Track & Field News

[Jacksf]

Just watched a fascinating episode on PBS about the East German systematic doping of their athletes.
http://www.truveo.com/SECRETS-OF-THE-DEAD-Doping-for-Gold-PBS/id/971992275
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/episode-home/doping-for-gold-2

Most of their young athletes didn't even know they were being doped.
They were also told that the athletes in the West were cheating and taking steroids, but didn't realize they themselves were doping.
Many of the athletes have had long term damage and health problems from the doping. Some of the drugs were so strong that they caused one athlete, Heidi Kreiger - 86 Euro shot put champ - to have a sex change operation.

An interesting side note...they talked to a West German doctor who headed the anti-doping testing for the 83 Pan American Games. He said many of the American athletes tested positive for drugs and promptly left the Games.
Does anyone know anything about or remember this?

[Marlow]

http://mb.trackandfieldnews.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=30586&highlight=secrets+dead

[Daisy]

[Matt]

Krieger was a little bloke-ish but didn't help herself with her haircut etc. Other East German throwers were quite the opposite eg Gansky and Hellman, both of whom maintained their feminity during their careers.

Did any 'big' US T&F names suddenly withdraw from the 1983 Pan-Ams?

[Rob]

[Mennisco]

[Rob]

I've seen it all before, many times over (and much more, in the German press). Not much patience left these days, to be perfectly honest...

Re-packaging of half-truths to grab 'pseudo' headlines nearly 20 years after the wall came down, and prior to an imminent Olympics, is politically biased and written with intent.

Those who cast stones should not live in glass houses (and that's not aimed at you).

To add a counter argument - the top-ranked DVfL female athletes from the 1970s and 1980s, whose names will be familiar to most members on this board, all seem to be healthy, in good physical condition (most are now in their 50s), with healthy sons and daughters. But nobody bothers reporting that. Why not?

[Mennisco]

[Jacksf]

The show interviewed Kreiger, and he certainly made it seem that the doping he received played a major role in his decision to have a sex change operation.

I found this in the NY Times, Jan 24, 2004...

"The taking of pills and injections of anabolic steroids created virile features and heightened confusion about an already uncertain sexual identity, Krieger said, influencing a decision to have a sex-change operation in 1997 and to become known legally as Andreas.

"They killed Heidi," Krieger said.

[tandfman]

[Halfmiler2]

My recollection ia that it was a whole lot more athletes - about ten or twelve, but the really big names were skipping the Pan-Ams because of the first World Championships being held in Helsinki that summer.

I think the Pan Am withdrawals got significant press - television news as well as print media. I sort of recall a shot putter admitting in a television interview (perhaps on the PBS News Hour) that he had taken a caffeine pill and did not want to be tested for fear of a positive. I think TAC made some sort of investigiation and issued a report of some kind.

[odelltrclan]

[Daisy]

[bambam]

[odelltrclan]

[quote="Daisy"][quote="odelltrclan"]

[Daisy]

[bad hammy]

An irreverent comment on a serious thread subject:

When I saw the title of this thread I was figuring it would tell me why the Grateful Dead were so damn popular . . .

OK, back to your local station.

[imaginative]

It is quite possible that she just needed someone to blame in order to
cope with her situation. If this is the case, we should let her.
(Although therapy and acceptance is the better way to go.) No-one
innocent is being hurt, and she can feel better about the situation.

As for the factual possibility: It seems entirely plausible that
a woman who already is close to the border is pushed over by a mixture
of artificial hormonal disturbances and a ``macho'' environment.
Consider also that the EG system _may_ have made it harder for a female
athlete to develop traditionally female interests, find feminine
role-models, and so on. (I can obviously not judge whether this
applies to Krieger in particular.)

Look, as an analogy, at the related issue of sexual orientation: Most
people are not unambiguously straight or gay, but somewhere in-between.
In many cases, the eventual choice can be brought on by a few critical
coincidences, e.g. that someone has an early same-sex partner and
afterwards remains in an environment (friends, favourite bars, etc.)
that makes further same-sex partners the default. (Similarly, with a higher
likelyhood, the opposite scenario for someone who leans more to the
gay side by nature. Consider also the case of someone who is
indoctrinated to consider homosexuality to be evil, and forces
him/herself into a heterosexual mold.)

Much of our respective developments has been caused by small nudges at
the right/wrong time, big one-time decisions, and sheer coincidence.
(Other parts have been results of inherent nature.)
Sexual identity would be an extreme, but IMO is not an exception where
border cases are concerned.

[Novitiate]

[Pego]

There had been people of indistinct sexual characteristics before Heidi (Andreas) Krieger as well as after. Some took drugs, most of them did not. There is not one iota of evidence that steroids, including testosterone would change a woman into a man. Temporary hirsutism, lower voice, yes, but that is about it. I read many accounts of athletes attributing their subsequent disorders (including malignancies) to the use of steroids with absolutely no supporting evidence. Correlation does not equate causation.

[Jacksf]

You guys should watch the show to see what Krieger has to say about it himself - rather than just guessing about he felt.
They did mention that the drugs given to Krieger were 20 times stronger than what Ben Johnson was taking.
Krieger said that the drugs played a major role in deciding to make the change.
In the NY Times article, he said, "they killed Heidi"

[Daisy]

Not to sound too sceptical but invariably popular science programs embellish the facts. I may not have seen the show but there are quotes from the show above that send mixed messages. Already that is a red flag for an objective story.

[Marlow]

[gh]

Krieger's opinion on what any steroids did to his/her body are no more germane than Lionel Alzado's deciding that his brain cancer came from it. That's the kind of determination that one can't make on one's own accord. Those are mere anecdotal testimony, like the kind used to sell you snake oil.

[imaginative]

[Pego]

[gh]

[croflash]

[Daisy]

[imaginative]

To formulate the issues slightly differently:

1. That a certain percentage of all people exposed to X suffer from Y
does not automatically imply that X causes (or is otherwise correlated
with) Y. Only if the percentage is significantly (in the statistics
sense) higher than in control groups is there a valid reason for
conclusions. (Suspicion is another matter.)

2. Even if X does cause Y, it is not logically correct to
assume that it did so in a specific individual (barring very specific
evidence). Smoking does increase the risk of lung cancer; however, not
all smokers who have lung cancer got it because of smoking.

[Daisy]

Anyone who is interested in this debate should read the following article that appeared in the new york times magazine.

Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy?
By GARY TAUBES
Published: September 16, 2007

Interesting paragraph from the middle of the article:

[croflash]

[Daisy]

[croflash]

[odelltrclan]

There is scientific evidence as there are old documents from GDR scientists and doctors stating that they were expecting and tolerating long term damages to the athletes. It is proven that PEDs, especially anabolic steroids led to all sorts of problems. One example is former shot putter Gerd Jacobs who was given PEDs by Werner Goldmann (who is the coach of Robert Harting and the German shot put team today despite a lawsuit in 1998), Jacobs had a heart transplantation five years ago.

Then you have class-action lawsuits from former GDR athletes, they succeeded because it was proven that their long term damages were not because of the training, they are suffering from the abuse of oral-turinabol and other PEDs. It is true that not any former athlete has those problems, but the number of those who can't give birth to children because uterus is inable to. Another example is Birgit Boese who has had organs of an 11 year old at the age of 24 because they PEDs interfered that process. She was still growing, as were here hands and she became more muscular, but she is still suffering because of that today.

Many recognized doctors are shocked today about the dimension of doping in the GDR and most of them are backing up their diagnosis of long term damaged with the abuse of PEDs. I know that because there has been a lot about that that topic in the German media recently. There has been before, but with the Olympics nearing, several former GDR athletes were interviewed and you could hear the opinion of doctors about the reason for the long term damages.[/quote]


I think you are barking up the wrong tree here with many of these posters. A lot of won't believe in the damage of these drugs because of lack of "scientific proof". Of course, remember now, Marion Jones never tested positive for drugs right? Getting so-called scientific proof is a crapshoot because of all the variables and conditions that could affect outcomes. It is not uncommon to hear of disagreements among so-called scientifc "experts" about the results of scientific studies.

Common sense, which the world lacks plenty of these days, would lead you to believe that if you mess with mother nature, weird and bad things can, will, and do happen. There is plenty of evidence, but many won't accept unless it was done in a lab looking for a small set of certain results over a period of years.

Common sense tells me that if you pump huge amounts of male hormones [i.e. 20 times Ben Johnson's level] into a female (who then became abnormally large and powerful with odd characterics and then was ostracized by her society] something bad probably would have happened.