Two of my favorite steroid writers are John Hoberman, PhD and Charles Yesalis, PhD. I read their books. I read their articles. I have “Google Alerts” set to notify me when they are quoted by the media. I have even invited them to write for my website (and I’ve been fortunate to have Dr. Hoberman write a few feature articles for me).
Several of my friends and colleagues wonder why I enjoy works from these “anti-steroid guys.” While I may have a different perspective regarding the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports, Dr. Yesalis and Dr. Hoberman represent the few prominent “steroid experts” that generally stay above the histrionics and scaremongering. Dr. Yesalis recently discussed the topic of steroids in an interview published on Testosterone Nation website:
[S]teroids pose primarily an ethical, rather than a public health problem. The
biggest issue is that using steroids is against the law, and against the rules
of sport. These rules are what define sports, and using drugs to gain an advantage
is tantamount to cheating.
On dangers of steroids:
As I mentioned in my book, the health risks
have been greatly overstated. Hypertension, for example, is widely claimed to
be a side effect of taking androgens. This is one of the most exaggerated claims.
And as for users becoming sterile, there has never been a single reliably documented
case of irreversible infertility as a result of androgen administration.
Think about it: medical science has been using
steroids safely in a clinical setting for the last 70 years. Anabolic steroids
can be used relatively safely, but at even low doses they can have side effects.
No drug, supplement, or substance is totally “safe.” Heck, you can even overdose
on water.
My personal opinion is that if one uses these
drugs at high dosages, over a long period of time, then yes, they’re too powerful
to fool Mother Nature. And it’s the oral (hepatoxic) steroids that can potentially
be the most harmful. But should they be placed in the category of “killer drugs”?
Absolutely not. Not even close.
On steroid “roid rage”:
But let me put this whole “rage” thing into
perspective for you, Chris. You’ve been to Penn State home games. If you told
me you’ve never seen outbursts of “rage” at a football game, then I would have
to call “bullshit.” They happen all the time. And that’s not steroids, that’s
alcohol. It’s not even in the same ballpark.
But what about the children?!
One of
the biggest issues with young people in sports concerns their often fanatical
coaches and parents. If a kid is constantly being told that he has to do “whatever
it takes” to win that game, or to win that scholarship, or to get that start
on the team, well, guess what? That kid is going to do
whatever it takes.
From a moral and ethical standpoint, how you
raise a child will determine that child’s behavior. If you instill certain standards
in them, then they won’t cross certain lines. If parents want to make sure that
their kids are not crossing lines, they need to be paying attention to who coaches
their children, and what’s being told to them, and then they need to step back
and re-examine their own relationship with their kids as well.
Whether you identify yourself as “anti-steroid”
or “pro-steroid”, there is a lot to be learned from Dr. Yesalis in his
books, recent
interviews and older
interviews
on the internet.
HBO Films is planning to make a movie about Barry Bonds and all the characters involved in the BALCO steroid scandal. They recently purchased the rights to the book “Game of Shadows” written by the investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Hollywood is already promoting this as a “Barry Bonds” movie. I think everyone will be overloaded with stories about Bonds, if not already, by the time the movie is released on HBO. How many people will really want to see a movie about Barry Bonds?
Game of Shadows is well-written and interesting book that is about much more than Barry Bonds. I hope that director Ron Shelton is able to breathe life into movie adaption with an engaging depiction of the BALCO steroid scandal. I am hopeful as he has had some notable success with sports films:
Shelton’s sports-film directing credits include “Bull Durham,” the Ty Cobb feature “Cobb,” “Tin Cup” and “White Men Can’t Jump.”
Most are curious who will play the role of “Barry Bonds.” But I want to see who will star as “Patrick Arnold” and “Victor Conte.” It will be a lot of fun to see actors portraying people that I have known during my time in the “bodybuilding industry!” Of course, these guys were not really major steroid distributors; they just happened to be associated with some prominent athletes thereby making it a huge scandal. Their short-term prison stints more than likely served to guarantee their future success in the bodybuilding/supplement industry.
I feel the steroid hysteria of the past several years has done more harm than good by transforming a woefully ignorant public into a largely misinformed public when it comes to the topic of anabolic steroids. But at least, all the attention given to steroids in the media has made it possible for A-list writers and producers to document the history of steroids in society and sport (e.g. Game of Shadows and Steroid Nation).
David Jacobs, training partner of IFBB Pro bodybuilder Branch Warren, admitted to selling 40,000 vials of anabolic steroids and several thousand units of growth hormone as part of a sealed plea agreement earlier this month. The Plano-based national level bodybuilding competitor and personal trainer pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to distribute anabolic steroids. He was indicted in May 2007 as part of Operation Raw Deal.
Jacobs gained national attention in recent weeks after revealing to CBS 11 (Dallas-Fort Worth television station KTVT) that, as a condition of his plea agreement, he would cooperate fully with federal prosecutors by releasing the names of professional athletes to which he supplied anabolic steroids and growth hormone. In exchange, other charges would be dropped and he would receive three years probation instead of maximum of five years in federal prison.
Statements by Jacobs on his website implied that he worked with several NFL and IFBB athletes:
These athletes range from Dallas Cowboys and Atlanta Falcons football players to those we have seen in the top 10 at the Mr. Olympia Bodybuilding Competitions.
Local CBS TV affiliate KTVT wasted no time identifying NFL football player and former Dallas Cowboy Matt Lehr as one of the athletes linked to Jacobs. As proof of their relationship, they showed Matt Lehr photographed with David Jacobs.
While mainstream media may only be interested in NFL players to which Jacobs sold anabolic steroids and ignoring Jacobs’ ties to bodybuilding, those of us who follow professional bodybuilding know David Jacobs was a regular training partner of Branch Warren along with Jay Moore; he replaced Johnnie Jackson as part of Branch’s hardcore training triumvirate last year. There is no shortage of photographic and videographic evidence documenting the relationship between Branch and David including but not limited to scenes in Branch Warren’s DVD and the featured training articles in Flex Magazine.
David Jacobs forfeited over $25,000 cash, his 2005 Hummer H2, 2005 Ford Mustang, and his new Harley-Davidsons. But he still has his freedom as a result of the plea agreement (as long as he cooperates with the feds).
Operation Raw Deal had far-reaching effects in bodybuilding community; Branch Warren is clearly not the only one who has seen friends and training partners arrested or investigated as a result of this federal investigation. In fact, there are probably only a few degrees of separation between most competitive bodybuilders and those who have were busted in the aftermath of the steroid crackdown. However, the David Jacobs plea agreement highlights the vulnerability of the sport of competitive bodybuilding. It is probably only a matter of time before some aggressive prosecutor realizes that they could decimate the ranks of pro bodybuilding and cripple the sport at a fraction of the time and cost necessary to bring down a single professional baseball or football player who uses anabolic steroids.
The medical journal Circulation published a new study this week entitled “Endogenous Testosterone and Mortality Due to All Causes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer in Men.” The role of testosterone in health has long been a controversial topic and the recent steroid hysteria has only fueled the love-hate relationship with steroids in our society.
Reuters reports that “high testosterone linked to men’s lower death risk.” I hope steroid-using bodybuilders do not conclude that higher testosterone levels, even supraphysiologic levels from exogenous testosterone adminstration, are always better than low testosterone levels.
I think that WebMD more accurately describes the culprit associated with the increased mortality in their headline - “Low Testosterone, Early Death?” Higher endogenous testosterone levels were related to lower mortality rates from all causes, particularly cardiovascular disease. Low testosterone levels may be as good a predictive marker for predicting cardiovascular disease risk as lipid profiles i.e. cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
Lead researcher University of Cambridge gerontologist Kay-Tee Shaw writes in the paper:
Men in the top quartile for endogenous testosterone concentrations had 40% lower risk of death due to any cause than men in the bottom quartile, and this relationship appeared independent of age, body mass index, smoking and other lifestyle factors, cardiovascular risk factors, and other hormone levels.
If low testosterone increases mortality risk in men, then it seems logical that testosterone supplement would be in order to optimize testosterone levels in the highest quartile of physiological normal range. Of course, it is never that simple.
No one in mainstream medicine wants to advocate testosterone therapy because there are no studies showing that it is safe. And no one wants to do any studies on testosterone therapy because they are afraid that exogenous testosterone will increase the risk of prostate cancer.
Robert Davis, MD, professor of urology at the University of Rochester, laments the widespread myth regarding the alleged association between testosterone and prostate cancer:
One of the myths is that androgen supplementation will cause a cancer. We know that prostate cancer often regresses when androgen is removed, but there is very little evidence that supplementing to normal levels increases risk of cancer, and some evidence it may lower it.
The situation as described by Dr. Shaw to WedMD:
There has been a worry that testosterone supplementation may increase the risk of prostate cancer, but we did not see any more cases of prostate cancer in men with higher testosterone levels compared with those with lower levels. This is reassuring and should open the way for studies of testosterone supplementation in men with low levels to take place.
Furthermore, Dr. Khaw acknowledges the problems that have faced estrogen replacement therapy in recent years:
The observational studies of estrogen replacement in women were encouraging, but randomized controlled trials actually showed harm. That has put people off the idea of hormone therapy in men as well. But the observational studies in women were mainly with estrogen supplements and suffered from many biases, as women who took estrogen supplements were different in many other ways from women who didn’t. In contrast, our study in men looked at endogenous testosterone levels, which should have fewer biases.
My first introduction to Dan Duchaine was through the photocopied pages of Underground Steroid Handbook that circulated among bodybuilding circles at the University of Texas. I was impressed by the matter of fact, straightforward discussion of anabolic steroid information for muscle-building and performance-enhancing purposes. There was a lot of accurate information contained within those pages, much moreso than contemporary journal articles and information provided by physicians. And for this, we generally overlooked the errors and mistakes made by Duchaine.
As one of the first writers to disseminate uncensored information on the use of anabolic steroids, we looked forward to everything Dan wrote from articles in Muscle Media 2000 to Dirty Dieting Newsletter to misc.fitness.weights usenet newsgroups.
So, in the mid-1990s when I planned to launch my own steroid-related website at Mesomorphosis.com, Duchaine was one of the first people I wanted to consult. I soon had my wish. My wife and I were invited by the beautiful fitness diva and sex columnist Laura Moore to spent a few days with her and Dan in Jackson, Mississippi.
My continuing education in anabolic pharmacology with Dan included watching pornography (with careful attention to enlarged clitorises that were a side effect of the steroids used by female bodybuilders featured in the films).
The pervert in Dan was immediately obvious to anyone who met him in person. Over the ensuing years, Dan revealed to me more of his cynicism and hopelessness regarding his personal relationships with women. But the full story is even more tragic than I could have imagined. I liked Dan Duchaine - he was always nice to me and my wife.
One thing is for certain, investigative reporter Shaun Assael asks the right questions of the right people. This is obvious as the story of the steroid guru Dan Duchaine unfolds in the pages of Steroid Nation - Assael’s book on the recent history of the anabolic steroid subculture.
While it was nice to see that Assael recognizes Duchaine as one of the “founding fathers of the steroid movement,” it was difficult for me to read the story of Dan Duchaine portrayed in Steroid Nation. Shaun Assael recently published it as a book excerpt on the ESPN the Magazine website. But like I said, Assael interviewed the right people - Dan’s friends, Will Brink, John Romano, Bruce Kneller, Patrick Arnold, Stan Antosh, Shelley Hominuk and Nancee Shwartz.
While Shelley Harvey was in England, recovering from the brain damage caused by the motorcycle accident, the woman Dan Duchaine had selected to replace her, a woman whom he had promised prize-winning legs, was about to have one of them sawed off.
