performance enhancing drugs approved by ethicist?

disagrees with ethicist

 

Leading ethicists are questioning the value of banning some of the sports drugs listed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada). It’s a view rejected emphatically by former Olympic champion Linford Christie, who tested positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone in 1999; 100m sprinter Christie, rebutted comments from Julian Savulescu.

 According to professor of applied ethics at the University of Oxford, UK. ‘I think there are good reasons to allow safe performance enhancers such as caffeine or creatine,’ Altitude training and hypoxic air tents (used by Wayne Rooney) are legitimate ways to increase athletes’ red blood cell counts, according to Wada. The agency bans blood-enhancing drugs such as the red blood cell regulating hormone erythropoietin, EPO (Chemistry World, October 2004). Wada’s code is ‘incoherent and unjustified,’ Savulescu said, because EPO, in safe doses, has the same effect on the blood as the legitimate methods.   

Christie said Savulescu’s comments were risky. Humans should accept that some are born faster and fitter than others, he said. Christie said aspiring athletes should be subject to graphic images of the effects of steroids, including shrunken testicles and penises (Christie publicly criticised media attention paid to his tight fitting running attire, leading to his nickname of the ‘Lunchbox’).    

Phil Willis, chair of the committee predicts that gene receptor technology will become the next hot topic in performance enhancing technology. Athletes will attempt to use gene enhancement in the next four or five years, he told Chemistry World. Changes to genes will be harder to detect than drugs, and the detection labs are shifting their emphasis from chemistry to biology, explained Steve Maynard from HFL, one of the UK’s Wada accredited testing labs (Chemistry World, August 2004, p7). ‘We cannot adapt current methods to detect gene doping,’ said Maynard.     

What does this mean for the future of professional sport? Will performance enhancing drugs be detected in future sport competitions?

McNamee’s Lawyers Seek dismissal of Hardin in Defamation lawsuit

 

 

Attorneys for Roger Clemens’s former personal trainer Brian McNamee filed a motion Tuesday to disqualify Clemens’s lead lawyer from representing him in a defamation lawsuit. The motion was filed along with a second motion, asking the lawsuit brought by Clemens against Mc Namee to be thrown out.  

The motion to disqualify Clemens’s lead lawyer, Rusty Hardin, was due to a conflict of interest because Hardin had represented Andy Pettitte and Clemens.If the lawsuit proceeds, the court papers contend, Pettitte will be called as one of McNamee’s main witnesses and would be subject to cross-examination by Hardin.

“Other than the parties themselves, Mr. Pettitte will be the chief witness in this case,” said the motion, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston.  

The motion to have the lawsuit dismissed said that McNamee’s statements to federal authorities regarding Clemens’s use of banned substances were privileged because they were made as part of a federal investigation. The motion also argued McNamee’s statements to investigators for the Mitchell report were also protected because they came in connection with his cooperation with federal investigators.

“Brian McNamee’s statements to the Mitchell commission and others concerning steroid and H.G.H. use by Roger Clemens are absolutely false and the very definition of defamatory,” Hardin said in an e-mail message. “We look forward to trying this matter before a jury rather than in the court of public opinion.”

McNamee’s lawyers said that Hardin cannot be in the position of attacking Pettitte on behalf of Clemens, because he once represented him.

“To successfully prosecute Mr. Clemens’s claim, and consistent with his duty of loyalty to Mr. Clemens, Mr. Hardin would be obligated to disclose confidential information about Mr. Pettitte to undermine Mr. Pettitte’s credibility,” the brief said. Hardin said he intended “to continue representing Roger in this case, and will file an appropriate response to this motion with the court.”In a signed deposition as part of a Congressional investigation, Pettitte said Clemens had told him about his use of human growth hormone.

“His testimony that Mr. Clemens admitted using H.G.H. provides direct proof of the truth of Mr. McNamee’s allegedly defamatory statements, an absolute defense to Mr. Clemens’s claim,” the motion said.

Since the Mitchell report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball was released in December, Clemens has denied McNamee’s statements that he injected him with steroids and H.G.H. Pettitte, however, has confirmed McNamee’s account that he injected him with H.G.H. on at least two occasions.

On Jan. 6, the day he appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes” to issue his denials, Clemens filed a defamation lawsuit against McNamee in the Harris County District Court in Texas. The suit, which was later moved to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston, said that federal prosecutors coerced and bullied McNamee into lying about injecting Clemens.

“Consistent with the timing and purpose of the complaint, it reads more like a press release than a pleading, focusing primarily on the accomplishments of the plaintiff and the alleged coercion of Mr. McNamee by federal authorities,” the motion said.

The lawsuit quoted McNamee from a secretly recorded interview he gave to private investigators for Hardin shortly before the Mitchell report was released.

In the interview, McNamee maintained his account about Clemens’s use of performance-enhancing drugs but said that he did not implicate Clemens until the second day of questioning with federal prosecutors.

The lawsuit said it was on that second day that the I.R.S. special agent Jeff Novitzky went on a tirade and threw a piece of paper at McNamee. It also said that on the second day, the assistant United States attorney Matthew Parrella said that McNamee had one last chance to avoid jail.

It was after that exchange, the suit said, that McNamee stated he had injected Clemens with steroids in 1998, 2000 and 2001.

‘The little Hercules’

By the age of nine he was working on a movie version of Little Tarzan with director Joey Travolta. This remarkable Ukrainian boy has had his 10 minutes of fame, but at the expense of missing out, totally, on anything resembling a normal childhood. This fame was not without controversy, as many outspoken parents considered this treatment as nothing short of child-abuse. What I really want to know is where he is now? What is he doing? All I could find were a few recent pictures of Richard but nothing about what he was actually doing- if anyone knows please post something up about it….  

Baseball must answer for steroids

Usually in professional sport, the influence of steroids is associated significantly with basketball’s steroid era- whilst baseball is usually cast over with a blind eye. Yet, whilst baseball began to revel in the success of its revitalization, it failed to identify the fact that players were becoming significantly bigger and stronger, as home runs soared and turnstiles whirred.  So who are we talking about when we refer to baseball? Are we talking about owners? General managers?  Team doctors? It’s time to put a face on baseball, just as the public has put a face on its players.  

 Around March 2005, the Padres’ general manager, Kevin Towers, became the first baseball executive to be publicly acknowledge that he suspected steroid use in baseball. Towers admitted to ESPN.com that he had suspicions the former third baseman Ken Caminiti had used steroids. Caminiti played for the Padres from 1995 to 1998 and was the National League’s most valuable player in 1996. He died from an accidental drug overdose in 2004. In an statement of remorse for not speaking up, Towers told ESPN.com: “I feel somewhat guilty, because I felt like I knew. I still don’t know for sure, but Cammy came out and said that he used steroids, and I suspected. Selfishly, the guy was putting up numbers, and I didn’t do anything about it. That’s just the truth.”

Towers said box-office success persuaded executives to turn a blind eye. Towers added: “The truth is, we’re in a competitive business and these guys were putting up big numbers and helping your ball club win games.”  

You tended to turn your head on things. And it really wakes you up when someone you admire as a person is no longer around. I hate to be the one voice for the other 29 G.M.’s, but I’d have to imagine that all of them, at one point or other, had reason to think that a player on their ball club was probably using, based on body changes and things that happened over the winter. I think we all knew it, but we didn’t say anything about it.”The reminder of Towers’s admission should be enough to prompt Congress to hold yet another round of hearings, this time involving team owners, the commissioner, general managers, team doctors and trainers.  

Commissioner Bud Selig took a important step last Friday when he spoke with the Giants’ principal owner, Peter Magowan, (and their general manager, Brian Sabean) about the team’s prominent mention in the Mitchell report. There is speculation that the line of questioning dealt with whether members of the organization suspected that members of the Giants team were using performance-enhancing drugs. If it turns out that the organization knew and looked the other way, as the Mitchell report suggests, the organization, and Magowan, should be punished. And while Selig looks at the Giants, he should look at the 2000 and 2001 Yankees as well. The team was filled with players, thought to have used performance-enhancing drugs before, during or after that season: Clemens, Jason Grimsley, Denny Neagle, Andy Pettitte, David Justice, Mike Stanton and Chuck Knoblauch to name a few. How much did Joe Torre know? On Sunday, Selig refused to comment on his actions toward individual players and teams. But in response to the idea of having Congress hold more hearings, he said baseball had done enough self-examination. “I think we have examined ourselves more than anyone else has ever done,” he said by telephone from Arizona. “Do I think there’s reason to do more of it? I do not. I think that for a lot of reasons it would not only be unfair, but I think counterproductive.”He added: “We have now looked at our history. We’re aggressive in the present; we’re really aggressive in the future.  

How much did the Steinbrenners know? How much did Brian Cashman

Last month, Hank Steinbrenner, speaking to reporters at spring training, made an eye-opening statement about baseball’s steroid scandal. He said: “To whatever extent there was a steroid or H.G.H. problem, it was equal among all the teams. I think Mitchell made that pretty clear. We were just better than everybody else. That’s the bottom line.” Is it really? Or is the bottom line finding out how much you knew about widespread drug use on your team and what you did about it? “You can’t tell me the other teams, including the Red Sox and everybody else, didn’t have the same number of players doing it,” Steinbrenner added. “Of course they did, to whatever extent that was. We were just better.”   In his book “Juiced,” José Canseco wrote that President George W. Bush, a part owner of the Texas Rangers during the steroids era, and Rangers General Manager Tom Grieve saw all these “guys getting bigger before their eyes” but never made it an issue.  This scandal is deep and wide, and we won’t have closure until we know the complete truth: Who knew what, when?

Canseco threw a number of players under the bus, but he steered clear of the owners. He wrote, “I’m not going to name any actual owners; I don’t want anyone picking up a phone and sending a hit man after me.” Baseball owners won’t send assassins after Congress, and Congress should be the owners’ next stop. 

If we really want to get to the bottom of the steroids era, the Congressional inquiries should continue into the front office and the ownership stage. Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and all the others being publicly flogged paid the price in a scandal that helped create revenue and excitement when Major League Baseball needed it most. The public has been entertained by baseball players whiffing at curveballs, screwballs and fastballs before Congress. Now let’s let the men and women who run these teams take a few swings. I want to know who knew what and when. 

Marion Jones-former track and field champion

 

 

Marion Jones before and after anabolic steroids

Athletes who have admit to using performance enhancing drugs

Marion Jones (also known as Marion Jones Thompson) is a former American track and field athlete of Belizean- during her long career- she received five medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia- however, she was later stripped of every medal from 2000 after admitting that she took performance enhancing drugs.

It was in October 2007 that Jones admitted to taking steroids before the Sydney Olympics. She also accredited that she had, in fact, previously lied and denied steroid use in a number of statements to the press as well as various sport agencies- the most significant however, were the 2 grand juries, one of which was selected to investigate the BALCO “designer steroid” ring. Once Jones Admitted to using steroids, hse accepted a two- year suspension from track and field competitions, and later announced her retirement on the 5^th October 2007. The United States Anti-Doping Agency stated that the sanction “also requires disqualification of all her competitive results obtained after September 1^st 2000, and forfeiture of all medals, results and points.” On October 5^th 2007, Jones formally pled guilty to lying to federal agents in the BALCO steroid investigation in the U.S. District Court. 

Jones admitted to having taken steroids before Sydney 2000 summer Olympics and acknowledged that she had, in fact, lied when she previously denied steroid use in statements to the press, to various sport agencies, and- most at the time of her admission, Jones was one of the most famous people to be linked to the BALCO investigation. Just 41 days later, Major League Baseball player Barry Bonds was indicted on one count of justice and four counts of perjury linked to his own testimony before the BALCO Grand Jury in 1993. 

The IOC and IAAF stripped Jones of all medals, points and results received after September 1 2000 after Jones admitted to using steroids prior to the 2000 Summer Olympics. Jones is also not allowed to attend the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Here are some of Marion’s achievements throughout her career:

Year	Meeting	Venue	Place and event	Result
1992	IAAF World junior Championships	Seoul, South Korea	5th 100m7th 200m
1997	IAAF Championships	Athens, Greece	1st 100m10th Long Jump	100m (10.38)
1998	IAAF World cup	Johannesburg, South Africa	1st 100m1st 200m 2nd Long Jump	100m (10.65)200m (21.62) LG (7.00)
1999	IAAF World Championships	Seville, Spain	1st 100m3rd Long Jump	100m (10.70)LG (6.83)
2000	2000 Summer Olympics	Sydney, Australia	Dq 100mDq 200m Dq Long Jump	100m (10.75)200m (21.84) LG (6.29)
2001	IAAF World Championships	Edmonton, Canada	Dq 100mDq 200m	100m (10.85)200m (22.39)
2002	IAAF World cup	Madrid, Spain	Dq 100m	100m (10.90)

Anabolic steroids- how do they work?

 This segment shows the effects of anabolic steroids on the human body

This is a clip taken from Greg Valentinos documentary- ‘The Man whos Arms Exploded’- in this segement we see how Greg tries to drain an infection inside his bicep without any professional help- Greg also explains how his personal life was affected by his addiction to steroids.

from zero to hero

Performances enhancing drugs (or ‘nutritional supplements’) have unfortunately become an outstanding feature in high level sports. These supplements may be a quick fix to add muscle, bulk and speed but many doctors and physicians say there’s no telling what the long-term effects of pills and powders will be on the body.
Aside from the fact that these athletes are seriously jeopardizing their health in the name of sport- according to reports from The National Institute of Drug Abuse- alarming reports show that in 2007 27.7 percent of adolescents in US high Schools admit to using steroids in attempt to enhance their athletic performance.

With the preparations for the 2012 Olympics already on the go, who knows how many more athletes will take lead from sport personalities such as Linford Christie and adopt these ‘nutritional supplements’ in their daily training regime.

when I first began this blog I thought that performance enhancing drugs would be my focus- but then after thinking about it, I thought it would be wrong to address the concerns of performance enhancing drugs without addressing all categories of drugs- with the growing glamorization of drugs I felt the need to counter- act this by showing the nitty-gritty side to drugs- and the horrible repercussions that come with them. 

Hope this website is informative and useful.