Designer drug find sounds alarm
BY DON H. CATLIN AND
CAROLINE K. HATTON
All indications are that the current sport doping scandal over
the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) is anything but
business as usual. It is a turning point.
THG differs from anabolic steroids previously found in athletes’
urine in the following ways. It is not a pharmaceutical like testosterone,
which is used by some athletes not for legitimate medical purposes
but to cheat. Unlike boldenone or Dianabol, THG is not a known veterinary
product or discontinued pharmaceutical. Nor is it a never-marketed,
toxic pharmaceutical like norbolethone. THG is a new chemical entity
never documented before, probably synthesized by clandestine chemists
who didn’t just comb old literature for abandoned pharmaceuticals
but sat down to design a new molecule. The finding suggests levels
of depth and organization always suspected but never uncovered before.
No one ever thought that testing could catch all cheaters, but the
discovery of THG shows that cheaters are willing to go to unprecedented
extremes.
One option is to stop testing. Why bother to continue? Perhaps
a segment of the public rather likes the grossly superlative feats,
the dizzying race to break records, and wants only more, more, more!
Besides, how could a society that reaches for pills as a quick fix
and considers testosterone replacement therapy for healthy men forbid
athletes from doing the same? What if doctors gave athletes the
drugs? It is such an intriguing idea that a doctor tried it decades
ago, before steroids were explicitly banned. The athletes soon went
out of control, taking megadoses of drugs bought at the gym. If
drugs were to be allowed in sport, soon all athletes would be on
them, in a new level playing field, with everyone equally drugged.
The competition would turn pharmacological. Maybe some athletes
would get sick or even die. Maybe not.
Another option is to continue testing. More testing might help.
So would developing new tests, optimizing existing tests, conducting
available but unused tests that close loopholes, and dreaming up
a hundred molecules to evade current tests, then devising new tests
to find them. The resources needed to follow every imaginable lead
would be considerable, though the sports community at large —
Olympic committees, sport federations, sponsors, fans — could
find major funding if it wanted the problem solved. Even so, another
big bust in a few years might just be busy work, pushing the problem
around instead of solving it, letting clandestine chemists move
on to the next designer drug.
Yet another option is to turn the culture around. A novel approach
would be to reward integrity instead of punishing cheating. Most
athletes are clean. Unfortunately, if they start winning, they get
suspected of taking drugs. Clean athletes might volunteer to get
drug-tested and lead a new elite, if promised a clean system and
something tangible — health monitoring by physicians as well
as the tracking of serum hormones and fitness markers by other health-care
providers. If one parameter moves out of line, the athlete would
simply be asked to leave the program — get de-listed —
not be accused of doping. No one would volunteer for such a program
unless they were clean. After a wake-up call such as the discovery
of THG, now is an ideal time to give this experiment a try.
Catlin is professor of molecular and medical pharmacology
and founding director of the UCLA Olympic Laboratory. Hatton received
her Ph.D. from UCLA in 1985 and was a co-director of the laboratory
from 1985-1998.
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