The Lance Armstrong doping scandal has created an unprecedented degree of hysteria over the use of anabolic steroids, erythropoietin (EPO) and other performance-enhancing drug (PEDs) in the sport of professional cycling. The anti-doping movement often pretends to be about something more than enforcing an arbitrarily and capriciously defined morality. Lip service is given to the […]
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Tyler Hamilton’s Guide to Using Anabolic Steroids and EPO in Cycling
The Secret Race is a virtual how-to guide on using anabolic steroids and EPO in cycling while evading drug testers. It exposes the weaknesses of drug testing in the sport. It is a “big game of hide-and-seek played in a forest that has lots of good places to hide, and lots of rules that favor the hiders.”
How Lance Armstrong Can Win Against the United States Anti-Doping Agency
The battle between Lance Armstrong and the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is shaping up to be much more than a doping case. USADA has formally accused Armstrong of using a variety of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) during his accomplished career as a professional cyclist. And USADA rarely loses a case when it decides pursue an athlete. So, how […]
Use of Biosimilar EPO Agents Widespread at 2008 Tour de France
A BBC investigation suggests that most athletes who use recombinant human erythropoietin (EPO) continue to get away with it. The investigative article reveals several reasons why the EPO test is failing. But the BBC revealed that the biggest problem is not the ineffectiveness of the existing EPO tests used by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). It […]
Spanish Doctor Implicated in Doping Scandal – “Germans Want to Shit on the Spaniards”
Spanish doctor Marcos Maynar Mariño sent an email offering comprehensive urinalysis and steroid profiling at 50 euros per athlete to as many as ten professional cycling teams including Gerolsteiner, Milram, CSC and Columbia . Maynar offered to provide a complete analysis consistent with the same control methods used by the International Cycling Union (UCI). The […]
New French Laws Imprisons Individuals for Personal Use of Anabolic Steroids
The French government, in an effort to crack down on cyclists at the 2008 Tour de France who use performance-enhancing drugs, passed a new law last month that provides severe criminal penalties for the personal use and/or possession of doping products like anabolic steroids. Performance enhancing drugs like anabolic steroids, EPO and human growth hormone […]
Riccardo Ricco Tests Positive for Undetectable New Drug Mircera at 2008 Tour de France
Cyclist Riccardo Ricco of the Saunier Duval-Scott team tested positive for the new performance enhancing drug Mircera (methoxy polyethylene glycol-epoetin beta) at the 2008 Tour de France. Ricco is a top cyclist on the Tour and the King of the Mountains and White Jersey leader. Mircera is a third generation version of erythropoietin manufactured by pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-LaRoche […]
Pharmaceutical Companies Sponsoring Pro Bodybuilding Contests?
Could you imagine a pharmaceutical company (whose top-selling drugs are anabolic steroids) becoming the title sponsor of a professional bodybuilding contest? What if 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, […]
Lesser Known Pharmacological Ergogens
The use and abuse of performance-enhancing substances by athletes has been an issue in sports since the ancient Greeks. Not until the advent of modern health science in the twentieth century though has performance enhancement presented such serious legal, ethical, and medical dilemmas. A person needs only to tune in to the television coverage of […]