IRS Special Agent Jeff Novitsky testified against cyclist Tammy Thomas at her perjury trial yesterday. Novitsky is a popular (and controversial) figure in the entire steroids in sports investigation. Thus, many observers were interested in his testimony. Reviewing the published accounts of Novitsky’s testimony, I found it particularly interesting how much incriminating evidence federal investigators found in BALCO’s trash.
Novitzky began searching through the trash behind the BALCO offices, learning when the company set garbage out and when it was collected. Each Monday night for a year, he hauled BALCO’s rubbish to a well-lit area nearby and sifted through it, he testified.
He found copies of e-mail messages and copious quantities of empty needle wrappers, he said. The latter led him to a medical-waste company where he found evidence of syringes, vials and performance-enhancing drugs that apparently originated at BALCO.
The scientific and anti-doping community continue to struggle with the development a test for exogenous growth hormone in athletes. They haven’t even been able to produce scientific evidence that growth hormone enhances athletic performance in spite of anecdotal evidence [from athletes and strength coaches] that this is the case.
But science continues to do a good job at finding weakness in the doping controls currently in place. Tip of the hat to Trust But Verify for alerting us of a new study which, among other things, tells us exactly how much exogenous testosterone some athletes can use and still pass the drug test.
Over three years ago, MSNBC determined that anabolic steroids were sold on Ebay after a three-month investigation. I’m not sure why it took them three months to learn that steroids were sold on the popular auction site (”Steroid dealers use ruse to sell wares on eBay,” January 20, 2005).
In October and November [2004], an NABP investigator purchased four items on eBay that appeared to be steroids, paying between $90 and $140 for each order. In two cases, eBay shut down the auctions before they ran their course.
“I got a notice from eBay saying this auction was ended because of a violation of the rules, but the transaction still went through,” said the investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity...
All four products — injectable solutions in factory packaging, oral tablets labeled in Spanish as being for veterinary use and unmarked pills in a plastic bag — turned out to be just what the sellers claimed they were: anabolic steroids like Dianabol, Sustanon and testosterone propionate.
Guess what? Ebay continues to be used to sell anabolic steroids in spite of efforts by the billion dollar auction website and the DEA to prevent it. Currently, an individual in Biloxi, Mississippi is trying to sell Dianabol on Ebay.
Claims that growth hormone enhances physical performance are not supported by the scientific literature. Although the limited available evidence suggests that growth hormone increases lean body mass, it may not improve strength; in addition, it may worsen exercise capacity and increase adverse events. More research is needed to conclusively determine the effects of growth hormone on athletic performance.
This confirms what J.C. Bradbury, Ph.D. has been saying all along.
The 2006 Tour de France winner, who was stripped of his victory last year, seeks to have his title restored by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. It’s the final step in a series of appeals that have cost upward of $2 million, a good portion of which has been paid for with federal funds…
But it will still be costly, and a good chunk of the cost will be footed by USADA, which gets about 70 percent of its $12 million annual budget from the federal government, and the rest from the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Some newspapers, like the Akron Beacon Journal, have redistributed the aforementioned Associated Press news article only to change the title and imply that U.S. taxpayers are also paying for Floyd Landis’ defense
The steroid hysteria related to steroids in sports continues to have an adverse impact of the availability of anabolic-androgenic steroids and human growth hormone for legal use in legitimate medical conditions. Congressional attacks upon anabolic steroids and other anabolic drugs (solely because athletes use them) are hurting those patients who stand to benefit from these highly beneficial and effective drugs.
Here’s the problem: The proposed legislation would re-classify HGH as a Schedule III drug, increasing penalties for its illegal use and limiting access in several ways. The penalties are fine, the parents agree. Limiting access for growth-challenged kids is the deal breaker.
The Champs, for example, would need to go to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan once every month for a new prescription, which would last 30 days. Currently with each visit, they are able to obtain a three-month supply of HGH, with two refills. They only need to go once every nine months. Meanwhile, their insurance co-pays would triple for the extra doses.
David Soares is a political fraud ostensibly promising drug law reform while expanding the costly war on drugs in a different direction. He was elected to the office of the Albany County District Attorney running on a platform seeking to repeal New York’s draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws. Many progressive anti-prohibition organizations fell in love with his rhetoric. To Soare’s credit, his campaign was influential in the passage of minor Rockefeller drug law reforms although critics have charged that the changes do not represent real reform.
Prosecutor David Soares continues to strongly criticize the U.S. war on drugs as an abysmal failure. His 2006 speech at the International Harm Reduction Association conference in Vancouver, where he warned Canada to stay as far away from U.S. drug policy as possible, earned him praise from drug law reformers.
Yet at the same time Soares was criticizing the failure of the ”war on drugs”, he was aggressively invigorating the nation’s “war on steroids“; he abandoned his efforts to repeal the Rockefeller drug laws in favor of a costly steroid witch hunt. The inescapable hypocrisy of David Soares’ actions suggest a political opportunist who lacks a principled stance on drug law reform
The non-medical use of anabolic steroids by mature, consenting adults, whether for appearance- or performance-enhancing purposes, is one thing that doesn’t particularly trouble me. The voluntary consumption of steroids by consenting teenagers is more problematic. But it still does not represent a public health crisis.
According to a recent AP probe, there are steroid hormones in our drinking water. The presence of pharmaceuticals including steroids in our public water supply is significantly more important than steroids in baseball. Not only does is point to the hypocrisy of our doped culture attacking doped athletes, but more importantly, it represents a serious threat to children, infants, and developing fetuses whose endocrine systems are particularly vulnerable to pharmaceuticals that act as endocrine disruptors. Read the rest of this entry »
The federal government’s obsession with eliminating anabolic steroids from Major League Baseball is compromising state law enforcement efforts to fight drug dealers and violent criminals thereby jeopardizing the public safety according to Oakland County Sheriff Michael Brouchard.
“While Congress focuses on the need to eliminate drug use from baseball, law enforcement is struggling to get action on Byrne . . . which fights drugs not just in baseball, but on our streets and in our neighborhoods,” Bouchard said. “Literally thousands of children have been saved from drug scenes by this program.”
