Was IFBB Pro Bodybuilder Flex Lewis connected to the Tennessee steroid investigation involving several Tennesse law enforcement officers? Absolutely not! However, Nashville, Tennessee’s News Channel 5 took the opportunity to include the following teaser on their website as part of their exclusive coverage of the steroid investigation (”Nashville’s Hidden Steroid Culture,” May 7).
On Thursday night, the second part of the NewsChannel exclusive steroids investigation will focus on the informant and the Nashville Predators team physician and world-class body builder Flex Lewis. The report airs at 6 p.m.
By stating that their steroid investigation will “focus” on Flex Lewis, the reader is left to speculate how Flex Lewis is connected to the steroid investigation. Is he involved? Or is is just going to talk about steroids? It turns out the answer is negative to both questions.
I contacted Flex since I know he lives in the United Kingdom and asked him about this. He explained that he happened to be at a nutritional store in Tennessee doing a demo as a representative of Gaspari Nutrition. A local television camera crew briefly interviewed him but they NEVER mentioned steroids!
The media is unbelievable. This is probably why Jim Lorimer told pro bodybuilders not to trust the media when it comes to steroids in a private athlete’s meeting at this year’s Arnold Classic.
UPDATE: The sports supplement store where Flex Lewis made a guest appearance promoting Gaspari was American Nutrition Wholesalers in Hermitage, Tennessee. Owner Mark Johnson is considered a main suspect by investigators in the Tennessee steroid investigation. Lewis just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and has absolutely no relationship with Johnson or this investigation. So, I hope NewsChannel 5 in Nashville uses the Flex Lewis footage for the good of the health industry as promised.
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 The goal of the film was not to necessarily demonize steroids but to condemn a state-sponsored doping system that superceded individual choice to pursue victory at all costs even the victimization of children.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!
In March 2006, according to the plea agreement, Abernathy sent Pyle an e-mail asking her to write prescriptions for his customers until he could replace a physician who had retired.
When Pyle questioned the legality of the arrangement, Abernathy assured her that it was legal, according to her plea agreement.
The document lists 18 patients for whom Pyle wrote prescriptions for anabolic steroids. The orders totaled about $13,000, and Abernathy paid Pyle $60 for each customer, according to her plea agreement.
In each case, she never saw the patient and prescribed the exact combination of drugs that Abernathy recommended, according to her plea bargain. In some cases, she prescribed Trenbolone, a livestock drug.
James Abernathy defended his recommendations of trenbolone as appropriate while deflecting some of the responsibility for the recommendations to pharmacists at Applied Pharmacy Services.
In his interview with the Press-Register, Abernathy said Trenbolone is not a drug he ordinarily would recommend, although he added there could be some exceptions. He said that he relied on the expertise of the pharmacists at Applied Pharmacy.
Abernathy further defended the Body Solutions Rx clinic.
Abernathy, 53, said his dealings with Applied Pharmacy have been aboveboard at all times. “We’ve used many pharmacies,” he said. “Applied was one of the front-runners in HIV treatment. They had an outstanding reputation.” […]
Abernathy said he would never recommend steroids to improve athletic performance or to serve as some sort of fountain of youth. “In fact, we turn away many patients who are looking for vanity medicine,” he said.
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.
Three of the seven co-defendants indicted for their role in David Jacobs’ Texas-based steroid distribution network were sentenced today including David Jacobs. All seven co-conspirators have already pleaded guilty. David Jacobs, Amber Jarrell and Matt Williams all received probation along with a monetary fine based on their respective role in the steroid operation (”Plano steroids supplier wants to help clean up NFL,” May 2)
Sentenced Thursday:Mr. Jacobs, 35, ringleader, three years’ probation and a $25,000 fine. Amber Jarrell, 37, of Plano, his former girlfriend, three years’ probation and a $1,000 fine. Matt Williams, 39, of Dallas, who helped bottle and store the steroids, three years’ probation and a $10,000 fine.
Awaiting sentences:Andrew Schenck of Dallas; Juan Carlos Ballivian of Houston; Brandon Mark Smith of the Dallas area; and Jamie Mongeau of Wichita, Kan.
The ringleader of one of the largest steroids trafficking networks in the nation said Thursday after he was sentenced to probation that he plans to meet with the NFL to share his expertise to help “clean up” football.
“I want to help them understand the loopholes, how I was able to help people beat the tests, and how prevalent steroid use is,” Plano bodybuilder David Jacobs said after his sentencing hearing.
Jacobs, a former body builder, said he advised about 10 N.F.L. players on how to exploit loopholes in the league’s drug-testing program. One way, he said, was to have team doctors write them prescriptions for drugs that would mask steroid use…
Jacobs said he advised players, including Lehr, to ask their team doctors to write them prescriptions for finasteride, a drug used to treat balding in young men. Jacobs said a Falcons team doctor wrote Lehr a prescription for the substance.
Now that the leader of one of the largest steroid distribution rings in the country was sentenced to probation along with two other co-conspirators, it seems to confirm that steroid dealers were not the targets of the federal steroid investigation in Texas. It appears that the real targets of the investigation are professional athletes, namely NFL football players with David Jacobs providing the steroids and football link.
Drs. Kenneth M. Olds and Kelly W. Tucker of Greeley, Colo., agreed to plead guilty in Mobile to dispensing anabolic steroids outside the course of professional practice. Greeley is also home to another who in January pleaded guiltyto withholding information about illegal steroids prescriptions.
Dr. Pamela Pyle, a Myrtle Beach, S.C., osteopath, also admitted to the withholding offense, known as misprision of a felony.
The indictments were expected after Assistant U.S. Attorney Donna Dobbins requested a postponement in the sentencing of their APS co-conspirator Scott Corliss last week. Olds and Tucker had previously been named in court documents as co-conspirators in the APS steroid scandal. We have not previously seen a link to Dr. Pamela Pyle.
MESO-Rx expects all four doctors who have pleaded guilty in the steroid conspiracy will cooperate with federal prosecutors in their pursuit of Applied Pharmacy Services Inc. and their owners Samuel Kelley and Jason Kelley.
Prosecutors allege that Applied Pharmacy Services was party to a conspiracy involving the distribution of anabolic steroids to individuals without a legitimate medical need.
“Working in concert for their mutual profit, these doctors, pharmacy owners, pharmacists and sales representatives removed the word controlled from ‘controlled substances,’” U.S. Attorney Deborah Rhodes said in a written statement. “They made sure that anabolic steroids were readily available to any person willing to pay for them, regardless of any legitimate medical need.”
Practices that have troubled prosecutors include the distribution of trenbolone acetate which has no accepted medical application in humans and the dispensing of steroids to patients as young as 19 years old.
Applied Pharmacy no longer offers pharmaceutical quality anabolic steroid and hormone preparations; they have stopped production of all anabolic steroids as a result of DEA pressure and the ongoing federal steroid investigation.
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.
, and included Chris Bell, John Romano of 
