Michael White, professor and department head from the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy, talks about performance-enhancing drugs and the effect they have had on Major League Baseball.
Below are some questions with answers provided by White.
What are the performing enhancing drugs in question in the Alex Rodriguez case?
Major League Baseball claims that Alex Rodriguez took human growth hormone, insulin related growth factor and testosterone from 2010 through 2012. These performing enhancing drugs are mostly abused by professional wrestlers, body builders and football players. They increase the amount of lean muscle mass a person has and increases strength and power.
What about A-Rod’s contention that since he passed 11 drug tests it proves that he is innocent?
Major League Baseball did not test for human growth hormone or insulin related growth factor over those years so testing would not tell you whether A-Rod had taken those drugs or not. They did test for testosterone however but there were issues with Major League Baseball’s testing program before 2013. The urine testosterone test set a certain concentration that if exceeded indicated testosterone use. So if you gave just enough testosterone to scrape below the threshold level during drug testing, you would pass.
According to Major League Baseball, A-Rod had his blood tested by his dealer and his testosterone regimen was adjusted multiple times to avoid detection. He allegedly used multiple forms of testosterone including injections, creams and tablets that you suck on called troches. While the creams and the injections will raise your testosterone concentrations for two to four days, the tablet you suck on only increases testosterone concentrations for two to four hours once the tablet is spit out. So if A-Rod used the injections and the creams to boost his testosterone concentrations to just below threshold he could then use the tablets to push it past that level knowing that he only needed to spit the tablet out four or more hours before testing.
The second problem is that Major League Baseball tested for the testosterone/epi-testosterone ratio which is normally less than six. If you are using testosterone, your ratio would be above six unless you give a similar amount of the inactive epi-testosterone which would balance it out. It is not clear if A-Rod allegedly tried this strategy. In 2013, Major League Baseball adopted much more rigorous testing to control for these deficiencies.
While A-Rod is the man in the news currently, are performing enhancing drugs a big issue in Major League Baseball? (Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire and many other star athletes have been implicated)
It wasn’t until 2002 when Major League Baseball began testing for performance enhancing drugs and explicitly outlined penalties for testosterone use a couple years later. According to several players caught up in the performance enhancing drugs scandal, approximately 25 to 50 percent of players from the 1980s to 2002 used drugs to boost muscle mass or amphetamines to give them more energy at one time or another.
It the use of muscle boosting drugs limited to competitive athletes?
No, interestingly almost 80 percent of anabolic steroid users in the United States are noncompetitive bodybuilders and non-athletes and 13 percent of them reported unsafe injection practices such as reusing needles, sharing needles and sharing multi-dose vials. They use it for the cosmetic effects of increasing muscle mass.