Download Drugs and Olympic Games

Drugs and the Olympic Games Drugs and the Olympic Games
It is no secret that performance-enhancing drugs have been use by Olympic
athletes for decades. According to an article in Forbes magazine, " From the brute
steroids the East Germans reportedly used on their Olympians during the Cold War to
today's man-made versions of natural human proteins, drugs have been as much a
staple of the Games as gold, silver and bronze" (Herper, par. 4). 1 Despite rigorous
drug testing, the used of banned performance –enhancing substances has become
more widespread than ever. The disqualification of athletes from the most recent
Olympic Games because of illegal drug use shows that the problem is ongoing
It seems apparent that if athletes want to win, they must consider using drugs. Dr
Michael Karsten, a Dutch physician who said he had prescribed anabolic steroids to
hundreds of world-class athletes , states, '' If you are especially gifted, you may win
once, but from my experience you can't continue to win without drugs. The field is
just too filled with drug users'' (qtd. in Bamberger and Yaeger 62).2 In fact, some
people claim that record-breaking performances of Olympic athletes may be directly
to drugs. Charles Yesalis, a Pennsylvania State University professor who has studied
the use of drugs in sports, believes '' a large percentage'' of athletes who have set new
records have done so with the help of performance enhancing drugs. A lot of experts,
at least, in private, feel that way he claims (qtd. in Herper, par. 6).
Excercises
1. Which sentences do state the main ideas of the first and second paragraphs?
( Which sentence states the main idea of the first paragraph?)
Which sentences state the main ideas of the first and second paragraphs?)
2. What direct quotation supports the topic sentence of Paragraph One? What phrase introduces
the quotation? ( What is the phrase that introduces the quotation?)
3. What are the three quotations that support the topic sentence of Paragraph Two?
( What three direct quotations support the topic sentence of Paragraph Two?
Read the article online copied in the next page and answer question 4.
http://www.forbes.com/2002/02/15/0215ped.html
4. How does the writer of the two paragraphs seen above represent his own view
( attitude, belief) with the support of this online article ? Explain in detail.
5. Read the two paragraphs above and write down the simple, compound, complex, and
compound-complex sentences. Explain the reasons your answer in detail.
6. What verb tenses are used? Explain in detail?
1
Herper, Matthew. "Olympics: Perfonnance Drugs Outrun Olympics." Forbes IS Feb. 2002. 30 Mar. 2004
<http://www.forbes.com/2002/02/1S/021 Sped.html>.
The fonn of this in-text citation shows that the words in quotation marks are from paragraph 4 of an
online article written by a person whose last name is Herper.
2
Bamberger, Michael, and Don Yaeger. "Over the Edge." Sports Illustrated 14 Apr. 1997: 60-86.
The form of this citation means that the words in quotation marks were spoken by Dr. Michael Karsten
and were quoted on page 62 of an article written by two people named Bamberger and Yaeger.
http://www.forbes.com/2002/02/15/0215ped.html
Olympics Olympics
Performance Drugs Outrun The Olympics
, 02.15.02, 12:00 PM ET Matthew
Herper
NEW YORK - The Olympic Games celebrate majesty of the human body as a
perfectly tuned machine, and the spirit that pushes that machine to its limits.
Olympic athletes stretch the very fabric of human performance, smashing
world records with their grit, heart and sweat.
And performance-enhancing drugs.
Who can blame them? The absolute limits of non-enhanced human athletic
performance may well be set in stone. Bones don't get stronger from one
generation to the next. The amount of power that muscles can generate is
limited, as is the amount of oxygen that can be ferried by blood. What remains
constant is the public clamor for new world records.
Performance-enhancing drugs are banned from Olympic competition, but it is
a ban that has been honored in the breach. From the brute steroids the East
Germans reportedly used on their Olympians during the Cold War to today's
man-made versions of natural human proteins, drugs have been as much a
staple of the Games as gold, silver and bronze.
Throw in the fact that some of the new drugs are used safely for clinical
purposes and are nearly impossible to detect, and widespread use seems
inevitable. That's the reality of competitive 21st-century sport.
Charles Yesalis, an epidemiology professor at Pennsylvania State University
who has written extensively on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in
sport over the past 23 years, believes a "large percentage" of record-holders
probably doped their way to the finish line. "A lot of experts, at least in private,
feel that way," he says.
One often abused performance-enhancing drug is erythropoietin, a protein
that was the biotech industry's first blockbuster and is still its biggest drug.*
Erythropoietin--also known as EPO--generated more than $5 billion in 2001
sales for inventor Amgen (nasdaq: AMGN - news - people ) and licensee
Johnson & Johnson (nyse: JNJ - news - people ).
For many, EPO dramatically improves quality of life. The protein spurs the
body to produce more oxygen-carrying red blood cells, which in turn allows
the blood to carry more oxygen. Doctors prescribe it for the anemia that
occurs with kidney failure and chemotherapy. But for an athlete, the same
protein can increase endurance by allowing the blood to ferry more oxygen to
hungry muscles. This is risky: Dopers also might make their blood so thick,
they induce heart attack from the stress of pumping it.
"There's
definitely a performance-enhancing effect if you use things that
improve oxygen transport to the tissue," says Larry Bowers, an expert on
athletic drug testing and senior managing director of the U.S. Anti-Doping
Agency. He says anonymous surveys of athletes indicate that only a tenth of
them use performance-enhancing drugs. But he acknowledges that doped
athletes may win most of the time. Yesalis maintains that drug testing, as
practiced at past games, has been a "farce."
"Just because of my own value system, I have never seriously entertained
legalizing drugs," says Yesalis. "But the stench of the hypocrisy is starting to
outweigh my hesitation to just throw up my hands and say, 'Let everybody do
whatever they want.'"
For years, EPO has been difficult to detect with standard urine and blood
tests. Newer tests that may pick up EPO use can not detect Aranesp,
Amgen's newer, longer-lasting version of the protein.
In the near future, drug testing may be of little use. Gene therapy, a set of
medical technologies that plant new genes in a person's cells in order to
produce missing proteins, might be used both to save lives and to ramp up
athletic performance. And if the past is any guide, it won't be long before the
technology moves from the laboratory to the training field.
Malcolm Brenner, a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine and the
current head of the American Society of Gene Therapy, says that such gene
therapy is already being done. A researcher at Baylor is working on a therapy
that would allow cancer patients to produce extra human growth hormone
(HGH), lessening their symptoms.
A ring
of DNA containing a gene that starts the body producing extra HGH is
injected into the patient's muscle. These cells start to produce the hormone,
boosting levels of it in the body more smoothly than occurs with injection. The
work looked promising in animals, and the researchers wanted to move on to
human trials.
Human gene therapy trials are tightly controlled. The Recombinant DNA
Advisory Committee, a division of the National Institutes of Health that
approves all gene therapy experiments, has yet to make a decision on
whether this technique should move into the clinic. But one concern they
brought up is that athletes, some of whom already inject HGH, might use this
gene therapy instead.
It does not make sense to not treat sick people in order to prevent healthy
athletes from cheating. Instead, we should focus on preventing performanceenhancing drugs from making the athletes sick.
One step in the right direction is to focus on the dangerous side effects, not
the drugs themselves. Bowers says that this year, endurance athletes like
speed skaters and cross-country skiers are being tested to see if their blood is
too thick with red blood cells. That can be a side effect of abusing EPO. But
the athletes would not be blamed; instead, their health would be protected .
http://www.forbes.com/2002/02/15/0215ped.html