As the current investigation into BALCO and the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone unfolds, several doctors and scientists are skeptical about whether sport can rid itself entirely of performance-enhancing drugs.
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Don Catlin, the UCLA molecular pharmacologist who dissected and identified THG, and Charles Yesalis, a Penn State professor who has been researching steroids for 24 years, suspect that even current publicity, including announcements that as many as 7 percent of major-league baseball players tested positive for steroids this spring, has not stopped the circulation of other performance-enhancing drugs.
Catlin said uncovering THG “sends a bittersweet message for sport.”
“Sweet in that sport was able to get a suspect syringe, get it tested, discover the designer steroid and take action against it,” he said. “Bitter in that it went undetected this far and suggests that people out there are working to create things that we have not yet detected.”
Sherwin Ho, an orthopedic surgeon and University of Chicago professor specializing in sports medicine, agreed.
“It’s hard for me to imagine there is only one steroid and only one laboratory,” Ho said. “How many others are out there?”
Catlin is troubled especially that athletes may be using such substances “without knowing the side effects.” The worst of those, he said, are tumors, cancers and liver disease.
Yesalis said THG is the fifth designer steroid or drug to be detected and then banned from sports. The others, he said, are anabolic steroids Turinabol and Norbolethone and amphetamine-like stimulants Sydnocarb and Bromantan.
“Five years ago, I said sport governing bodies need to come up with a minimum of $100 million, pool the money, give it to the best chemists in the world and give them five years to make substantial progress in identifying hidden steroids,” Yesalis said.
What has happened instead, he said, is less funding and more hand-wringing. He cited creation of the U.S. and world anti-doping agencies as the only significant reform.
If scientists’ best-funded efforts cannot stanch the flow of steroids, then what?
“If progress is not made, we should get out of the drug-testing business,” Yesalis said. “As much as allowing performance-enhancing drugs into sports is anathema to me, the stench of hypocrisy over what is happening now with limited enforcement and funding is intolerable.
“Maybe we should just let sport become the athlete with the best chemist wins. At least the hypocrisy would be gone.”