anabolic substances  in sports, and the influence of 'hormonal cheating'.  Thus we have followed the case of the Indian runner Santhi Soundaraja won the 800M at the Asian games, then made worldwide headlines as she failed a 'gender test'.  ESPN story here.  UPDATE here.

We will try to keep readers updated on this.  In the Big Ten Medical Center where 'the Nation (it's the holidays, give us some presumptuousness)' works, there is an interesting photo of a young ophthalmologist, Richard Richards, who became Renee Richards.  For a younger generation Renee Richards was a gender-bending sex-changed tennis player who created controversy in the 80s.

The Nation doesn't believe the Indian runner, Santhi Soundaraja, is a  'transsexual'. (meaning changed sex;  Steroid Nation still remembers a medical convention in San Francisco where a demonstration of 'transsexuals against medicine' was quite impressive).

The Nation suspects that the runner from India has a case of ambiguous genitalia.  That would be where the genitals are not fully developed unlike Pittsburgh Steeler kicker Jeff Reed, whom Deadspin reports seems to have the vestiges of the male organ.

An Indian official has already said this:

An Indian athletics official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media said Soundarajan almost certainly never had sex-change surgery.

Instead, the official said Soundarajan appeared to have “abnormal chromosomes.” The official also said the test revealed more Y chromosomes than allowed.

Let's go over the reasons an athlete may not pass the muster of being 'female':

• Chromosomal (XO, or XXY)
• Hormonal (androgen insensitivity)
• Enzyme problems (5-alpha reductase deficiency; failure to convert testosterone to effective form)
• Hermaphoditisim (possesses both male and female genitalia)
  
• Gonadal dysgensis (gonads do not form correctly)

We will explain why this athlete probably wasn't cheating.

(much more then you really wanted, after the jump)