The documentary focused on the state-sponsored East German doping program and the secret administration of anabolic steroids to female children without their knowledge or consent (or parental consent). The goal of the film was not to necessarily demonize steroids but to condemn a state-sponsored doping system that superceded individual choice to pursue victory at all costs even the victimization of children.
Clearly, there is a big difference between healthy adult men who “choose” to use anabolic steroids and little girls who are “forced” to use unknown substances by government bureaucratics without regard for their health. The documentary interviews four athletes (Ute Krause, Rica Reinisch, Katharina Bullin, and Heidi Krieger aka Andres Krieger) that were involuntarily subjected to steroid use as young girls and chronicles how it affected their lives.
Under the auspices of East Germany’s elite sports federation, headed by Manfred Ewald and monitored by the Ministry of State Security (known as Stasi), the government used doping as part of a deceptive master plan to secure international prestige through success in sports. Girls as young as 12 were recruited from across the country, and without their knowledge, were regularly administered untested steroids and male hormones as part of their training. Ultimately, Olympic gold came at a disturbing price for many of the German athletes, specificially side effects ranging from male-type hair growth and deepened voices to liver and heart disease, depression, infertility, miscarriages, and even death.
The film lists various documented side effects of anabolic steroids (such as Jenapharm’s Oral Turinabol and STS-646) based on Stasi records and long-term medical records of athletes affected. But it also makes some spurious connections to other side effects such as self-mutilation, breast cancer, and changes in sexual identity.
Many critics seek to connect the East German steroid scandal with contemporary doping scandals. Since the scandals all involve steroids, the suggestion is that steroid use in sports could possibly lead to a repeat of East German tragedies if we are not careful. According to a Plain Dealer television critic:
What emerges from this “Secrets of the Dead” installment is a cautionary tale for individuals and sports organizations wrestling with the curse of drugs.
Watching how athletes’ health, sexuality and lives were so willingly traded for Olympic medals, you can’t help but wonder what pressures are at work in the U.S. where so many athletes choose to ingest potentially career-ending and physically damaging drugs.
However, the lack of consent and forcible/abusive nature of steroid use by East Germany clearly differentiates the Stasi doping program from subsequent steroid scandals.
I was disappointed to see Gregg Valentino at the beginning of the trailer conveying the message to a mainstream public that his arms are the result of anabolic steroids when that is clearly not the case. I actually enjoyed Valentino’s appearance in the film; Valentino was very open about steroid use and his scenes were very entertaining and provided a good deal of comic relief. So while I enjoyed Valentino in the movie, not so much in the trailer!
America’s performance-enhancing appetite has never been bigger. And it’s not just in professional sports or Hollywood. From high school locker rooms to anti-aging clinics, our nation is embracing steroids and human growth hormones like never before, spurring a furious debate about the ethics of enhancement. Join Christopher Bell, who documented his brothers’ struggle to be “the best,” BALCO founder Victor Conte, Jon Romano and Mark Haskins in a provocative discussion about the pitfalls and promise of the asterisk era, and where we go from here. Moderated by Steroid Nation author Shaun Assael.
New Yorkers have really embraced the film; this was confirmed firsthand by Anthony Roberts who had the opportunity to see Bigger Faster Stronger for the second time witnessing a large crowd of bodybuilders at the screening. Several sports writers, bloggers, and movie critics have screened the film at Tribeca and have written mostly positive reviews.
If anyone had the opportunity to attend the panel discussion, please post your reactions to the event in the comments below.
Cinematical interviewed Christopher Bell, director of “Bigger Stronger Faster*” at the Tribeca Film Festival this week. Cinematical picks up on anti-intellectual theme that pervades discussion of anabolic steroids, particularly in Congress. Chris Bell discusses how politicians (in this case, Republican Senator John Sweeney) make decisions on steroid policy.
In the movie, [New York congressman] John E. Sweeney says one of the most retarded things I’ve heard. He says that Donald Hooten, whose son Taylor committed suicide and they blamed steroids, was more important than statistics or any of that stuff. As a congressman, how can you be more concerned with emotions than statistics? If you were going to go to war based on emotions, that would be insane. We’re kinda in that situation right now.
It seems that emotion-based or faith-based policy has triumphed over policy based on science and logic again and again in the past several years. As has been said before, this documentary is about much more than the steroids. The anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism seen in the steroid debate is only a microcosm of tendencies that pervade our society. Scholars have written books on the dumbing down of our culture.
The New York Times highlights the “testosterone loophole” in anti-doping tests reporting on a recent study that finally explains the phenomena that allows some athletes to get away with indiscriminate use of exogenous testosterone. This is the same study that has been discussed in the blogosphere for over a month on various doping and steroid-related websites including MESO-Rx, Steroid Report, Trust But Verify and Rant Your Head Off. But the New York Times story will provide mainstream exposure to the weakness in current doping protocols implemented by WADA using the testosterone:epitestosterone (T:E) ratio test (”Some Athletes’ Genes Help Outwit Doping Test,” April 30).
Researchers have long known that some men, Asians in particular, seemed to be able to take the drugs without getting caught, although no one had identified the cause of the phenomenon. Without gene testing, there is no way to know whether any athletes have exploited this doping loophole, but Dr. Catlin says he suspects some athletes discovered their invulnerability by accident and took advantage of it.
Men with the gene deletion still metabolize testosterone, Dr. Schulze says. But, she adds, she does not know where the hormone goes. “We have no idea,” she said. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
The gene in question adds a chemical, glucuronide, to testosterone. That converts it from a substance that dissolves in oil into one that dissolves in water and urine.
Athletes with a specific gene deletion (UGT2B17 homozygous deletion/deletiongenotype) are genetically predisposed to pass the testosterone doping test.
The results were unambiguous: the test worked for most of the men, showing that they had taken the drug. But 17 of the men tested negative. Their urine seemed fine, with no excess testosterone even though the men clearly had taken the drug.
It was, researchers say, a striking demonstration of a genetic discovery. Those 17 men can build muscles with testosterone, they respond normally to the hormone, but they are missing both copies of a gene used to convert the testosterone into a form that dissolves in urine. The result is that they may be able to take testosterone with impunity.
The New York Times also reports that the “prevalence in other groups is not known.” But this is inaccurate. As reported in MESO-Rx last month, there is a lot of data on other groups involving the UGT2B17 gene.
(Thanks to Rehan Jalali of TSRF for alerting me to the Times article.)
When Robert Sepe brutally murdered his girlfriend with a baseball bat, the media immediately speculated that anabolic steroids caused him to do it. The apparent reasoning was that the crime was so horrific that only an anabolic steroid user with roid rage would be capable of such violence. The “brutality of the crime” coupled with Sepe’s ownership of a supplement company apparently prompted the Journal News to write about a possible link between steroid abuse and murder.
New information suggests that Sepe was strongly against illegal and recreational drug use and likely even anti-steroid. He even abstained from alcohol and coffeee (”Cortlandt slay suspect told cops of ’surreal’ events,” April 29).
In discussing weighlifting, he went into great detail about how various vitamins and supplements could affect the body. He said he hated drugs and never used illegal substances such as cocaine and marijuana. He didn’t even drink coffee or alcohol, or eat meat, though he had once tried venison, he told them.
But he did admit to using prescription drugs Elavil and Zoloft to treat psychopathology and an undisclosed blood pressure medication.
During a five hour standoff, he started out by lying about his identify and eventually opened up and talked about some serious problems he said he was having. He told police he had been suffering from panic attacks, depression and insomnia in recent months, and that he was taking two psychotropic medications, Elavil and Zoloft, along with medicine to control high blood pressure; he mentioned he had one pill in his pocket. He claimed the various drugs were “contradicting each other” and that his psychologists and internists “didn’t know what each other was prescribing.”
Zoloft and roid rage? It doesn’t quite have the same sensationalistic impact as steroid roid rage; it is kind like prednisone roid rage. Yet there are various websites demonizing Zoloft suggesting it can cause normal invidividuals to turn into “homicidal maniacs“!
It seems that there is a natural tendency to ascribe a single cause for senseless events like suicide and murder. Anabolic steroids are the demon of choice in such events irrespective of the actual potential causes of such behavior. But if the media wants to blame steroids for the violent crime of Robert Sepe, the actual use of anabolic steroids by the perpetrator is a prerequisite for this unsubstantiated claim. This is unfortunate for the anti-steroid crusaders seeking to capitalize on the current trend of steroid hysteria in the media and popular culture.
Attempts to eliminate anabolic steroid from sports in an effort to preserve athletes as role models for our children is a failed strategy. The real problem lies with a society that worships athletes as role models. Manufacturing a moral issue out of steroid use in professional sports is hypocritical when other “immoral” behavior by athletes is not subject to the same media scrutiny, Congressional hearings, and multi-million dollar federal investigations.
Yet performance-enhancing drugs and the “culture of steroids” is seen as evil and immoral. The demonization of steroids in sports is absurd in the face of such hypocrisy.
House, M.D., the medical television drama, discussed “roid rage” as a side effect of steroids last night in an episode entitled “No More Mr. Nice Guy.” The House medical team attributed the “roid rage” to the catabolic steroid prednisone. “Roid rage” is not a medical term, but a term arising from popular culture.
Even though aggression in anabolic steroids users is rare, the producers of House decided to promote an even less plausible case of “roid rage” (arising from prednisone use). Then again, the whole point of the television show is to explore rare medical cases and consequently rare side effects. So, perhaps the reference to roid rage was consistent with the goals of the show rather than a capitulation to the current pop culture fascination with anabolic steroids and roid rage and related undocumented or overstated side effects of steroids?
If you catch the Tribeca screening, I strongly encourage you to take the time to meet with director Christopher Bell and co-producers Tamsin Rawady and Alex Buono.
“Bigger Stronger Faster*” opens today for the New York City premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival for the first of four screenings at the festival.
Sat, Apr 26, 9:00PM
Tishman Auditorium at The New School
An investigative series on anti-aging medicine by Brian Alexander of MSNBC is highly critical of the anti-aging industry. Alexander has interviewed a few academics to reinforce the skeptical overview of the industry suggesting the industry is more about financial profiteering than health optimization (”Mainstream docs join anti-aging bandwagon,” April 21).
Dr. Thomas Perls, a Boston University researcher who studies centenarians (people who live at least 100 years), and a vociferous critic of the anti-aging industry, argues that while some anti-aging practitioners “may have their hearts in the right place … in my mind the whole anti-aging practice has so many problems of ethical and professional misconduct. These practices are selling medicines and substances at great profit with very little in the way of clinical studies to support what they are doing.”
The answers to the science questions can be complicated, but the motivations of some doctors to enter the anti-aging world are not. Dr. Arnold Relman, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine who is now a professor emeritus of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, believes “the interest in anti-aging practice is mainly based on economic considerations” by physicians who are looking to boost income.
Alexander is troubled by the extreme commercialization of the anti-aging industry as seen at anti-aging conventions (”Selling longer life - or snake oil?” April 18).
Indeed, there is no better place to witness the truism of the phrase “hope springs eternal” — and perhaps “there’s a sucker born every minute” — than an anti-aging convention, especially on the trade show floor where the latest products and services are hawked.
At the 15th Annual World Congress on Anti-Aging and Regenerative Biomedical Technologies in Las Vegas, held under the auspices of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), dozens of businesses set up displays to market everything from horny goat weed dietary supplements to wands containing dirt that supposedly align water molecules so the H2O will get into your cells…
In an interview, Dr. Ronald Klatz, co-founder, with Dr. Bob Goldman, of A4M, said he gets annoyed when reporters wander the booths of an A4M event and use the sketchy claims and flimsy science of fringe products to attack the credibility of A4M or anti-aging in general.
“This exhibit hall is constantly being mistaken for the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine,” he said. “But that is just the exhibit hall. That is where advertising, lotions, potions, lasers, X-ray equipment, plastic surgery equipment are being sold. That is an exposition. That is advertising! Then there is the scientific conference. That is where the real science is going on and real clinical medicine is being taught.”
The investigative series reveals that the founders of A4M, Dr. Ronald Klatz and Dr. Bob Goldman, have a conflict of interest with the scientific agenda of A4M since they have financial interests in the very products (e.g. Arasys Perfector) and services (Regenerco) advertised at the associated convention.
But distancing A4M from the kinds of products and services offered at the exposition is somewhat disingenuous. Klatz, Goldman and the company that organizes the meeting itself, Tarsus Group PLC, are deeply involved in some of these same kinds of businesses.
Regenerco, for example, is a Klatz and Goldman company seeking to “offer, at a reasonable cost, high-quality, multi-screened vital pathogen-free stem cells originating from umbilical cords and placentas of healthy, live-births, or autologous [genetically identical] adult stem cells from peripheral blood collection.” It promises to use such cells as an anti-aging therapy and has made a deal with a resort developer in Indonesia, PT Hanno Bali, to be the exclusive stem cell distributor for anti-aging resorts serviced by yet another company called One Life +.
The Arasys Perfector is being funded with up to $500,000 from a firm called CapRegen PLC, a publicly traded regenerative medicine investment company based in the United Kingdom. CapRegen’s founders? Klatz, Goldman and Tarsus Group.
Do the commercial ambitions of the founders of A4M jeopardize the scientific agenda of A4M? What do you think?
, and included Chris Bell, John Romano of 
