HGH problem has quietly mushroomed
Growth hormone is difficult to detect
Growth hormone is difficult to detect
By Mark Zeigler
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 21, 2007
HGH Q&A
On April 18, 2006, a package was delivered by the U.S. Postal Service to a 5,200-square-foot home in the “Estates at Scottsdale Ranch,” a gated community west of Phoenix.
A short while later, the doorbell at 10792 East Fanfol Lane rang again. Dana Grimsley came to the door, and the three people on the front porch – two men and a woman – asked to see her husband, Jason, a veteran pitcher with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
They were federal agents and they had a search warrant. The package, according to court documents later unsealed, contained vials of sterile liquid and a powdery substance that, when mixed, created injectable human growth hormone.
Not wanting a team of law-enforcement agents rifling through every corner of his five-bedroom, 5½-bathroom home in full view of his children and house guests, Grimsley agreed to cooperate. He changed clothes, surrendered the package of growth hormone to the agents and drove with them to a less conspicuous location for questioning.
Over the next two hours, according to a search warrant affidavit made public two months later, Grimsley outlined how he had used an array of banned performance-enhancing drugs “throughout the course” of a major league career that spanned 15 seasons and included stops in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Anaheim, New York, Kansas City and Baltimore.
Anabolic steroids, Clenbuterol, amphetamines, he had used them all. Then the search warrant affidavit says this:
“Grimsley stated that since Major League Baseball began its drug testing for steroids and amphetamines, the only drug that he has used is human growth hormone.”
Grimsley wasn't telling them something they didn't already know, or at least suspect – that growth hormone has quietly become a regular part of doping regimens for elite athletes as efforts to develop and institute an effective test drag on.
“Because you can't detect it in tests, I think more and more guys are using it,” Florida Marlins infielder Jason Wood recently told the Palm Beach Post. “I wouldn't be surprised if it's widespread.”
Adds BALCO founder Victor Conte: “Growth hormone use is just as common as steroids now, and just as easy to get.”
The headlines this year certainly agree. The Signature Pharmacy scandal – the investigation of a Florida company by a district attorney in Albany, N.Y. – has implicated several big-name athletes since a February raid of its Orlando headquarters. Among them: baseball's Rick Ankiel, Gary Matthews Jr. and Carlsbad High alum Troy Glaus; former Chargers safety Rodney Harrison; boxing's Evander Holyfield; and a dozen pro wrestlers, including the late Chris Benoit.
They ordered a variety of banned substances from Signature with prescriptions from different doctors, often without being examined or undergoing medical tests. But if there was a common denominator, it was this: They almost always got growth hormone.
Dr. James Shortt thought enough of it to prescribe it to several of his patients, who happened to be members of the Carolina Panthers. Shortt, based in South Carolina, pleaded guilty to distributing steroids and growth hormone last year and was sentenced to 366 days in prison.
The case included taped conversations between Shortt and his patients, one of whom was tight end Wesley Walls.
“Everybody,” Shortt is heard telling Walls, “is using it.”
The pituitary gland is located at the base of the skull. It's about the size of a pea.
One of its primary functions is to distribute human growth hormone, which coerces the liver to secrete insulinlike growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which in turn stimulates bone and muscle growth. Everyone has it in his or her body, most abundantly during childhood and adolescence.
It was first prescribed by doctors as a way to treat dwarfism in children, and for years it had to be extracted from cadavers. But a synthetic version was developed in the mid-1980s, making it cheaper and more accessible, and it wasn't long before athletes began secretly using it in their endless quest to build muscle and hasten recovery.
More recently, it has been touted as the fountain of youth, although experts say the creams and pills advertised on anti-aging Web sites are worthless because the only way to get the true benefits of growth hormone is with the real stuff via regular injection, preferably into the folds of the stomach.
Conte said his athletes took it in three-week cycles, with injections Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights before bed.
“Strenuous training or athletic competition causes micro-tears and cuts in the muscle,” Conte says, “and (growth hormone) seems to accelerate the healing and recovery process.”
But the big benefits, Conte discovered, came when it was combined – or, in bodybuilding parlance, stacked – with steroids. One plus one, the theory goes, equals three.
That allows athletes to use lower doses of growth hormone in an effort to avoid its nasty side effects, which can include diabetes as well as permanent physical changes such as elongating of the jaw. It also allows them to use lower doses of testosterone that are rarely caught in standard drug tests, particularly those administered by American pro sports leagues.
It doesn't, however, protect them from federal investigations into anti-aging clinics that distribute growth hormone for uses not approved by the Federal Drug Administration.
Ankiel and Harrison admitted using growth hormone but with a twist: They did it with a doctor's prescription to heal faster from injuries and, as Harrison put it, “never to gain a competitive edge.”
Anti-doping experts aren't buying it, contending that healing from an injury is not an FDA-approved use of growth hormone, and that healing in fact is the basis of sports – whether it's recovering quicker from micro-tears in muscles after an intense workout or returning to competition sooner after a major injury.
And, in the case of a banned substance such as growth hormone, doing it without the slightest fear of failing a drug test.
The search for a growth-hormone test has been a little like that for the lost continent of Atlantis: extensive and elusive.
Scientists from a half-dozen countries have spent more than a decade and $10 million, and the best they came up with was a blood test first used at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. There were two problems: The detection window went back only about two days, and everyone knew the test was coming. No one got caught.
The test was used again at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. No positives.
That test measures various types of growth hormone in the blood, knowing that the use of synthetic growth hormone shuts off the body's production of other types. A German company is developing testing “kits” that are to be sent to labs later this year that would allow anti-doping authorities to conduct out-of-competition tests.
The 48-hour detection window, though, figures to limit its effectiveness.
More promising is another blood test that looks for specific biomarkers, physiological changes that only come about from the use of synthetic growth hormone. Because the biomarkers hang around in the blood longer, the detection window can go back two or three weeks.
How immiment is that test?
“I'd say we're about a year away,” says Larry Bowers, the medical expert at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
Once the logistical issues of transporting blood samples to the lab are resolved, Bowers expects the two tests to be used in conjunction.
Which could mean problems for Olympic athletes and which, as things stand now, means nothing to members of American pro leagues.
None currently mandates blood testing, and changing that policy likely requires the blessing of powerful players unions. The NFL has openly questioned the reliability of the blood test for growth hormone and, like Major League Baseball, has made six-figure grants to a research project searching for a urine-based test.
That sounds good . . . until you consult the experts.
“The problem is there is very, very little – I think it's 0.01 percent – of growth hormone that shows up in your urine,” USADA's Bowers says. “It presents a lot of problems . . . daunting problems.”
The World Anti-Doping Agency, on its Web site, uses another word to describe the chances of developing a urine test:
“Remote.”
Grimsley initially agreed to cooperate with federal agents in exchange for them not executing their search warrant of his Scottsdale house. Then he had a change of heart.
“Approximately one week after Grimsley's extensive cooperation with agents on April 19, 2006,” court documents said, “Grimsley, through a retained attorney, informed the United States Attorney's office that he no longer wanted to cooperate.”
Six weeks later the feds obtained another search warrant for 10792 East Fanfol Lane, and this time they executed it. On June 6, a reported 13 agents spent six hours probing every corner of his house.
A few hours later, authorities made public the search warrant affidavit, a 20-page document with details of Grimsley's two-hour conversation with agents in April. Names were blacked out, but the fact that Grimsley, a 15-year veteran, had allegedly broken baseball's Omerta code and ratted out his teammates was eminently clear.
The next day, Grimsley requested his release from the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Grimsley might not be playing hardball anymore, but the point is, law enforcement apparently is.
“For so long,” USADA CEO Travis Tygart says, “sports attempted to handle these issues itself.”
Things began to change in 2000, when the U.S. Olympic Committee turned over drug testing to USADA, an independent body. Then came the BALCO scandal, which was partially triggered when USADA obtained a syringe containing traces of a previously undetectable “designer” steroid that Conte's crew was using.
Tygart now spends “a significant amount of time” consulting with various law enforcement agencies about ongoing investigations.
There is the BALCO case, which is far from finished. There is Kirk Radomski, the former New York Mets batboy and steroid dealer to the stars who has been cooperating with authorities for more than a year. There is Signature Pharmacy, which reportedly might involve 10 more baseball players.
There is the announcement by a U.S. Attorney in Boston earlier this week that a St. Louis-based company agreed to pay a $10.5 million fine for illegally distributing growth hormone to several people, including a “well-known professional athlete in Massachusetts.”
And in San Diego there was Operation Gear Grinder, which broke up a massive ring of Mexican drug manufacturers that accounted for an estimated 75 percent of illicit steroid sales north of the border.
“It's charting a new and more effective course,” USADA's Tygart says. “The partnership has allowed law enforcement to be more effective by us providing them with information and expertise and resources. It's also allowed us to be more effective in disciplining athletes who are using drugs that maybe aren't detected in the traditional testing.”
The athletes currently being caught, of course, are those who purchased growth hormone and other banned substances themselves.
“These guys are stupid,” Conte says. “Why not have a buddy walk into a gym and get it for them?”
But the name of the game for USADA is deterrence, and having the long arm of the law in its bullpen might help.
“For those athletes who are going to dope, I think it comes down to a cost-benefit analysis,” Tygart says. “And if the chance of being caught or disciplined is zero, then it's a lot easier to justify doping. If you increase the likelihood of being exposed, whether it's through a government investigation that results in jail or you being thrown out of your sport, the cost-benefit analysis suddenly becomes a different analysis.”
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 21, 2007
HGH Q&A
On April 18, 2006, a package was delivered by the U.S. Postal Service to a 5,200-square-foot home in the “Estates at Scottsdale Ranch,” a gated community west of Phoenix.
A short while later, the doorbell at 10792 East Fanfol Lane rang again. Dana Grimsley came to the door, and the three people on the front porch – two men and a woman – asked to see her husband, Jason, a veteran pitcher with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
They were federal agents and they had a search warrant. The package, according to court documents later unsealed, contained vials of sterile liquid and a powdery substance that, when mixed, created injectable human growth hormone.
Not wanting a team of law-enforcement agents rifling through every corner of his five-bedroom, 5½-bathroom home in full view of his children and house guests, Grimsley agreed to cooperate. He changed clothes, surrendered the package of growth hormone to the agents and drove with them to a less conspicuous location for questioning.
Over the next two hours, according to a search warrant affidavit made public two months later, Grimsley outlined how he had used an array of banned performance-enhancing drugs “throughout the course” of a major league career that spanned 15 seasons and included stops in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Anaheim, New York, Kansas City and Baltimore.
Anabolic steroids, Clenbuterol, amphetamines, he had used them all. Then the search warrant affidavit says this:
“Grimsley stated that since Major League Baseball began its drug testing for steroids and amphetamines, the only drug that he has used is human growth hormone.”
Grimsley wasn't telling them something they didn't already know, or at least suspect – that growth hormone has quietly become a regular part of doping regimens for elite athletes as efforts to develop and institute an effective test drag on.
“Because you can't detect it in tests, I think more and more guys are using it,” Florida Marlins infielder Jason Wood recently told the Palm Beach Post. “I wouldn't be surprised if it's widespread.”
Adds BALCO founder Victor Conte: “Growth hormone use is just as common as steroids now, and just as easy to get.”
The headlines this year certainly agree. The Signature Pharmacy scandal – the investigation of a Florida company by a district attorney in Albany, N.Y. – has implicated several big-name athletes since a February raid of its Orlando headquarters. Among them: baseball's Rick Ankiel, Gary Matthews Jr. and Carlsbad High alum Troy Glaus; former Chargers safety Rodney Harrison; boxing's Evander Holyfield; and a dozen pro wrestlers, including the late Chris Benoit.
They ordered a variety of banned substances from Signature with prescriptions from different doctors, often without being examined or undergoing medical tests. But if there was a common denominator, it was this: They almost always got growth hormone.
Dr. James Shortt thought enough of it to prescribe it to several of his patients, who happened to be members of the Carolina Panthers. Shortt, based in South Carolina, pleaded guilty to distributing steroids and growth hormone last year and was sentenced to 366 days in prison.
The case included taped conversations between Shortt and his patients, one of whom was tight end Wesley Walls.
“Everybody,” Shortt is heard telling Walls, “is using it.”
The pituitary gland is located at the base of the skull. It's about the size of a pea.
One of its primary functions is to distribute human growth hormone, which coerces the liver to secrete insulinlike growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which in turn stimulates bone and muscle growth. Everyone has it in his or her body, most abundantly during childhood and adolescence.
It was first prescribed by doctors as a way to treat dwarfism in children, and for years it had to be extracted from cadavers. But a synthetic version was developed in the mid-1980s, making it cheaper and more accessible, and it wasn't long before athletes began secretly using it in their endless quest to build muscle and hasten recovery.
More recently, it has been touted as the fountain of youth, although experts say the creams and pills advertised on anti-aging Web sites are worthless because the only way to get the true benefits of growth hormone is with the real stuff via regular injection, preferably into the folds of the stomach.
Conte said his athletes took it in three-week cycles, with injections Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights before bed.
“Strenuous training or athletic competition causes micro-tears and cuts in the muscle,” Conte says, “and (growth hormone) seems to accelerate the healing and recovery process.”
But the big benefits, Conte discovered, came when it was combined – or, in bodybuilding parlance, stacked – with steroids. One plus one, the theory goes, equals three.
That allows athletes to use lower doses of growth hormone in an effort to avoid its nasty side effects, which can include diabetes as well as permanent physical changes such as elongating of the jaw. It also allows them to use lower doses of testosterone that are rarely caught in standard drug tests, particularly those administered by American pro sports leagues.
It doesn't, however, protect them from federal investigations into anti-aging clinics that distribute growth hormone for uses not approved by the Federal Drug Administration.
Ankiel and Harrison admitted using growth hormone but with a twist: They did it with a doctor's prescription to heal faster from injuries and, as Harrison put it, “never to gain a competitive edge.”
Anti-doping experts aren't buying it, contending that healing from an injury is not an FDA-approved use of growth hormone, and that healing in fact is the basis of sports – whether it's recovering quicker from micro-tears in muscles after an intense workout or returning to competition sooner after a major injury.
And, in the case of a banned substance such as growth hormone, doing it without the slightest fear of failing a drug test.
The search for a growth-hormone test has been a little like that for the lost continent of Atlantis: extensive and elusive.
Scientists from a half-dozen countries have spent more than a decade and $10 million, and the best they came up with was a blood test first used at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. There were two problems: The detection window went back only about two days, and everyone knew the test was coming. No one got caught.
The test was used again at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. No positives.
That test measures various types of growth hormone in the blood, knowing that the use of synthetic growth hormone shuts off the body's production of other types. A German company is developing testing “kits” that are to be sent to labs later this year that would allow anti-doping authorities to conduct out-of-competition tests.
The 48-hour detection window, though, figures to limit its effectiveness.
More promising is another blood test that looks for specific biomarkers, physiological changes that only come about from the use of synthetic growth hormone. Because the biomarkers hang around in the blood longer, the detection window can go back two or three weeks.
How immiment is that test?
“I'd say we're about a year away,” says Larry Bowers, the medical expert at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
Once the logistical issues of transporting blood samples to the lab are resolved, Bowers expects the two tests to be used in conjunction.
Which could mean problems for Olympic athletes and which, as things stand now, means nothing to members of American pro leagues.
None currently mandates blood testing, and changing that policy likely requires the blessing of powerful players unions. The NFL has openly questioned the reliability of the blood test for growth hormone and, like Major League Baseball, has made six-figure grants to a research project searching for a urine-based test.
That sounds good . . . until you consult the experts.
“The problem is there is very, very little – I think it's 0.01 percent – of growth hormone that shows up in your urine,” USADA's Bowers says. “It presents a lot of problems . . . daunting problems.”
The World Anti-Doping Agency, on its Web site, uses another word to describe the chances of developing a urine test:
“Remote.”
Grimsley initially agreed to cooperate with federal agents in exchange for them not executing their search warrant of his Scottsdale house. Then he had a change of heart.
“Approximately one week after Grimsley's extensive cooperation with agents on April 19, 2006,” court documents said, “Grimsley, through a retained attorney, informed the United States Attorney's office that he no longer wanted to cooperate.”
Six weeks later the feds obtained another search warrant for 10792 East Fanfol Lane, and this time they executed it. On June 6, a reported 13 agents spent six hours probing every corner of his house.
A few hours later, authorities made public the search warrant affidavit, a 20-page document with details of Grimsley's two-hour conversation with agents in April. Names were blacked out, but the fact that Grimsley, a 15-year veteran, had allegedly broken baseball's Omerta code and ratted out his teammates was eminently clear.
The next day, Grimsley requested his release from the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Grimsley might not be playing hardball anymore, but the point is, law enforcement apparently is.
“For so long,” USADA CEO Travis Tygart says, “sports attempted to handle these issues itself.”
Things began to change in 2000, when the U.S. Olympic Committee turned over drug testing to USADA, an independent body. Then came the BALCO scandal, which was partially triggered when USADA obtained a syringe containing traces of a previously undetectable “designer” steroid that Conte's crew was using.
Tygart now spends “a significant amount of time” consulting with various law enforcement agencies about ongoing investigations.
There is the BALCO case, which is far from finished. There is Kirk Radomski, the former New York Mets batboy and steroid dealer to the stars who has been cooperating with authorities for more than a year. There is Signature Pharmacy, which reportedly might involve 10 more baseball players.
There is the announcement by a U.S. Attorney in Boston earlier this week that a St. Louis-based company agreed to pay a $10.5 million fine for illegally distributing growth hormone to several people, including a “well-known professional athlete in Massachusetts.”
And in San Diego there was Operation Gear Grinder, which broke up a massive ring of Mexican drug manufacturers that accounted for an estimated 75 percent of illicit steroid sales north of the border.
“It's charting a new and more effective course,” USADA's Tygart says. “The partnership has allowed law enforcement to be more effective by us providing them with information and expertise and resources. It's also allowed us to be more effective in disciplining athletes who are using drugs that maybe aren't detected in the traditional testing.”
The athletes currently being caught, of course, are those who purchased growth hormone and other banned substances themselves.
“These guys are stupid,” Conte says. “Why not have a buddy walk into a gym and get it for them?”
But the name of the game for USADA is deterrence, and having the long arm of the law in its bullpen might help.
“For those athletes who are going to dope, I think it comes down to a cost-benefit analysis,” Tygart says. “And if the chance of being caught or disciplined is zero, then it's a lot easier to justify doping. If you increase the likelihood of being exposed, whether it's through a government investigation that results in jail or you being thrown out of your sport, the cost-benefit analysis suddenly becomes a different analysis.”
