In a typical kneejerk reaction by Congress, it appears that they are on the verge of expanding the Controlled Substances Act to include non-addictive human growth hormone. Senators Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sponsored the legislation in response to the Mitchell Report’s on performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids and growth hormone in Major League Baseball. The Senators misguided efforts are an attempt to make an example of athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs since they are role models for children. Essentially, the goal of the bill is to protect the children.
Sally Jenkins, writing in the Washington Post, observes that professional athletes who use anabolic steroids are treated more harshly than others who have committed similar crimes.
Perjury cases are rarely prosecuted by the Justice Department according to Jenkins:
It charged just 99 people with the crime in 2006, out of more than 88,000 federal defendants. Between 2001 and 2006, 566 perjury cases were filed — about 1 percent of all criminal charges. Cases brought before the federal criminal justice system are supposed to be top-notch in quality, and of overriding size and importance.
Unless, of course, the defendant is famous.
Prosecuting trivial lies by the likes of Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and Marion Jones in federal court is highly unusual. This is especially true when serious lies have been told to Congress with no perjury charges:
Jim Lorimer, bodybuilding promoter and co-founder of the Arnold Sports Festival and the Arnold Classic, warned professional male bodybuilders competing in the bodybuilding competition in a private athlete’s meeting last Thursday night about reporters asking questions about “enhancement.” This was interpreted by those in attendance as a reference to anabolic steroids and other performance enhancement drugs although Lorimer never mentioned steroids directly. Lorimer offered guidance for bodybuilders who were approached by reporters:
Don’t focus on anything but the fantastic effort these athletes make which is… beyond athletes in every other sport as far as physical commitment and discipline and hard work and that’s the story I think we got to… Again, we got to make sure we tell that good part of the story; we got to tell the best of our story, ok?
Dr. Gary Gaffney from Steroid Nation posted an article on Huffington Post about the performance enhancing effects of human growth hormone. Gaffney responds to so-called experts who assert with certainty that growth hormone does not help performance in sports. As Lou Schuler stated in a recent post, the true effects of growth hormone on performance are not always empirically “knowable and measurable.”
Gaffney takes note of the lack of empirical research examining the performance enhancing effects of drugs that has historically resulted in mainstream medical organizations failing to recognize performance enhancing drugs. Given this along with results seen in “experiments of nature,” Gaffney feels it is reasonable to conclude that GH has performance enhancing effects:
An article on the Psychology Today blog by Steven Kotler asked the question, “what makes a drug performance-enhancing?” It cites the WADA rules for banning performance enhancing drugs.
According to the World Anti-Doping Code, three substance categories govern the chemistry of cheating—1) It has the potential to enhance or enhances sport performance 2) It represents a potential or actual health risk 3) It is contrary to the spirit of sport—with a score of two-out-of-three being enough to earn a drug a place on the dreaded Prohibited List.
I asked Dr. Jay Hoffman, Professor and Chair of the Department of Health and Exercise Science at the College of New Jersey, about the theory that sports supplements are a gateway to anabolic steroid use. He replied in an email:
I do not believe that this is the case. There really isn’t any documented evidence to support such a claim. Although all anabolic steroid users I would venture to guess use sport supplements - I do not necessarily support the hypothesis that increasing supplement use would increase anabolic steroid use.
Many people believe that dietary supplements, specifically sports nutrition supplements, are a “gateway” to anabolic steroid use. It is the steroid war’s version of the “gateway drug theory.” While I agree that teenagers should not be permitted to purchase or use stimulants and steroids sold as dietary supplements, I do not subscribe to the “supplements as a gateway to steroids” theory.
 Chris Connolly, the head football coach and athletic director of Dolgeville High School in Dolgeville, New York, has taken the gateway theory, as it applies to suppplements, to the extreme.
I know it is not popular to express skepticism at claims that anabolic steroids lead to suicide or suicidal behavior. But the media has once again embraced a story of a teenager who blames steroids as the cause of his/her psychological state without question.
A former cheerleader and gymnast admits to injecting Winstrol ever other day for a five week period when she was in high school. She claims the steroid caused her to experience “roid rage” and experience suicidal thoughts and behavior.
Many people seem to assume that growth hormone and testosterone are both anabolic steroids. The media has shown very little interest in distinguishing the two throughout the entire war of steroids or the steroids in baseball fiasco. (Never mind the fact that there are dozens of different steroids with differing effects and side effects within the class of anabolic steroids.) When Sylvester Stallone tried to explain that growth hormone was a completely different class of drugs than anabolic steroids, he was met with widespread disbelief if not ridicule. Never mind the fact that he was correct.
So, I have to give credit to the few journalists who “try” to explain the difference between growth hormone and anabolic steroids like testosterone e.g. The Growth Hormone Myth:
We’ve learned a few things from the Congressional hearings on Roger Clemens and anabolic steroids. Roger Clemens is not very smart. And his attorney Rusty Hardin is an idiot. From the very beginning, I thought that Hardin should be fired.
Hardin allows Clemens to wait several days before responding to allegations of steroid and growth hormone use in the Mitchell Report. Hardin prepped Clemens for his terrible performance on 60 Minutes where he: (1) admitted the hypocritical use of various other performance-enhancing drugs that enabled him to continue playing while masking pain of his injuries; (2) offered idiotic explanations as proof that he never used steroids; and (3) admitted to allowing a non-medical professional inject him with B-12 and lidocaine. Hardin compared Clemens’ drug use to a high performance racehorse (apparently oblivious to the problem of steroids in horse racing). Hardin apparently preps Clemens to secretly record a phone conversation with Brian McNamee and hold a press conference to share it with the media even though it proved nothing. Hardin stands by as Clemens releases statistical report that supposedly proves he didn’t use steroids but fails to accomplish its goal. And lastly, Representative Henry Waxman apologizes for holding the disastrous Roger Clemens steroid hearings, explaining that the only reason he did it was because Clemens’ attorneys insisted upon it. Read the rest of this entry »
