The Canadian Football League (CFL) is the only professional sporting league in North America that has not yet implemented steroid testing for its football players. Former WADA chief Dick Pound had previously called the CFL a “summer camp” for NFL players suspended for violations of the NFL policy on anabolic steroids and related substances (”WADA chief Pounds on CFL,” October 19, 2006).
“We’ve got the CFL,” Pound said. “It’s like a bad scene from the NHL. They say, ‘We don’t test in the Canadian Football League because we don’t need to test — there’s no drug use.’ Helloooo. We’re like a refuge for all the Americans… a summer camp for NFL players who have been suspended for drug use.”
Two professional soccer players tested positive for the banned performance enhancing substances androstatriendione (ATD) and metabolites of the anabolic steroid boldenone according to the MLS. Red Bulls Jon Conway and Jeff Parke were suspended and fined ten percent of their respective salaries for violating the MLS substance abuse and behavioral health policy (SABH).
According to Red Bulls manager director Erik Stover, both players said “that they ingested an over-the-counter supplement that unknowingly contained a banned substance.”
The statement seems to imply that there was no indication that the banned substance androstatriendione (ATD) was listed on the label of the OTC supplement product. Most likely androstatriendione was listed with a synonymous chemical name e.g. 3,17-dioxo-etiochol-1,4,6-triene or 3 17-keto-etiochol-triene; furthermore ATD and the veterinarian steroid boldenone share at least one metabolite potentially resulting in a false positive for boldenone. Ignorance or naivete regarding supplement ingredients by drug-tested athletes rarely succeeds in exonerating them from anti-doping policy violations.
UPDATE: The product used by Parke was purportedly ALRI Jungle Warfare.
Products containing androstatriendione (ATD) are very popular in the sports nutrition marketplace. One of the most popular products in this category is Gaspari Nutrition’s Novedex XT. Novedex XT is, by all accounts, completely legal and DSHEA-compliant with all ingredients fully disclosed on the label. But if the anti-doping policy in an athlete’s sport has banned androstatriendione (ATD), then athletes would be wise to avoid all OTC supplements containing any and all modified or derivative versions of 1,4,6-androstatriene-3,17-dione (ATD).
Four of the eight NFL football players whose names were “leaked” as having violated the league’s policy on anabolic steroids and related substances were caught using the diuretic Bumex (bumetanide). New Orleans Saints running back Deuce McAllister and defensive ends Will Smith and Charles Grant tested positive for bumetanide as did Houston Texans deep snapper Bryan Pittman.
Reports of a “rash of positive steroid tests” in the NFL by news websites here and here and here and here are highly misleading and false since none of the players are alleged to have tested positive for steroids by the NFL. Nonetheless, MSNBC stated that one player tested positive for anabolic steroids with the headline ”Report: Saints’ McAllister positive for steroids“, but deep in the article reported the truth that it was bumetanide. There are even plausible indications these may have involved inadvertent doping from weight loss supplements tainted with bumetanide.
Researcher Jason Thomas, a graduate student in the doctoral program for synthetic organic chemistry at City University in New York, takes us inside the mind of a designer steroid chemist in an interview with Culturekiosque. Thomas describes a powerful tool that has the potential to create an infinite number of undetectable, designer anabolic steroids.
Once steroid designers specify the essential features and desired biological activity for steroid drug design, hundreds of novel designer steroids could be synthesized or simulated through Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry (DCC) ["Designer Steroids: Speeding Evolution (and Filling Stadium Seats)" August 8].
Until now, human attempts to change testosterone’s anabolic, androgenic or estrogen-related properties have been relatively slow due to the fact that they have been addressed one at a time. A steroid designer imagines a certain compound, synthesizes it, and then tests it for effectiveness. This can take a matter of weeks or years. However, this process is about to undergo a drastic change. Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry is a complicated process, so instead of explaining how it works I will simply provide the bottom line. Once steroid chemists have invested the necessary time into the chemical strategy for DCC, hundreds of novel steroid compounds can be synthesized and tested within a matter of minutes. The entire process is orchestrated by computers. The pharmaceutical sector has recently employed this process, and steroid manufactures will soon follow suit, if they haven’t already.
Stuart P. Cram, strategic marketing vice president at Thermo Fisher, reports that their company has numerous service engineers available 24 hours a day during the Beijing Olympics to maintain uninterrupted and efficient operation of the Thermo Fisher testing equipment. Chinese Anti-Doping Agency purchased several products from their company including:
(2) Thermo Fisher DFS Sector Field gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) systems;
(1) Thermo Fisher Delta V isotope ratio mass spectrometer – used to distinguish between “natural and synthetic steroids”;
Agilent Technologies supplies the China Anti-Doping Agency with the majority of their steroid testing and drug detection equipment. Stephen B. Crisp, international business development manager at Agilent, states that Agilent also has technicians available 24/7 to maintain the operational status of Agilent equipment that includes 18 liquid/mass stations and 19 gas/mass stations.
Spanish doctor Marcos Maynar Mariño sent an email offering comprehensive urinalysis and steroid profiling at 50 euros per athlete to as many as ten professional cycling teams including Gerolsteiner, Milram, CSC and Columbia . Maynar offered to provide a complete analysis consistent with the same control methods used by the International Cycling Union (UCI). The services would be conducted by the Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences at the Universidad de Extremadura in Cáceres, Spain (”Dos médicos españoles, acusados de dopar,” July 20).
According to the German television station ARD, Spanish doctor Marcos Maynar offered these services as for internal testing allowing athletes to monitor their doping to ensure that their use of performance enhancing drugs would not be detected by doping controls at the 2008 Tour de France and other pro cycling events. Maynar responded to the allegations that he aided and abetted doping by suggesting that ARD had ulterior motives stemming from bitterness over disgraced cyclist Jan Ullrich (”Marcos Maynar niega que quiera favorecer el dopaje,” July 21).
“Since Jan Ullrich’s tested positive, the Germans have wanted to shit on the Spaniards.”
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 [...]
Desoxymethyltestosterone (aka DMT and 17a-methyl-5a-androst-2-en-17b-ol)
19-nor-4,9(10)-androstadienedione (aka 19-norandrosta-4,9(10)-diene-3,17-dione and esta-4,9(10)-diene-3,17-dione)
Apparently, this is a shocking surprise to supplement industry lobbyist Loren Israelsen. Israelsen recently forwarded the following remarks (written by Rob Eder) to members of the United Natural Products Alliance. Read the rest of this entry
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.
Her teammates on the 1,600 squad were Jearl-Miles Clark, Monique Hennagan, LaTasha Colander-Richardson and Andrea Anderson. The 400-relay squad also had Chryste Gaines, Torri Edwards, Nanceen Perry and Passion Richardson.
Seven of the eight teammates have set up a legal defense fund called the “Innocent Olympic Athletes Defense Fund” to raise $200,000 in anticipated legal cost for the appeal for their defense attorney Mark Levinstein of Williams and Connolly Firm in Washington DC.
The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) refused to pay for the athletes’ defense if they chose Mark Levinstein because Levinstein wasn’t nice to them Read the rest of this entry
