Mike Markson has an interesting proposal for confronting the problem of anabolic steroids (and performance enhancing drugs) in baseball – “let them cheat.” His steroid comments were included in suggestions to make baseball more exciting.

I started thinking, if I was to come up with a baseball variant to try and take on MLB, what would it look like? Well, it would be baseball, but, I’d market it as a faster, more exciting version. I’d make the following rules changes to try and re-enforce the brand [...]

No steroid testing. Leave that for the cops. This is baseball – let’s the conversation revolve around the action on the field, not off of it.

In a previous post, Markson expands on his feelings about steroids in sports with some insightful comments on the issue. Sports has had to deal with advances in technology in every aspect of the game including performance enhancing drugs. More often than not, sports have embraced advances in technology and incorporated them into the game. Sports have recently had a conflicted position with regarding to technological advances in pharmacological ergogens. But it’s difficult to counteract technology (progress).

The thing about technology is that it always evolves at a rate much faster than efforts designed to stop it. Don’t believe me, ask the recording industry. In the case of performance enhancing drugs, the drugs will always outpace the tests designed to detect their presence/ use. To try to combat this, testing has to become more frequent, more intrusive. Like anything the more frequent and more intrusive you make it, the more likely their will be false results. Which means there need to be procedures around appealing tests, results, etc. All of a sudden, testing requires an infrastructure, and then you’re in trouble.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s basically how the Tour de France and track and field operate. Bet you have no clue who won last year’ tour de france, but know Floyd Landis cheated. Likewise, bet you have absolutely no clue who holds what records for any track and field events, but are very familiar with the Marion Jones scandal.

The problem with false positives is very disturbing. The problem is compounded by the flimsy standards of evidence required for guilt by anti-doping agencies. I can’t imagine the degree of uproar if our own imperfect criminal justice system in the United States abandoned “beyond a reasonable doubt” and “preponderance of the evidence” and adopted the “comfortable satisfaction” standard advocated by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).

Markson continues by discussing how the ultimate outcome is the destruction of the sport.

This is what happen when you try to use policing measures to keep up with technology. The drug tests, their results, the appeals, etc. actually become the only interesting/ memorable thing about the sport. The become the brand of the sport. And, since this isn’t nearly as fun/interesting as remember the actual games or plays themselves, the fans eventually abandon.

Baseball should stick to the business of balls, strikes, beer and caps and leave police work to the pros [...]

At the end of the day, juice or no juice, talent and skill are still the ultimate arbiter of performance.

Most elite athletes strive to be the best at their sport without qualification. And most fans want to see the best without qualification. After all, who really cares who is the best cyclist riding on a bike that costs no more than $200 or the best baseball player who doesn’t lift weights? Let’s see the best.

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Country singer Mindy McCready tacitly confirmed she had an extramarital affair with Roger Clemens. Clemens, through his attorney Rusty Hardin, has acknowledged a long-term “relationship” but denies Clemens had a sexual relationship with McCready.

Does Roger Clemens’ personal and/or sexual relationships have any bearing on his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs (or vice versa)? Already, the blogosphere is suggesting that steroids may have caused Clemens’ infidelity. But as far as the legal proceedings are concerned, Yahoo Sports’ Tim Brown doesn’t think his philandering has relevance to his alleged steroid use (“We’re no closer to the truth about Clemens,” April 29)

Clemens had an affair with a country singer, according to the New York Daily News. Therefore, the thinking goes, the defamation case against his accuser and former trainer is weak. Didn’t we already have a pretty good notion of that? As for claims in the petition regarding marital purity, well, it doesn’t address that, exactly. It does claim that McNamee has sullied “Clemens’ good reputation,” and has caused him to suffer “mental anguish, shame, public humiliation and embarrassment.” Presumably, the Daily News report has piled onto that, but what does a private relationship have to do with Clemens’ public reputation, whatever it may be? I’m sure the lawyers will enlighten us.

Now the attorneys chime in…

Richard Emery, McNamee’s attorney, believes the news of an extramarital affair by Roger Clemens clearly hurts Clemens’ defamation lawsuit claiming McNamee lied about Clemens use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (“Roger Clemens had 10-year fling with country star Mindy McCready,” April 28).

“The issue in Roger’s suit against McNamee is Roger’s reputation and how it has been damaged,” said Richard Emery, one of McNamee’s lawyers who is handling the defamation suit. “If it’s proved that he’s a philanderer, his reputation is already damaged. When you sue for defamation, you put your whole reputation in the community at issue. Anything is fair game, including his claim of sanctimonious purity. We would cross-examine him and other witnesses who might impact on his alleged behavior. We would probably subpoena her and witnesses who knew [of the relationship]. He’s a ‘family man’ – he implies that. It’s about what his damages are. All is fair game.”

Richard Emery believes the lawsuit will be dismissed.

“If the case heads to trial and is not dismissed, as we feel it should be, we will be calling [McCready] as a witness,” Emery said.

“The point is whether he was damaged by the allegations that he used steroids – he claims he was hurt. But if there are other women – and there’s not just one case, but many – and he holds himself out as a family man and an American paradigm, it’s relevant.

“None of this would have been revealed but for his lawsuit and sanctimonious testimony before Congress.”

But Rusty Hardin, Clemens’ attorney, tells the press that Roger Clemens’ (alleged) infidelity is irrelevant to the veracity of Brian McNamee’s statements regarding Clemens’ steroid and growth hormone use.

“I think it’s totally irrelevant to the issue of whether Brian McNamee is telling the truth about Roger using human growth hormone and steroids,” said Hardin. “The character trait that you put in issue should be the character trait that the defamatory statement was made about.”

I guess the specter of anabolic steroid use is so bad that Clemens would rather publicly embarrass his wife Debbie Clemens with revelations of an extramarital affair and her illegal use of human growth hormone a Sports Illustrated swimsuit photo shoot than admit steroid use. At least, Roger Clemens will have officially gone on record as officially denying steroid use.

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IRS Special Agent Jeff Novitsky has been transferred to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Office of Criminal Investigations as a special agent to give him greater freedom to focus on anabolic steroid-related investigations (“No Longer With I.R.S., Novitzky Joins F.D.A.,” April 23).

In regards to Novitzky’s new job, Dwight Sparlin, a retired I.R.S. manager who led the San Francisco office when the Balco case started nearly six years ago, said he had been hearing for two weeks that Novitzky was going to the F.D.A. to continue focusing on drug cases.

“I think it would give him more exposure to just doing that type of work,” Sparlin said by telephone Tuesday. He added: “For Jeff to go as far as he did in Balco was a stretch for the I.R.S., too. I think he was allowed to go a lot further than he would otherwise because of the impact.”

Jeff Novitsky has been involved in almost every aspect of the BALCO steroid scandal and steroids in baseball investigation.

(Hat tip to Steroid Nation for the story.)

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While high school football coaches like Chris Connolly of Dolgeville High School have banned Gatorade and other dietary supplements out of fear that they may be a gateway to steroid use, Major League Baseball has actually embraced Gatorade as MLB’s “official sports drink.” Major League Baseball has now taken it a step further and banned water from the clubhouse (“Don’t drink the water!” April 23).

Gatorade is Major League Baseball’s “official sports drink.” So instructions were sent that no player could be seen drinking anything but Gatorade in the dugout. Not even Aquafina, which is the “official water” of MLB. Not even bottles of water with the labels removed.

White Sox clubhouse personnel said if players take bottled water onto the bench, all the bottled water will be removed from the clubhouse as punishment.

This policy only reinforces the appearance of a pro-steroid agenda by Major League Baseball. MLB sends the following message to baseball fans.

So remember, the biggest threat to baseball isn’t steroids or HGH or amphetamines or runaway ticket prices or four-hour games.

It’s water.

Just think of the contradictory message this sends to the youth of Coach Connolly’s high school football team!

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Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) have modified a bill that would have added human growth hormone (HGH) to the Controlled Substances List. The bill was introduced as a kneejerk reaction to revelations of widespread HGH use in professional baseball. But in the end, legislators avoided making the same mistake with HGH as they did with anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) with the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990. (“HGH bill altered to help children,” April 16)

Senators Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have dropped language in the bill that would have put HGH on the same legal plane as anabolic steroids, a move that would have severely limited access to the synthetic hormone.

For example, under the bill’s original language, HGH would not have been widely available through the mail and would not have been available in longer than six-month supplies. Because doctors specializing in childhood growth disorders often are far from patients, such controls could have caused hardship for families with children using the drug.

The atmosphere of steroid hysteria resulted in overwhelming bipartisan support for the original HGH bill practically guaranteeing passage of the legislation. When it comes to steroids and performance enhancing drugs, it appears that emotional arguments generally trump intellectual arguments. But fortunately, and surprisingly, the Sen. Schumer and Sen. Grassley rationally examined the evidence of the adverse consequences, particularly for children, of making HGH a Scheduled-III controlled substance. 

“We’ve ran into some things that we didn’t anticipate. We were enlightened by the parents whose children legitimately need HGH,” Grassley told USA TODAY on Tuesday. “Making it (a more tightly controlled substance) would have created a lot of red tape for them.”

Sadly, Sen. Schumer and Sen. Grassley are not students of history when it comes to the Controlled Substances Act; otherwise, they would already known how political misuse of the Controlled Substances Act (especially involving doping in sports) can adversely affect availability of pharmaceuticals for patients who needs these therapies for health, wellness, and survival. The addition of anabolic steroids to the Controlled Substances List with the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990 had adverse unintended consequences for untold numbers of patients who had legitimate medical indications requiring anabolic steroid treatment.

We can thank Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), who were widely criticized for doing so at the time, for placing a temporary hold on the original HGH legislation thereby allowing reason to prevail over emotion in the Senate. But most credit should go to the MAGIC Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to “providing support services to the families of children afflicted with chronic and critical disorders, syndromes, and diseases that affect their growth,” for their activism in the matter.

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Major League Baseball has acted on some of the recommendations from the Mitchell Report with the implementation of an anonymous hotline to uncover users of performance enhancing drugs in the sport (“Baseball uses anonymous hotline to nab steroid cheats,” April 10).

The hotline, recommended by Sen. George Mitchell in his report on baseball and steroids and implemented by commissioner Bud Selig in January, is one of the tools the investigative unit is using to catch drug cheats, along with information from outside investigators.

Everybody is baseball is said to have access to the anonymous hotline which hopes to break the so-called “code of silence” of steroid use in baseball.

The first casualty of the hotline is said to be Jordan Schafer, a top minor league player, according to an anonymous MLB source contacted by the New York Daily News. Schafer was suspended for growth hormone use due to evidence of a “non-analytical positive.” This was obviously not the result of a drug test nor evidence in a governmental steroid-related investigation (“Braves prospect unable to clarify HGH charge,” April 9).

Jordan Schafer, 21, already has a Nike contract and a projected center-field spot with the Braves in 2009.

However, this is a bad incident at the beginning of his career. Schafer was playing for Class AA Mississippi after a breakthrough 2007 season in Class A that lifted him to the organization’s No. 1 prospect.

There are questions, but even team officials have not been able to get complete answers. Schafer was advised not to discuss matters with anyone..

The anonymous hotline is being used to investigate suspected steroid use (and other performance enhancing drugs) in both the minor and major leagues.

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State Representative Jeff Roorda has introduced legislation to coerce professional sports in the State of Missouri to change their rules by increasing penalties for anabolic steroid use in their respective sports.

Roorda, a Democrat from Jefferson County, filed a bill today that would bar state tax credits from going to professional sports teams in a league that does not place at least a one-year ban on athletes caught using steroids.

That would mean: No state breaks for the Cardinals, as well as the Royals, the Chiefs, the Rams, the Blues, the state’s minor league baseball teams, or pro soccer outfits…

“Since when in baseball is it four strikes and you’re out?” Roorda said in a statement today.

Never mind that in baseball, it is not one strike and you’re out either. Roorda obviously intends to highlight what he believes to be a weak steroid and doping policy in Major League Baseball.

But it also highlights the government’s “investment” in professional sports via corporate welfare (e.g. sales tax revenue and tax subsidies). Major League Baseball is not the only entity to benefit from the bigger, faster, stronger steroid-fueled performances.

The sales tax will raise $425 million over 25 years for the overhaul of the stadiums. The Royals will contribute another $25 million, the Chiefs $75 million and the state of Missouri $50 million in tax credits.

The State of Missouri has a long-term investment in the success of Major League Baseball. Is there a conflict of interest when the issue of steroid use threatens the sports?

“This bill attempts to send a message to Major League Baseball and to all other professional sports leagues that if they want to continue to ignore the problem that they have with steroids, that we’re not going to continue to underwrite their activities with tax dollars,” Roorda said.  

How involved (taxpayer funds) should the government be in building stadiums for private sports teams? I’ve previously written about my distaste for government regulation of the rules in private sports leagues; I also question whether the government should provide corporate welfare to professional sports leagues especially if the government has a problem with the widespread steroid use.  Thoughts?

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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:

Consider that until 1984, testosterone — now the paragon of a PED — was not labeled a PED by the American Academy of Sports Medicine. Consider that most PED studies look at ‘weekend warriors’ and not elite world class athletes. And consider that no scientist has studied the effect of any PED on home run production in a double-blind placebo-controlled cross-over pharmacological study. Considering all these points, saying PEDs affect MLB home-runs — or any athletic task — constitutes a classic inductive leap. But a reasonable conclusion in my view.

Gaffney discusses the importance of syngergism in the use of performance enhancing drugs. Bodybuilders have long recognized and exploited the synergism amongst various combinations of anabolic steroids, growth hormone and other peptides, and other performance enhancing drugs and have coined the term “stacking” to describe it. But Gaffney is one of the few doctors I’ve seen that has appreciated the concept of synergy in the context of PEDs in baseball and other sports outside of bodybuilding.

In the complex physiological milieu that constitutes human biology, hormones like HGH do not act alone. Neurotransmitters, hormones, growth factors, and other biochemicals act in concert with a multiplicity of biological variables to produce behavior, performance, emotions, and the other functions that we call life…

Many experts contend that HGH by itself my not increase strength or athletic performance. However, athletes take the drug in combination with anabolic steroids, thyroid hormone, insulin, IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor), and other ‘stacked’ PEDs. The effects of these drugs appears to be synergistic…

Experts on metabolism and endocrinology suggest that androgenic hormones modulate the response to HGH — ie. a synergistic effect. The response to HGH becomes even more complicated because another hormone IGF-1 may actually be performing much of the cellular dirty-work for HGH.

In 1999, my friend Bryan Haycock wrote a groundbreaking article on the synergism between growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), insulin, thyroid, and anabolic-androgenic steroids.  The lengthy series offers incredible insight in the synergy of performance enhancing drugs.

In the first installment of this series we discussed the mechanism by which human growth hormone (GH) exerts its anabolic effects in the body. We also discussed the important role of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in the anabolic properties of GH. In part two we discussed the role of androgens in GH secretion and sensitivity in a hypothetical pharmacological regimen aimed at dramatically increasing skeletal muscle growth. Based on research looking at the effects of androgens on GH secretion and IGF-1 sensitivity, it was deduced that the testosterone esters should provide the most potent anabolic stimulus compared to other androgens, especially those that do not aromatize. Now, in the final installment, we shall look at the feasibility of using GH, IGF-1, Insulin, and perhaps tri-iodothyronine (T3) to enhance the anabolic properties of androgens.

Athletes, particularly bodybuilders, will always be far ahead of the scientific community when it comes to experimentation with performance enhancing drugs. Bodybuilders usually are the first to establish trends in the types of anabolic drugs used and the manner in which they are used. The body of knowledge amonst bodybuilders continues to advance through real world trial and error.

There is no prohibition on performance enhancing drugs in bodybuilding which completely eliminates the ethical considerations faced by researchers and physicians and even athletes subjected to doping controls. As a result, anyone who wants to learn about performance enhancing drugs just needs to investigate bodybuilding to learn what is on the leading edge.

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Nick Garcia claims his “theory of roidactivity” is the most reliable statistical tool for predicting steroid use in baseball. It applies a statistical formula to the “career trajectories of suspected steroid users.”

Garcia began to study the career trajectories of known steroid users such as Jose Canseco, Ken Caminiti and Jason Giambi.?His statistical analysis showed that each aforementioned player’s performance in the areas of batting average and home runs significantly and quantifiably spiked after he?began taking steroids.

The “theory of roidactivity” is detailed in Nick Garcia’s book, “A Very Big League of Their Own: Cracking Baseball’s Steroid Code.” I’ve added it to my reading list.

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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:

The media haven’t spent much time making a distinction between HGH and steroids. An AP story, titled “After BALCO, Another Steroid Scandal,” glosses over any differences between the two, drawing a straight line from the BALCO investigation to the busts in Florida. But Jerry Hairston isn’t Barry Bonds. Sure, both of these guys probably took banned substances in an effort to boost their stats, and both were involved in major drug busts involving large numbers of Major League players. But it’s just plain wrong to put growth hormone in the same category as anabolic steroids. In the sports version of the war on drugs, Bonds was shooting heroin while Hairston was smoking marijuana.

Hairston used growth hormone; Bonds used a variety of anabolic steroids. The author of the article makes the analogy that steroids are like heroin as growth hormone is like marijuana. The implication is that not only are they different classes of drugs, but that one (anabolic steroids) is significantly more dangerous than the other (growth hormone).

Unfortunately, this may not be true. At the very least, it is not a certainty according to experts. The anti-aging physician Karlis Ullis, M.D. who has prescribed both testosterone and growth hormone in the course of his practice suggests that growth hormone may be a riskier proposition than testosterone:

Don’t get me wrong – I still use both growth hormone and testosterone as part of overall anti-aging programs in my patients. This article is not meant to say one hormone is “good” and another is “bad”. It is just my opinion at the moment that the overall benefit/cost ratio for improving body composition is higher with testosterone than growth hormone. By cost, I mean both the monetary price – testosterone is far cheaper than growth hormone, and the side effect/safety profile – testosterone is safer than high-dose growth hormone use.

Since growth hormone is extremely expensive and perhaps riskier than testosterone, I screen patients very carefully and only recommend it to those who either have very low IGF-1 levels and fail growth hormone stimulation tests, or those who have failed to respond to testosterone or other therapies. The new research has also made me confident in encouraging more and more patients to go on testosterone. However, we must keep constant track of the new research to better refine both anti-aging and bodybuilding programs. The science of hormone supplementation is still in its infancy, and there is still a lot more questions that need to be answered.

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