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Not sure if this is the right section but I thought I would post this little article I wrote.
An intersting read.
In 1926 Professor Fred Koch and Lemeul C. McGee from the University of Chicago, discovered testosterone. Koch and McGee began their research by acquiring 40 pounds of bull testicles and proceeding to extract the hormone by stewing the bull testicles in alcohol, acetone, and benzene.
The result of their efforts was 20 milligrams of a substance they believed to be the male sex hormone. To prove this Koch and McGee injected a capon (a neutered rooster) with the substance, and within two weeks the capon began to take on the appearance and behavior of a rooster. They repeated the experiment and came up with the same results. In 1929 Koch and Dr. T. F. Gallagher refined the original technique. They were able to create a much greater quantity of the mysterious hormone by using 1,000 pounds of bull testicles, instead of the smaller amount used several years before. The two scientists, along with Dr. A. T. Kenyon, performed experiments on a eunuch to prove that the hormone worked in humans, too. The results of this experiment left no doubt that the male sex hormone existed.
By 1935 Ernest Laqueur, a Jewish-German pharmacologist working in Amsterdam, extracted a few milligrams of pure hormone. Then he determined the hormone’s molecular structure very precisely. Laqueur is the scientist credited with naming the hormone “testosterone.”
During the same time period two other scientists—Ruzicka, a Yugoslav chemist, and Butendant, a German chemist—managed to synthesize the hormone from cholesterol. By the autumn of 1935, preparations of testosterone were being made available to the medical community for testing and treatment purposes. Iin 1939, both groups of scientists who worked on the isolation and synthesis of testosterone were awarded the Nobel Prize for their efforts. Only Ruzicka accepted the award. The German scientists stayed home.
In 1954, at the world weight lifting championships in Vienna, Austria, a Soviet sports physician is said to have told Dr. John Ziegler, the U.S. weight lifting team’s doctor, about the Soviets’ use of testosterone. Ziegler took the Soviets’ ideas back to the York Barbell Club, where he and a few other weight lifters began experimenting with testosterone, achieving some good results. In time, Dr. Ziegler, who worked at Ciba Pharmaceutical Company, became concerned about the side effects of testosterone and sought other drugs that might have the same effect.
One of the first to come into use was a steroid known as Dianabol. Dianabol was developed by Ciba Pharmaceutical Company and came onto the market in 1958. Ziegler, concerned about the effects of testosterone, switched his weight lifters to the drug.
York Barbell in the late 1950s and early 1960s was the home of many of the United States’ most prominent weight lifters. Among those athletes who trained at the club were: Bill March, who once held the world record in the standing press; Gary Cleveland, who twice won the U.S. senior national championships; Tony Garcy, and Norbert Schemansky, who won four Olympic medals.
In developing dianabol (methandrostenolone), Ziegler was looking to lessen the androgenic effects of testosterone, while maintaining its musclebuilding properties. After the drug was developed, he initially experimented on himself to see how well the drug worked. In 1960, Ziegler started giving dianabol to March and Jake Hitchens.
Ziegler had March take 10 milligrams of dianabol a day. Within two months, March increased his strength so much that he was able to increase the weight he lifted in competition by 100 pounds. March, following Ziegler’s training and medical advice, won the U.S. Senior Nationals from 1961 to 1965. In addition, he took home a gold medal at the 1963 Pan American games. During the Pan Am games, he set a new world record in his event.
In December 2006, Dick Smith described Ziegler’s approach to a reporter for the York Daily Record. Smith also told the newspaper that the doctor “would prescribe five milligrams to the lighter men, 10 milligrams to the middleweights and, (to) the heavier guys, 15 milligrams a day.”
As more and more athletes started using steroids without medical supervision, in ever-larger doses, Ziegler became concerned about the side effects and the harm they could cause to a person’s health. By 1967, Ziegler had become convinced that steroids were not something athletes should use to gain an edge over their competitors. In an issue of Strength & Health magazine from that time, he let it be known, “Androgenic anabolic steroids . . . are categorically condemned for the athlete.”
Eventually, though, some athletes stopped following Dr. Ziegler’s instructions and started taking larger and larger doses of dianabol. According to March, “One thing led to another. Some people figured if one pill helped, what would five do for you? They wanted faster results. Then they started selling it on the side. I’m not going to name names, but I knew what was going on. Guys got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.” Dick Smith, who was March’s personal trainer during the 1960s, added,“For some guys, it’s never enough. If a little is good, a whole lot must be better. It started getting out of hand.”
1967 International Olympic Committee bans performance-enhancing drug use during Olympic competition
1969 First recorded use of steroids in baseball (Tom House)
1975 Tour de France winner uses testosterone during the three-week stage race. In 1977, the same rider tests positive for doping during the Paris-Nice stage race (Bernard Thevenet)
1976 After being banned in 1974, IOCintroduces steroid testing during the Summer Olympics
1984 Human growth hormone emerges as a potential performance-enhancing drug
1988 Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson tests positive for stanozolol at the Summer Olympics
1988 Weight lifters from various East Bloc countries test positive for steroid use (Hunganrian And Bulgarian Athletes) in Seoul, South Korea.
1988 In November 1988, the distribution of steroids for nonmedical uses was outlawed in the United
States
1991 Dr. George Zaharian, 3rd, convicted for illegally distributing steroids to professional wrestlers
1991 Ben Johnson returns to competition. His return would be short-lived. After testing positive for testosterone at a meet in Montreal in early 1993, Johnson was handed a lifetime ban from competition.
1992 Various athletes test positive for the asthma medication clenbuterol at the Summer Olympics
1999 In November, a new antidoping agency comes into existence: The World Anti-Doping Agency.
Late 1990s Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative starts distributing various steroids to professional athletes (iwiki article is a good read, can't post links yet)
2000 American track and field athlete tests positive for nandrolone four times prior to Summer Olympics, bows out of competition in Sydney while proclaiming his innocence (C.J. Hunter)
2003–2005 Dr. James Shortt implicated in providing steroids to Carolina Panthers football team. He pleads guilty in March 2006.
2003 BALCO scandal erupts, implicating a large number of athletes
Most of this information I have taken from: Dope : a history of performance enhancement in sports from the nineteenth century to today by Daniel M. Rosen.
An intersting read.
In 1926 Professor Fred Koch and Lemeul C. McGee from the University of Chicago, discovered testosterone. Koch and McGee began their research by acquiring 40 pounds of bull testicles and proceeding to extract the hormone by stewing the bull testicles in alcohol, acetone, and benzene.
The result of their efforts was 20 milligrams of a substance they believed to be the male sex hormone. To prove this Koch and McGee injected a capon (a neutered rooster) with the substance, and within two weeks the capon began to take on the appearance and behavior of a rooster. They repeated the experiment and came up with the same results. In 1929 Koch and Dr. T. F. Gallagher refined the original technique. They were able to create a much greater quantity of the mysterious hormone by using 1,000 pounds of bull testicles, instead of the smaller amount used several years before. The two scientists, along with Dr. A. T. Kenyon, performed experiments on a eunuch to prove that the hormone worked in humans, too. The results of this experiment left no doubt that the male sex hormone existed.
By 1935 Ernest Laqueur, a Jewish-German pharmacologist working in Amsterdam, extracted a few milligrams of pure hormone. Then he determined the hormone’s molecular structure very precisely. Laqueur is the scientist credited with naming the hormone “testosterone.”
During the same time period two other scientists—Ruzicka, a Yugoslav chemist, and Butendant, a German chemist—managed to synthesize the hormone from cholesterol. By the autumn of 1935, preparations of testosterone were being made available to the medical community for testing and treatment purposes. Iin 1939, both groups of scientists who worked on the isolation and synthesis of testosterone were awarded the Nobel Prize for their efforts. Only Ruzicka accepted the award. The German scientists stayed home.
In 1954, at the world weight lifting championships in Vienna, Austria, a Soviet sports physician is said to have told Dr. John Ziegler, the U.S. weight lifting team’s doctor, about the Soviets’ use of testosterone. Ziegler took the Soviets’ ideas back to the York Barbell Club, where he and a few other weight lifters began experimenting with testosterone, achieving some good results. In time, Dr. Ziegler, who worked at Ciba Pharmaceutical Company, became concerned about the side effects of testosterone and sought other drugs that might have the same effect.
One of the first to come into use was a steroid known as Dianabol. Dianabol was developed by Ciba Pharmaceutical Company and came onto the market in 1958. Ziegler, concerned about the effects of testosterone, switched his weight lifters to the drug.
York Barbell in the late 1950s and early 1960s was the home of many of the United States’ most prominent weight lifters. Among those athletes who trained at the club were: Bill March, who once held the world record in the standing press; Gary Cleveland, who twice won the U.S. senior national championships; Tony Garcy, and Norbert Schemansky, who won four Olympic medals.
In developing dianabol (methandrostenolone), Ziegler was looking to lessen the androgenic effects of testosterone, while maintaining its musclebuilding properties. After the drug was developed, he initially experimented on himself to see how well the drug worked. In 1960, Ziegler started giving dianabol to March and Jake Hitchens.
Ziegler had March take 10 milligrams of dianabol a day. Within two months, March increased his strength so much that he was able to increase the weight he lifted in competition by 100 pounds. March, following Ziegler’s training and medical advice, won the U.S. Senior Nationals from 1961 to 1965. In addition, he took home a gold medal at the 1963 Pan American games. During the Pan Am games, he set a new world record in his event.
In December 2006, Dick Smith described Ziegler’s approach to a reporter for the York Daily Record. Smith also told the newspaper that the doctor “would prescribe five milligrams to the lighter men, 10 milligrams to the middleweights and, (to) the heavier guys, 15 milligrams a day.”
As more and more athletes started using steroids without medical supervision, in ever-larger doses, Ziegler became concerned about the side effects and the harm they could cause to a person’s health. By 1967, Ziegler had become convinced that steroids were not something athletes should use to gain an edge over their competitors. In an issue of Strength & Health magazine from that time, he let it be known, “Androgenic anabolic steroids . . . are categorically condemned for the athlete.”
Eventually, though, some athletes stopped following Dr. Ziegler’s instructions and started taking larger and larger doses of dianabol. According to March, “One thing led to another. Some people figured if one pill helped, what would five do for you? They wanted faster results. Then they started selling it on the side. I’m not going to name names, but I knew what was going on. Guys got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.” Dick Smith, who was March’s personal trainer during the 1960s, added,“For some guys, it’s never enough. If a little is good, a whole lot must be better. It started getting out of hand.”
1967 International Olympic Committee bans performance-enhancing drug use during Olympic competition
1969 First recorded use of steroids in baseball (Tom House)
1975 Tour de France winner uses testosterone during the three-week stage race. In 1977, the same rider tests positive for doping during the Paris-Nice stage race (Bernard Thevenet)
1976 After being banned in 1974, IOCintroduces steroid testing during the Summer Olympics
1984 Human growth hormone emerges as a potential performance-enhancing drug
1988 Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson tests positive for stanozolol at the Summer Olympics
1988 Weight lifters from various East Bloc countries test positive for steroid use (Hunganrian And Bulgarian Athletes) in Seoul, South Korea.
1988 In November 1988, the distribution of steroids for nonmedical uses was outlawed in the United
States
1991 Dr. George Zaharian, 3rd, convicted for illegally distributing steroids to professional wrestlers
1991 Ben Johnson returns to competition. His return would be short-lived. After testing positive for testosterone at a meet in Montreal in early 1993, Johnson was handed a lifetime ban from competition.
1992 Various athletes test positive for the asthma medication clenbuterol at the Summer Olympics
1999 In November, a new antidoping agency comes into existence: The World Anti-Doping Agency.
Late 1990s Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative starts distributing various steroids to professional athletes (iwiki article is a good read, can't post links yet)
2000 American track and field athlete tests positive for nandrolone four times prior to Summer Olympics, bows out of competition in Sydney while proclaiming his innocence (C.J. Hunter)
2003–2005 Dr. James Shortt implicated in providing steroids to Carolina Panthers football team. He pleads guilty in March 2006.
2003 BALCO scandal erupts, implicating a large number of athletes
Most of this information I have taken from: Dope : a history of performance enhancement in sports from the nineteenth century to today by Daniel M. Rosen.
