NPC Bodybuilder Dan Puckett was found dead in his apartment on November 8, 2007 at the age of 22. There was immediate speculation that Puckett died from the use of anabolic steroids based on the fact that he was a bodybuilder and furthered by the rampant steroid hysteria in the media. This week, autopsy results reveal that Puckett’s unfortunate death was due to “natural causes” dispelling claims that he died from steroid use.
Dan Puckett was a collegiate bodybuilding champion, winning the 2006 NPC Teen & Collegiate National Championships, and a senior marketing major at the University of Alabama.
The Athens News, an English-language newspaper in Greece, has been covering the recent steroid scandal plaguing the Greek Weightlifting Olympic Team. The newspaper discusses the anabolic steroid methyltrienolone, one of the three substances in the failed drug tests for the eleven Greek weightlifters. The newspaper makes the preposterous and irresponsible claim that methyltrienolone killed 200 bodybuilders in the 1960s.
Steroid expert Patrick Arnold (Ergopharm) has told me he doesn’t believe methyltrienolone was ever formally introduced commercially; therefore it is extremely unlikely that any bodybuilders were even aware of its existence in the 1960s. It is “completely inconceivable” that 200 bodybuilders died from using methyltrienolone, according to Arnold.
In the Athens News article, Professor Demetrios Kouretas (Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology at the University of Thessaly) discusses the “deadly” and toxic steroid methyltrienolone (”Testing positive saved lives: Greek biochemistry professor Dimitris Kouretas says methyltrienolone could well have killed Greek weightlifter,” April 11).
“This [methyltrienolone] is a very old drug and no one has tested positive for it in the [recent] past. It is on the banned drugs list. But because it is extremely toxic, especially for the liver, it is not used,” Kouretas said. “Those that tested positive are in a sense very lucky because if they continued, they could have died.”
Of the three banned substances for which the Greek athletes tested positive, methyltrienolone is the most dangerous. The drug was held responsible for the death of about 200 people, mainly bodybuilders, in the 1960s.
“After three or four weeks of taking it, you get severe liver problems, and if you don’t stop, it could lead to death in a few months,” Kouretas.
“For the last 25 years, methyltrienolone has been used in hundreds of laboratory experiments on killing cancer cells. It is commercially called R-1881. But it is not used as an anabolic steroid,” Kouretas said.
The newspaper article quotes Professor Demetrios Kouretas extensively. Dr. Kouretas received a postdoctoral degree from Harvard Medical School and has had over 40 articles published in scientific journals.
Nowhere is Dr. Kouretas directly quoted with the absurd and blatantly false propagandistic statement that the anabolic steroid methyltrienolone killed 200 bodybuilders?! Unfortunately, the author of the Athens News article interjected the statement giving the impression that it may be attributable to Dr. Kouretas.
Greek journalists apparently have no qualms about (mis)using university experts when publishing their steroid misinformation. Dr. Kouretas’ fearmongering about Greek weightlifters (being on the verge of death only to be saved by a positive doping result) was not enough for the author of the report.
Jill Atwood, of the ABC 4 News affiliate in Salt Lake City, got caught up in the steroid hysteria at the recent “Anti-steroid National Assembly Tour” at Alta High School in Sandy, Utah on Monday (”High school steroid use on the rise,” April 7).
A local high school football coach calls it an epidemic. He’s talking about illegal steroid use, and experts say is as dangerous, unpredictable, and life threatening as meth use.
The “experts” claiming steroids are as dangerous and deadly as methamphetamines were uncited. The high school coach is Les Hamilton who told his high school student athletes that steroids cause “death, pain and emotional damage.”
The steroid alarmist message is apparently what passes for steroid education at mainstream public high schools. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff participated in the steroid education assembly which was funded by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency and the Taylor Hooton Foundation.
The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency and the Taylor Hooton Foundation continue to fund steroid education efforts in high schools around the country. The latest steroid public service announcement was made for the benefit of students at Alta High School in Sandy, Utah (”Students get steroid warning,” April 7).
“Steroids are an illegal drug and they can cause you death, pain and emotional damage — it all comes down to choosing right from wrong and being strong enough to encourage those around you to do the right thing,” said Les Hamilton, Alta High’s head football coach.
Coach Hamilton should compare notes with Coach Chris Connolly of Dolgeville High School in New York to maximize the effectiveness of their respective steroid education programs.
The Salem Statesman-Journal reports the cause of death of former IFBB pro bodybuilder Shelley Beattie (”Farewell to one who beat so many obstacles,” March 10):
Shelley Beattie was an inspiration to the deaf community, overcoming her disability to become a professional bodybuilder, a television personality and a competitive sailor.
“The only thing I can’t do is hear,” she used to say.
Last month she discovered one other thing she couldn’t do: live with bipolar disorder. While under a doctor’s care during a six-week stay at a psychiatric hospital, she took her own life.
Shelley was extremely popular as a person, a female bodybuilder, an athlete, and an American Gladiator as can be seen by the comments to the original announcment of her death.
Our condolences to her parents, Jack Beattie and Laura Mitchell, and her life partner, Julie Moisa.
