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Date: April 18, 2024 Thu
Time: 9:26 pm
Time: 9:26 pm
Results for doping
1 results foundAuthor: Donati, Alessandro Title: World Traffic in Doping Substances Summary: 1. DOES EVERYONE KNOW WHAT DOPING IS? The English word "doping" is used worldwide but, up to about twenty years ago, only athletes and sports experts were aware of its meaning. Then, year after year, as one case followed closely behind another and involved high-level athletes from different sports disciplines, everyone began to understand it. Doping scandals among sports stars have deeply influenced the dissemination of the term "doping" to the extent that, nowadays, if you were to ask 1,000 people "do you know what doping is?", at least 990 of them would link it to sports and reply that it is a system used by athletes to artificially enhance their performances. Everyone knows that doping is currently used by a relatively significant number of athletes in different sports disciplines. Most people, however, are not aware of the fact that this phenomenon originated outside the world of sport and now extends well beyond it. Two of the purposes of this critical overview of the doping phenomenon are to explain the essentials of its origin and its diverse destinations. Indeed, without this background, it would be impossible to have a comprehensive view of the ramifications and the social hazard that doping entails, and it would be impossible to implement the measures necessary, if not to defeat it, at least to check its development. 1.1 The different origins of doping Researchers created most of the pharmaceutical substances used for doping practices as treatments for specific diseases: such is the case for amphetamines, anabolic steroids, growth hormone or GH, erythropoietin hormone or EPO, other peptide hormones that stimulate endogenous testosterone production, and many other drugs. Also, the doping process most used in sports, blood transfusion or blood doping, originated as an emergency treatment in the case of critical and copious bleeding or a critical reduction in red blood cells. There is also the case of particular stimulants and synthetic testosterone-based drugs -anabolic steroids - that were specifically created to support and increase the aggressiveness of German soldiers fighting, often in extremely stressful environments, in World War II. It is also well known that US pilots used stimulants. Obviously, these drugs were administered by military physicians. Only recently, and as a purely secondary phenomenon, researchers have modified molecules already known in the field of sports doping (for instance, anabolic steroids) so that they cannot be identified and, therefore, would be untraceable in doping tests. This is the case for the modified steroid THG, discovered on the occasion of the BALCO case 4. Another case of modified anabolic steroids was brought to light by the Canadian customs police, who stopped a Russian athlete. Also, the NAS Carabinieri - a unit of the Italian police particularly qualified in anti-doping investigations - recently intercepted boxes of a modified anabolic steroid coming from China in the hands of a criminal organization. 1.2 The various destinations of doping We have already mentioned experiments with drugs carried out, as far back as the 1940s, on soldiers. As we said, these were administered to provide both physical and mental support: on the one hand, they increased physical strength and endurance and, on the other, they lowered the perception of danger and enhanced self-awareness and a sense of belonging to the group. You will find further on in this overview evidence, supported by striking incidents, that doping among soldiers has never ceased. But the distinction between soldiers and other military or paramilitary corps such as policemen, gaolers or firemen is often slight; indeed, doping is widespread among these corps. Just as slight is the distinction between state police and various forms of private police organizations working as security personnel and bodyguards. All these aspects are extensively discussed further on 8. Doping among soldiers and policemen began in the 1940s and became increasingly widespread and progressively heavier and, therefore, more hazardous health-wise. Doping among body builders also has a long background: it began in the USA around 1950. However, while among soldiers the consumption of doping substances occurred only in specific periods of time and, in most cases, the dosage was relatively low, among body builders, who are driven by the irrepressible impulse to increase the size of their muscles, the dosage was significantly higher than the dosage for which these drugs had been tested in the medical field. One can easily imagine the dangerous combination of motivations triggered in a soldier who is also a determined body builder. In the following paragraphs, we shall also discuss how, since the 1970s, cinema influenced, both deliberately and unconsciously, the dissemination of the body builder stereotype. Beginning in those years, doping has become increasingly widespread among actors who need to have a particularly good appearance, especially when the results have to be attained in the few months between casting and the first shoots. Progressively, doping spread to the theatre, to ballet, and even to fashion, so that now it is no longer restricted to actors but involves the whole show business milieu. Doping in sports, on the contrary, did not begin in a specific period but developed alongside sports. It is not necessary to go back to sports in Ancient Greece, with the fraud and the quest for magical potions that characterized a large part of the history of sports. We need only refer to the cases of doping that were brought to light as early as 1904, during the Saint Louis Olympic Games, even though there were no specific tests. From then on, new, increasingly sophisticated forms of doping were developed, closely connected to the development of sports performances, so that it is now impossible to separate and distinguish between the effects of one factor (doping) from the values of the other factor (the operational capacity of athletes, coaches and the entire sports system). Lastly, thanks to these four channels of dissemination - military, show business, body building and sports - pharmaceutical companies became aware, as of the 1970s, of a situation that was surprising and perverse but economically very profitable: a significant number of healthy subjects were willing to consume large quantities of drugs meant for the treatment of various diseases just to look better, although they were aware that, in so doing, they ran the risk of becoming unhealthy. With carefully studied production and distribution strategies on the borderline between legal and illegal practices, some pharmaceutical companies filled the market with huge quantities of drugs, mainly hormones, which were advertised in turn as adjuvant treatment for serious diseases, dietary supplements or wondrous anti-aging remedies. Such improper use of pharmaceutical substances, put into practice by the very industries that were more aware than anyone of these drugs' side effects, is the fifth and last destination stream. Details: Montreal: World Anti-Coping Agency, 2007. 109p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 26, 2019 at: https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/WADA_Donati_Report_On_Trafficking_2007.pdf Year: 2007 Country: International URL: https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/WADA_Donati_Report_On_Trafficking_2007.pdf Shelf Number: 155559 Keywords: Athletes DopingIllegal Drugs Sports Doping |