MLB-steroidsAt the Growth Hormone Summit held November 10 at the Beverly Hills Hotel and Bungalows, anti-doping experts discussed two of the most contentious issues concerning exogenous human growth hormone.

First, its efficacy. Second, the accuracy of its testing. And since after the daylong conference no consensus was reached by the attendees on both issues, Major League Baseball decided to forego its testing for this controversial compound.

“Growth hormone is widely abused by athletes,” Richard Holt, a professor at University of Southampton in Great Britain said. “There is little scientific evidence that growth hormone is performance-enhancing. I think the scientists are wrong and the athletes are right.”

The professor said that by itself hGH does not do much – athletes have to take other performance-enhancing drugs along with hGH to improve their abilities.

“In order to get the full benefit of growth hormone, you need to take it with other agents as well,” he said.

Even anti-doping czar Don Catlin is in the dark regarding hGH’s affect on the performance.
“There is no answer and I don’t think there will be unless somebody gets approval to do the study. It’s the same thing with anabolic steroids 25 or 30 years ago. We need the same study with HGH,” Catlin said.

Catlin, who is the director of Anti-Doping Research at the UCLA, acknowledged the need to come up with an effective testing method, even if it means soliciting government support.

“The government needs to come in. I don’t like it, but I don’t like X-ray machines at the airport, either. There really isn’t much choice. We’re trying to find a needle in a haystack. There’s good hope.”

As far as the period to accurately test for hGH the timeline is quite narrow.

“Thirty hours, I’d say,” said Douglas Rollins, executive director of the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory in Salt Lake City.

Other resource persons were of the opinion the timeline can still be narrower.

Bob DuPuy, MLB’s president and chief operating officer, was well aware of the challenge hGH presents, and overcoming that challenge by coming up with such conference is a positive indication that his organization is willing to clean up the sport.

“The commissioner (Bud Selig) is committed to eradicating all performance-enhancing drugs, including HGH,” DuPuy said. “One of the things we’ve recognized from the start of this is HGH presents challenges. One of the purposes for this conference is to get everybody on the same page. All we can do is continue to fund things like this.

“I think we’re doing the best we can do. You’ve got most of the leading experts in the field here today, and that’s a good start.”

Gene Orza, the No. 2 official of the players’ union, said if there’s a scientifically valid test for HGH, the association could go for it. However, for the meantime, they’re not giving the green light.

“My suspicion is they would adopt it, but they wouldn’t be railroaded into doing so,” he said. “Today’s conference suggests a lot of hard work is being done by a lot of qualified people, but there’s a long way to go. No one should have complete faith in a test that has never tested anyone positive.

“We don’t oppose blood testing. We say we’ll consider blood testing, which is different from urine testing. We’re saying we’ll consider blood testing when the time is right. Now is not that time. The players’ association is contributing now to the development and analysis of HGH testing. That’s part of this conference.”

The conference, titled “Growth Hormone: Barriers to Implementation of hGH Testing in Sports”, was co-funded by the MLB with David Geffen School of Medicine of UCLA and Foley and Lardner LLP. Among the summit’s aims was to “identify the scientific, medical, legal, and ethical issues that must be addressed before hGH testing is considered a routine part of sports drug testing.”


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