2007_12_01_archive

Athletes Harm Others with Performance Enhancing Drugs

Some people think that we should let athletes take

performance-enhancing drugs because they think that these athletes can

only harm themselves and do not harm others. We already know that

anabolic steroids can cause liver damage, heart attacks and strokes,

and that growth hormone causes heart attacks by causing the heart

muscle to outgrow its blood supply. Now a two-year study of former

East German athletes shows that athletes who take these drugs can harm

their children.

In the 1970s and 80s, almost all government sponsored East German

athletes were forced to take anabolic steroids and other

performance-enhancing drugs. A study of 69 children of 52 of these

athletes showed that seven had birth defects and four were mentally

retarded, an unusually high incidence for a group of this size. More

than 25 percent had allergies and 23 percent had asthma. The women

suffered 32 times the normal incidence of miscarriage and stillbirth,

25 percent suffered cancer and 61 percent had therapy for mental

disorders. The study was conducted by Dr. Giselher Spitzer at Humbolt

University in Germany.

Many people are not aware that at this time, there is no test to catch

athletes who take growth hormone. The winner of the 2006 Tour de

France and the leader of the 2007 tour were disqualified for allegedly

taking performance-enhancing drugs. This was just the tip of the

iceberg. Martial Saugy, director of the Swiss Laboratory for Analysis

of Doping in Lausanne, Switzerland, told a Belgian newspaper that 47

of 189 riders raced on blood transfusions or EPO in the 2007 Tour de