The co-owner of Lowen’s Pharmacy has apparently died from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head; New York Police Department (NYPD) investigators maintain it was a suicide even though the victim was also shot in the chest.
Six NYPD police officers, most of whom worked out at Dolphin Fitness near Lowen’s, have been under instensive internal affairs investigations for improperly obtaining anabolic steroids from Lowen’s Pharmacy. Lowen’s Pharmacy has been raided on two separate occasions by narcotics officers working with the office of New York’s Albany District Attorney David Soares. These raids resulted in the seizure of over $7 million worth of growth hormone from China as well as $200,000 worth of various anabolic steroids, including testosterone, nandrolone and stanozolol; records seized showed that about $30 million in steroids and growth hormone were funneled through “longevity clinics” in Florida.
Lowen’s Pharmacy has ties to the Gambino crime family. Julius Nasso, Jr. is a part owner of Lowen’s Pharmacy; his father owns the building where Lowen’s is located at the corner of Bayshore Drive and 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn. The father of Julius Nasso, Jr. was a former pharmacist turned movie producer who served prison time for conspiring with the Gambino family to extort money from actor Steven Segal; the uncle of Nasso, Jr. owns a drug company and was sentenced for labor racketeering.
Bodybuilders who use anabolic steroids are very familiar with this problem; it is widely recognized and widely discussed in the bodybuilding community. Various doctors, writers and bodybuilders have offered possible solutions. It is accepted within many bodybuilding circles that ASIH can be largely minimized if not completely avoided.
But nowhere in the article is their any suggestion that the ASIH can be avoided or treated. It is not necessarily the fault of the author; the medical profession does not recognize the treatment of ASIH; the government does not recognize treatment of ASIH. Consequently they do not approve of treatment for the side effects related to the cessation of anabolic steroids.
This just baffles me! Why would the side effects that come along with stopping steroid use, especially if they are as dangerous as claimed, be left untreated especially if that treatment is readily available? I mean it is no secret that Taylor Hooton’s parents and doctors took him off of anabolic steroids and within 6 weeks he committed suicide. Texas has passed legislation claiming “clinical depression [occurs] when steroid use is stopped.” Kirk Brower, M.D. has told Congress during the baseball hearings that “depressive episodes and suicide attempts are most likely to occur within three months of stopping AAS use.”
If there is a treatment to prevent or eliminate the side effects associated with cessation of anabolic steroids, it should be promoted and encouraged by the government and medical community. But why isn’t it?
(1) The steroid prohibition movement is about morality and not about health. To paraphrase Radley Balko, it is better to let a steroid user suffer (and even die) rather than administer a medical treatment that could eliminate steroid side effects and remove threat of suicide. The war against steroids has taken on the characteristics of the overarching war on drugs. Balko explains the drug policy:
This is the mentality of your modern drug warrior. We’re fighting drug use not because it’s dangerous or harmful, but because they believe drug use is, in and of itself, immoral.
Today’s drug war isn’t about saving lives, it’s about saving souls.
(2) If the side effects of steroids are successfully treated, it would encourage steroid users to continue using steroids. This is probably correct, but is that a worse outcome than making steroid users suffer for making a supposedly immoral choice? The Office Of National Drug Control Policy has a strong moral philosophy and opposition to harm reduction when it comes to drug use.
These so-called “harm reduction” strategies are poor public policy because their underlying philosophy involves giving up on those who can successfully recover from drug addiction.
Let’s abandon this morality play and truly focus on the health consequences of anabolic steroid use.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were competitive rivals as box office muscle action heroes during the 1980s. But now Arnold and Sly are apparently good friends. According to Stallone, their friendship has flourished recently:
After he became governor, we started to build this relationship. We’d go to this place called Cafe Rome and smoke cigars, then they banned smoking, so the governor and I were in an alley stealing a few puffs talking about how to balance the budget. Now we meet every Saturday.
Schwarzenegger is even a fan of Sly’s movies nowadays. Arnold took his two sons on a flight to Las Vegas Los Angeles last week for the box office premiere of Sylvester Stallone’s latest movie, Rambo.
I’m certain that Arnold’s friendship with Sly will be criticized since Stallone has become the most high profile celebrity advocate for the use of growth hormone and testosterone in age management medicine during his recent promotional tour for Rambo.
Arnold has long faced criticism of his association with pro bodybuilding via the Arnold Classic because of the rampant anabolic steroid use in the sport. It’s good to hear Arnold is not turning his back on friends and the sport of bodybuilding simply due to political pressure!
Could you imagine a pharmaceutical company (whose top-selling drugs are anabolic steroids) becoming the title sponsor of a professional bodybuilding contest? What is Unimed, whose top selling drug products are Anadrol-50 (oxymetholone) and AndroGel (testosterone), sponsored the Mr. Olympia Bodybuilding contest resulting in the “Unimed Pharmaceuticals IFBB Mr. Olympia Bodybuilding Championships”?!! Or how about Savient, whose top-selling drug product is Oxandrin (oxandrolone), sponsoring the Arnold Classic resulting in the Savient Pharmaceuticals IFBB Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic Bodybuilding Championships?!! Observers would comment on the irony given that professional bodybuilding is practically synonymous with the use of anabolic steroids.
Interestingly, in the sport of professional cycling, such an unlikely sponsorship has been taking place since 2006 when the biotechnology company Amgen became the title sponsor of professional cycling’s Amgen Tour of California. One prominent cycling commentator called it the “death of irony.” You see, Amgen’s most successful product to date is Epogen (recombinant erythropoietin); it’s second best-selling drug is a long-acting version of Epogen called Aranesp (darbepoietin). Epogen is the most notorious performance-enhancing drug in cycling; Epogen is to professional cycling what anabolic steroids are to professional bodybuilding!
If the controversial title sponsorship was not enough, Tour of California organizers accidentally forgot to drug test riders for Epogen during the inaugural 2006 Amgen Tour of California. They tested for all other banned drugs but simply forgot to test for Epogen!
And why is Amgen spending $35 million sponsorship over a 5-year commitment on professional cycling? Is it because professional cyclist represent proof of the miraculous performance-enhancing effects of their products? Not exactly. Amgen’s scientific director Dr. Steven Elliott explains:
Our opportunity is to educate cyclists that there is an appropriate way to use a drug, and doping in sport is not it… Our medicines were made because we want to treat grievous illnesses. They’re not for enhancing performance in sport.
I think the sport of professional bodybuilding could use a $35 million infusion by a giant pharmaceutical company who manufacturers anabolic steroids and/or human growth hormone who could use the sponsorship as an opportunity to promote the therapeutic benefits of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.
But then again, along with the Amgen sponsorship of the Tour of California came pressure to expand anti-doping testing and improve anti-doping procedures.
The upcoming 2008 Amgen Tour of California cycling road race will adopt the most comprehensive anti-doping protocol in cycling history it was announced by Andrew Messick, president, AEG Sports, presenter of the race, at a press conference today.
This is something that professional bodybuilding probably does not want.
Sylvester Stallone is interviewed in Time Magazine as part of his media tour to promote his latest Rambo movie. He continues to defend his use of growth hormone and explains that it is not an anabolic steroid.
HGH [human growth hormone] is nothing. Anyone who calls it a steroid is grossly misinformed.
Testosterone to me is so important for a sense of well-being when you get older. Everyone over 40 years old would be wise to investigate it because it increases the quality of your life. Mark my words. In 10 years, it will be over the counter.
Model Janice Dickinson, an admitted former cocaine and alcohol addict, said that she regularly witnessed Sylvester Stallone using anabolic steroids. Not only that, but she also claims he gave her steroids too.
I’d wake up and my arm was as big as Popeye - steroids, testosterone, all that stuff.
Of course, all anabolic steroid users know that is how steroids work - you take steroids, go to sleep, and wake up in the morning looking like a muscular bodybuilder!
Sylvester Stallone and Janice Dickinson were engaged at one point in the 1980s until Stallone discovered he was not the father of her child. A spokesperson for Stallone responded to the steroid allegations:
Janice Dickinson lied about the origin of her child and she’s lying about this.
Sly Stallone was fined last year for importing a personal supply of growth hormone into Australia where he was promoting Rocky Balboa. Stallone has been busy promoting his latest movie, Rambo, the fourth installment in the Rambo series.
Roger Clemens attorney should be fired. Obviously, attorney Rusty Hardin must have devised the strategy used by Roger Clemens in his interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes tonight. Brian McNamee’s attorney, Richard Emery, was spot on when he identified the likely legal strategy:
I think that this is a lawyers’ game, which allows him to try and attempt to say that McNamee didn’t know what he was injecting or that at least Clemens didn’t know what he was injecting.
Conceivably, this is a crafty legal strategy to suggest that Clemens received so many injections of substances that were NOT anabolic steroids, testosterone, or growth hormone, that there is a chance that McNamee and/or Clemens simply didn’t know what was injected.
Roger took bunches of his shots over his career, much the way racehorses do, unfortunately.
But from a public relations standpoint, this strategy is stupid. It is stupid for the attorney to make an analogy to a racehorse; it is stupid to have Clemens’ publicly outline the hypocrisy of drug use in major league baseball…
Clemens’ admission to injecting several performance-enhancing substances that were to help joints and/or mask pain pointed out the hypocrisy of selectively demonizing some performance enhancers while condoning others. Drugs that allow a baseball player to “mask pain” are arguably more dangerous than growth hormone use and even steroid use. Yet Clemens is proud to use these drugs to mask pain allowing him to continue playing and performing while injured.
Clemens admitted to regularly using Toradol, which is considerably more liver toxic than most oral anabolic steroids. Yet the dangerous liver toxicity of oral androgens is unacceptable, but the even more dangerous liver toxicity of Toradol (not to mention its use to mask pain to allow players to perform while injured) is perfectly acceptable.
The regular denials by athletes accused of using anabolic steroids and growth hormone has become relatively commonplace and quite boring. So, I didn’t expect much from Mike Wallace’s 60 Minutes interview of baseball player Roger Clemens (who was accused by trainer Brian McNamee of using testosterone and growth hormone in the Mitchell Report). But I was pleasantly surprised when Clemens offered “proof” that he never used steroids or GH. If he did use the alleged performance enhancing drugs…
He would have grown a “third ear out of his head”;
He would have been able to “pull a tractor with his teeth”;
His tendons would have “turned to dust”;
His body would have experienced a “breakdown”; and
He would have lost “flexibility”
Since none of these things happened, that must be proof positive that he never used steroids or growth hormone!!
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.
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.
