Could somebody more educated on the subject explain this to me? Does this mean that he was on steroids regardless of the reasons of his hCG use?
[quote]Eielson wrote:
Could somebody more educated on the subject explain this to me? Does this mean that he was on steroids regardless of the reasons of his hCG use?[/quote]
I hadn’t read that article yet. Thanks
A 4:1 T to epiT ratio isn’t even that high. I’m surprised MLB uses such tight standards. The tour de france allows up to 6:1 (or at least they did when they claimed armstrong was using a few years ago). Anyway.
Synthetic testosterone is chemically identical to natural testosterone. There is absolutely no way to tell the difference once ester is cleaved from the molecule and the drug enters the blood stream. So the only way MLB can say he was injecting T or applying T transdermally was to examine his T to epiT ratio. This means that there is room for false positives. This is why “the clear or the cream” (I forget which) was such a good PED. It was transdermal T with epiT in it. It raised T levels while maintaining normal ratios. I still don’t know how they test for that.
Actually I can’t say for sure because I don’t know what a carbon isotope test is. If that test has a way of detecting esters (carbon chains added to steroid molecules to delay their release in the body (creating a half life)) than it is possible for them to knmow if it was synthetic; but I don’t know if that is what the test does.
The DHEA is surely playing a role in this. I wish I knew more about it. The only thing I do know is that it doesn’t do anything for young males with normal levels but as men age their DHEA levels drop and it becomes beneficial for quality of life to supplement with it, for some people.
It is possible that hCG and DHEA together caused an unsually high T to epiT ratio. But that is purely a guess.
[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:
Eielson wrote:
Could somebody more educated on the subject explain this to me? Does this mean that he was on steroids regardless of the reasons of his hCG use?
[/quote]
I don’t know what effect DHEA has on a potential drug test, but if that could have caused the “high” test:epitest ratio, then no, he may not have been using steroids.
I wonder if guys can inject epitest with any given cycle and get away with it. The ratio was the only thing that flagged them.
An isotope is a molecule that has a heavier or lighter molecular weight because of a drop or gain of neutrons in the nucleus of any given atom. I’m guessing that any modification to the test molecules will be detected by the testing system. It sounds like the only tests that go through this process are ones with a “high” ratio.
[quote]swivel wrote:
You really love rules don’t you …Why do want/need so many rules in your life anyway ?
[/quote]
Wait, am I talking about rules in my life or in baseball? I’m against steroids in BASEBALL. Last I checked I’m not a baseball player.
It’s easy to spot when someone has a really weak arguement because all they do is start making shit up that I never said. You’re a poopie head. I’m not talking to you anymore.
[quote]hockechamp14 wrote:
I wonder if guys can inject epitest with any given cycle and get away with it. The ratio was the only thing that flagged them.
[/quote]
Isn’t that what “the cream” was all about ? or is there a somehpw a difference between cream & injectable ?
In regards to the T/E test: 40% of athletes tested generate false negatives and can inject up to 360mg of test and still show normal ratios…Read that again…40 %…wow. …meanwhile 14% generate false positive, and that’s alot of innocent folks getting flagged. The variation has to do with genotypes of the individual…Asians seem to be able to get away with more test than anyone else…I read that a few weeks ago in NYT…can’t find the link but it’s on Floyd Landis’ site as well: a JCEM paper will be published next Month.
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/rapidpdf/jc.2008-0218v1
As someone rightly pointed out on the Landis site: where’s the consolation prize for Mary Decker Slaney on this one ? Not only that but how many other innocent athletes were “caught” over the years while ADA’s fiddle around with weak science, learning as they go, at the expense of players rights, reputations and careers ?
You folks who think “rules are rules” and must blindly be obeyed really need to think about who you’re getting bed with.
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
The fact that these issues are related, is that MLB’s fault or congress? The media? The fans? Who?
Hint: It’s not MLB’s fault.
[/quote]
I was always under the impression that the major sports leagues are the ones funding the lobbyists making these drugs illegal. They can’t fight the drug use in their leagues so they want the government to help. So if that is true then yes the sports leagues have to share some blame for creating this environment of fear and ignorance.
I mean look at the press releases, they don’t say “he broke the rules” representatives always go out of their way to say how dangerous they are. The sports leagues’ representatives are believing the hype they helped to create. For example:
“Major League Baseball has always recognized the influence that our stars can have on the youth of America. As such, we are concerned that recent revelations and allegations of steroid use have been sending a terrible message to young people.” â?? Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.
Sports related agencies blatantly lie:
U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart questioned Ramirez’s claim in an interview with The AP, saying, “We have no knowledge of the Ramirez case, but it’s highly unlikely an otherwise healthy, young athlete would need HCG for a legitimate medical reason.”
It’s not just Congress, the sports leagues and related agencies are feeding the hysteria about these drugs.
[quote]chrisb71 wrote:
LankyMofo wrote:
The fact that these issues are related, is that MLB’s fault or congress? The media? The fans? Who?
Hint: It’s not MLB’s fault.
I was always under the impression that the major sports leagues are the ones funding the lobbyists making these drugs illegal. They can’t fight the drug use in their leagues so they want the government to help. So if that is true then yes the sports leagues have to share some blame for creating this environment of fear and ignorance.
I mean look at the press releases, they don’t say “he broke the rules” representatives always go out of their way to say how dangerous they are. The sports leagues’ representatives are believing the hype they helped to create. For example:
“Major League Baseball has always recognized the influence that our stars can have on the youth of America. As such, we are concerned that recent revelations and allegations of steroid use have been sending a terrible message to young people.” â?? Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.
Sports related agencies blatantly lie:
U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart questioned Ramirez’s claim in an interview with The AP, saying, “We have no knowledge of the Ramirez case, but it’s highly unlikely an otherwise healthy, young athlete would need HCG for a legitimate medical reason.”
It’s not just Congress, the sports leagues and related agencies are feeding the hysteria about these drugs.
[/quote]
Sigh
I’ve already addressed this issue.
LankyMofo wrote:
Suffice to say that I believe the root of the problem is with congress and the public for not knowing, or not caring enough to know better. I think these people are to blame, not MLB.
I mean, if you were Paul Taglibue (sp?), would you put your job, league, and neck on the line and stick up for steroids (or any drugs currently on the banned substance list) given how they are portrayed in the media? Would the benefit (which most likely would be none) be worth the time, money, and effort to educate regular people who don’t care enough to learn more about the subject? To say some things are ok and some aren’t? I don’t even think people would listen. They love hearing the big names get busted.
Or maybe I’m not holding MLB up to a high enough standard, it’s a tricky issue.[/quote]
Try to read the entire thread next time, champ.
I have been.
You are ignoring they are NOT merely stating “steroids are cheating in our sport”
They are saying “Steroids are bad and dangerous for anyone to take” and thus contributing to the hysteria
champ
[quote]chrisb71 wrote:
I have been.
You are ignoring they are NOT merely stating “steroids are cheating in our sport”
They are saying “Steroids are bad and dangerous for anyone to take” and thus contributing to the hysteria
champ[/quote]
They only started saying this after congress forced them to in ~2000, the famous hearings where Paul Tagliabue was berrated over and over about how weak baseball’s testing was and how they were allowing such activity to go on. Baseball could’ve been saying shit like that all along if they wanted to but they didn’t because McGwire and Sosa were making them all sorts of cash, now with congress putting it all on lockdown they are outing the players that helped the game recover from the strike so they can keep making money.
They have a part in the situation for sure, but I’d say it was pretty forced by congress because of the issues about Andro and amphetamines.
Edit: Another issue as I see it is that some of the players that may have spoken out about this stuff can’t because they are in trials and what not and have to “say the right thing” or face jail time. If Clemen’s, who said some anti-steroid stuff on Mike and Mike this morning, had instead spoken favorably about them and how they can be used intelligently, it would be used against him in court and he’d be living in a cell. Congress has initiated all of this themselves, and the media has just run with it and forced the hands of some of these other parties, that’s how I see it at least.
[quote]hockechamp14 wrote:
I don’t know what effect DHEA has on a potential drug test, but if that could have caused the “high” test:epitest ratio, then no, he may not have been using steroids.
[/quote]
So DHEA isn’t a steroid or illegal? What exactly is DHEA?
[quote]Professor X wrote:
LankyMofo wrote:
Professor X wrote:
xkungpowx wrote:
Professor… I know I’m only speaking in baseball sense. My view is quite different outside of the realm of organized sports, aligning more with yourself, but if we are going to discuss general thoughts on HCG I feel it should be done so in a different thread.
Why? We just had a poster claim he can’t even fill his prescription as of the release of this news because no pharmacy wants to take that risk yet we are separating the issues? Congress isn’t separating them and pharmacies are scared shitless as a result.
Maybe some of you should realize that these issues are ABSOLUTELY FUCKING RELATED and not just a “baseball issue”.
The fact that these issues are related, is that MLB’s fault or congress? The media? The fans? Who?
Hint: It’s not MLB’s fault.
Once we can figure that out, we can starting pointing fingers and blaming people.
In the meantime, I can say I have no problems with the way baseball’s policy is set up or the way it enforces it’s rules. The rules that people already knew before they signed up to play.
The fault lies with every single one of us who raises no voice against it. You can’t blame the media without blaming the lemmings who swallow everything they say without question. You can’t blame those people without blaming Congress who puts on a show as if this is a major public health crisis that somehow surpasses war in another country. You also can’t fault Congress if NO ONE is going to say shit in opposition to them wasting that much time and money on an issue like this.
If you wrote what you did as a way of asking what the solution is, I may not be absolutely sure but I know the way we should NOT handle this is to continue to trivialize this issue by only talking about this shit in terms of baseball.
It is that very mindset that allows Congress and the media to push their own agendas. While most are too caught up in the game, they won’t realize until it is far too late that they just sold their soul to the devil by seeing it so simplistically.
Yes, in a perfect world, you play according to the rules of whatever game you are playing…but this isn’t a perfect world and by acting that way in terms of baseball you are also allowing more freedom to be taken away.
This is NOT a black and white issue.[/quote]
I think we’re starting to see more pro (or at least not anti) steroid voices these days than we used to. There was that NBC piece on Steroids and subsequently that movie “Bigger, Faster, Stronger”.
Excellent insight to WADA’s carbon isotope testing here:
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/opinions/testosterone_d13C.html#ref11
The article shows it’s impossible to differentiate between synthetic/natural test…you can only tell that it’s more or less likely …there can be a LOT of carbon variables… even carbon from food consumption has an immediate effect on urine steroids.
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
I’m against steroids in BASEBALL. Last I checked I’m not a baseball player. [/quote]
I think that’s what the problem was in the first place. The people that made the rules were never athletes.
[quote]hockechamp14 wrote:
LankyMofo wrote:
I’m against steroids in BASEBALL. Last I checked I’m not a baseball player.
I think that’s what the problem was in the first place. The people that made the rules were never athletes.[/quote]
Exactly. That’s why these rules have nothing to do with baseball and everything to do with grabbing power…look at the suspension of Jeremy Mayfield which is every ADA’s dream. Nascar has everything these zero-tolerance zealots could want: they decided Mayfield shoud be suspended within 6 hours;They’ve decided they don’t need to provide a time limit to his suspension- he’s suspended “indefinitely”; They’ve decided he has no opportunity for appeal; They’ve decided they don’t have to reveal the substance he alleged to test positive for; Perhaps most incredibly: they’ve decided they don’t need to provide a list of banned substances to anyone they are testing.
This is what’s going on in our sports = This is what’s going on in the USA. Some on this thread would just shrug and say " thems the rules ".
[quote]swivel wrote:
hockechamp14 wrote:
LankyMofo wrote:
I’m against steroids in BASEBALL. Last I checked I’m not a baseball player.
I think that’s what the problem was in the first place. The people that made the rules were never athletes.
Exactly. That’s why these rules have nothing to do with baseball and everything to do with grabbing power…look at the suspension of Jeremy Mayfield which is every ADA’s dream. Nascar has everything these zero-tolerance zealots could want: they decided Mayfield shoud be suspended within 6 hours;They’ve decided they don’t need to provide a time limit to his suspension- he’s suspended “indefinitely”; They’ve decided he has no opportunity for appeal; They’ve decided they don’t have to reveal the substance he alleged to test positive for; Perhaps most incredibly: they’ve decided they don’t need to provide a list of banned substances to anyone they are testing.
This is what’s going on in our sports = This is what’s going on in the USA. Some on this thread would just shrug and say " thems the rules ". [/quote]
It sucks. You get guys like Dick Pound who attacked hockey a couple years ago, trying to claim 2/3 of hockey was on illegal substances. What do you we have since the NHL initiated a drug testing policy? Two positive tests. One wasn’t even an NHL test. (Jose Theodore was barred from the 2006 Olympics because he failed to mention he was taking Rogaine or something.) The other, was by a man who had really only one eye and apparently was from a supplement.
So who wins? The people who do the tests. More tests, more $. Another personal freedom lost over someone making money.
[quote]hockechamp14 wrote:
It sucks. You get guys like Dick Pound who attacked hockey a couple years ago, trying to claim 2/3 of hockey was on illegal substances. What do you we have since the NHL initiated a drug testing policy? Two positive tests. One wasn’t even an NHL test. (Jose Theodore was barred from the 2006 Olympics because he failed to mention he was taking Rogaine or something.) The other, was by a man who had really only one eye and apparently was from a supplement.
So who wins? The people who do the tests. More tests, more $. Another personal freedom lost over someone making money.[/quote]
Yep…they tested 10,000 high school students in Texas last year and found 2 also…what a scam. It does suck and it’s wrecking sports. I can’t believe people fall for this stuff. Th war on drugs in sports is no different than the war on drugs anywhere else- just political power grabbing. Dick Pound is a tax attorney btw.
What a shocker. Turns out Many is on the 2003 list. Any of you still believe the ED claim now? Suckers.
[quote]on edge wrote:
What a shocker. Turns out Many is on the 2003 list. Any of you still believe the ED claim now? Suckers.[/quote]
Ortiz as well. They really need to just release the names on that list at this point. My opinion
[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:
on edge wrote:
What a shocker. Turns out Many is on the 2003 list. Any of you still believe the ED claim now? Suckers.
Ortiz as well. They really need to just release the names on that list at this point. My opinion[/quote]
Agreed.
I agree. The list needs to be released so it can be adsorbed, discussed, and gotten over.
I have a feeling the media is doing their best to get plenty o’mileage out of this list (that shouldn’t have even been made public, and is also 6 fucking years old) since the typical baseball season this time of year is all kinds of boring.
It’s ridiculous.