EPO development and NASA

[rhubroma]

EPO development and NASA.

Just out of curiosity has anybody heard of this? While on a ride today, one of the guys I know, who raced with Berzin and Chiappucci as an amateur, said that EPO was developed by NASA for astronauts, since during prolonged periods in outer space their hematocrit level dropped to circa 15%. He also held a conviction, in a most matter of fact way as if merely common history, that Lemond was the first to use it (although he must have meant at the Tour). Armstrong would have also been doped "by NASA," according to my source, no doubt under the aegis of George Bush then in power.

Now apart from the fact that before a hypothetical Lemond, Moser was given experimental doses of it by Conconi in preparation for the hour record, I have never heard such an account. I know it also smacks of a conspiracy theory, however, just for curiosity sake, I looked up EPO development and NASA on the web and found these sources. One would indeed seem to confirm that NASA developed the drug in the 60's:


http://ntrs.larc.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19680042555&qs=Ns%3DLoaded-Date|0%26N%3D4294926776

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/CBOSS-02-Erythropoietin.html

Of course everybody thinks they know what has really taken place and I've heard many a tale through the proverbial grape vine, by those who claim to be "true insiders," however, this one is certainly the most clamorous and for many reasons far-fetched.

At all events, just a report on what one can at times hear on bike rides in Italy.

 

[131313]

One would indeed seem to confirm that NASA developed the drug in the 60's:


http://ntrs.larc.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19680042555&qs=Ns%3DLoaded-Date|0%26N%3D4294926776

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/CBOSS-02-Erythropoietin.html

Of course everybody thinks they know what has really taken place and I've

No one "developed" EPO, unless you want to go back several million years into the evolutionary process. Unless you believe the world is 5,000 years old, but that's a different story...

EPO was discovered and named in the early 1900's, so there's nothing all that ground-breaking in NASA doing tests on it in the 60's. Synthetic EPO is another matter. It wasn't synthesized until the 80's, with the clinical trials being done in the late 80's.

As far as NASA doping up LeMond, I think folks are giving cycling a bit more importance than it's ever had, particularly in the US. NASA doesn't really have much interest in guys who shave their legs and ride a bike around in short pants, particularly in the 80's, when being an American cyclists was about as noteworthy as being a Belgium baseball player. I love a good conspiracy though, and this one is certainly a good one. Those guys should give Lance a call. He could use some good news, and evidence of LeMond doping would make him happy.

 

[DirtyWorks]

That's Not How it Works

Lots and lots of interesting ideas come out of DARPA/NASA. It's the American version of industrial development policy.

Turning a NASA-built anything into a mass market anything is a long, risky and expensive road as evidenced by the time it took EPO to get to market.

Regarding Lemond and the allegations he was doping with EPO, it has has been posted 1000 times before, and I will summarize the response.

1. Doping in cycling always is eventually revealed with specific allegations that are eventually coroborated and as such proven true. No one has ever come back around with specifics regarding Lemond doping. Ever.

The leverage for the allegations comes from completely false assumption EPO use was widespread early in Lemond's era. The other wrong assumption is pre-EPO doping was equivalent to oxygen vector doping. It's not.

2. Lemond's performances were consistent over his entire career going back to being an amateur. This is entirely unlike the common hero-to-packfill doper.

 

[DirtyWorks]

NASA doesn't really have much interest in guys who shave their legs and ride a bike around in short pants, particularly in the 80's, when being an American cyclists was about as noteworthy as being a Belgium baseball player.

You understate the era!

Competitive cycling wasn't even half as legitimate as running in the 80's. "You do what? Why are you still playing with bicycles? Where's your car?" with puzzled looks and disregard following that.

Cue "you guys have it easy!!!! When I was a kid I walked a mile to school uphill, both ways" speech.

 

[ChewbaccaD]

That's some Nazi frogman s*&t right there.

 

[rhubroma]

No one "developed" EPO, unless you want to go back several million years into the evolutionary process. Unless you believe the world is 5,000 years old, but that's a different story...

EPO was discovered and named in the early 1900's, so there's nothing all that ground-breaking in NASA doing tests on it in the 60's. Synthetic EPO is another matter. It wasn't synthesized until the 80's, with the clinical trials being done in the late 80's.

As far as NASA doping up LeMond, I think folks are giving cycling a bit more importance than it's ever had, particularly in the US. NASA doesn't really have much interest in guys who shave their legs and ride a bike around in short pants, particularly in the 80's, when being an American cyclists was about as noteworthy as being a Belgium baseball player. I love a good conspiracy though, and this one is certainly a good one. Those guys should give Lance a call. He could use some good news, and evidence of LeMond doping would make him happy.

Just for clarification, I do not subscribe to the idea that NASA was part of an 80's "build American cycling program" to launch in Europe as another weapon in the superpower's galactic Cold War propaganda armory.

I was simply reporting a sensational (in the sensationalist sense) claim I was told, with all the conviction as if it were a commonplace historical fact. Having said that, it really is interesting to note how many Italian cyclists of a couple of generations ago really have been convinced that there were "higher powers" at work, within the US sport arena. Call it living that history from a pawn's set of eyes, an admixture of admiration/awe that many Italians of that generation came to view US culture and government through in any operative sense, including the funding and development of sport - whatever.

The reason behind my original post was purely anthropological.

 

[rhubroma]

Lots and lots of interesting ideas come out of DARPA/NASA. It's the American version of industrial development policy.

Turning a NASA-built anything into a mass market anything is a long, risky and expensive road as evidenced by the time it took EPO to get to market.

Regarding Lemond and the allegations he was doping with EPO, it has has been posted 1000 times before, and I will summarize the response.

1. Doping in cycling always is eventually revealed with specific allegations that are eventually coroborated and as such proven true. No one has ever come back around with specifics regarding Lemond doping. Ever.

The leverage for the allegations comes from completely false assumption EPO use was widespread early in Lemond's era. The other wrong assumption is pre-EPO doping was equivalent to oxygen vector doping. It's not.

2. Lemond's performances were consistent over his entire career going back to being an amateur. This is entirely unlike the common hero-to-packfill doper.

Without NASA we wouldn't have aluminum foil, velcro and spandex.

 

[DirtyWorks]

The reason behind my original post was purely anthropological.

You can't give the Lemond trolls a break.

I probably came off stronger than I needed but, if there's no clarification sometimes this kind of thing takes off and becomes the equivalent of creationist history with people riding around on dinosaurs on an impossibly young planet.

 

[rhubroma]

You can't give the Lemond trolls a break.

I probably came off stronger than I needed but, if there's no clarification sometimes this kind of thing takes off and becomes the equivalent of creationist history with people riding around on dinosaurs on an impossibly young planet.

I realize this, but the thing that struck was the detachment with which the views were communicated. And I've heard lots of them.

 

[131313]

I realize this, but the thing that struck was the detachment with which the views were communicated. And I've heard lots of them.

FWIW, I heard the exact same views expressed about Armstrong when I began racing professionally. The "word on the street", expressed by probably 15 different domestic pros, was that LA had some special military drug, and Nike, Oakley and Wiesel were behind it.

It appears the truth is a lot more mundane, and they did it the old fashion way: pay off the people enforcing the rules.

 

[rhubroma]

FWIW, I heard the exact same views expressed about Armstrong when I began racing professionally. The "word on the street", expressed by probably 15 different domestic pros, was that LA had some special military drug, and Nike, Oakley and Wiesel were behind it.

It appears the truth is a lot more mundane, and they did it the old fashion way: pay off the people enforcing the rules.

Evidently this is what is meant by a "trickledown effect." In fact my "source" was a good dilettante on pane e acqua as they say, who competed against several of those who went on to be stars among the pros in the early 90’s, naturally doped. "They are today physically in pieces (a pezzi)", he assured me citing Berzin as the primary example, whereas in light of his purity he can still ride hard at 50 years-old was the gist of it.

The absurdity of it seemed like a kind of wonton vindication.

 

[noddy69]

It wasnt developed by nasa but given to the lizard king on earth by his bretheren to aid the chosen one who was just born and who reigned for 7 years at the tour,only outed when blinking and the lizard eyes gave him away.

 

[rhubroma]

It wasnt developed by nasa but given to the lizard king on earth by his bretheren to aid the chosen one who was just born and who reigned for 7 years at the tour,only outed when blinking and the lizard eyes gave him away.

The more likely, which is why he always wore those alien Oakley sunglasses I'm sure.

 

[Tinman]

EPO was discovered and named in the early 1900's, so there's nothing all that ground-breaking in NASA doing tests on it in the 60's. Synthetic EPO is another matter. It wasn't synthesized until the 80's, with the clinical trials being done in the late 80's.

Protein chemistry is highly complex, and EPO is one of the more complex proteins developed to date. Synthesizing it is no small feat and would have been beyond NASA unless they would have put a significant research program on it. Producing it in quantities for an athlete doping program is another level again. Less likely before the mid 80's than the NASA moon program being fake.

Rumors of Lance on a special access drug are likely to have been true. He would have had supply through Weisel at Amgen who had the patent for EPO synthesis.

 

[rhubroma]

Protein chemistry is highly complex, and EPO is one of the more complex proteins developed to date. Synthesizing it is no small feat and would have been beyond NASA unless they would have put a significant research program on it. Producing it in quantities for an athlete doping program is another level again. Less likely before the mid 80's than the NASA moon program being fake.

Rumors of Lance on a special access drug are likely to have been true. He would have had supply through Weisel at Amgen who had the patent for EPO synthesis.

Again not to go down the road of conspiracy theories and in the spirit of pure conjecture, one cogent reason, however, why NASA would have taken a keen interest in EPO (which one of the links I posted clearly demonstrated that it did from the 60's, thus coinciding with the lunar mission), was the problem of no gravity induced low hematocrit levels and re-entry boosts for astronauts. Given the sophisticated nature of the NASA research and development capacity, it seems at least plausible that it would not have been beyond its means to fabricate a precocious synthetic version of the hormone in laboratory.

Perhaps it then found its way into the pharm companies (through a lucrative deal?) and, by extension, eventually to athletes. I know that sounds rather like a Bionic Man scenario, although precisely such a TV series during the 70's demonstrates a certain level of pop mystique and enigma surrounding the non-disclosed technological advancements of NASA before the general public, from which it isn't a far leap to arrive at the type of convictions maintained by my Italian cyclist. This at least seems to be the general line of thought from which such convictions have arrisen here and, apparently, is what Italian cyclists were being told and believed about the origins of EPO by their team DSs and medics, at the time when it exploded in the pro and amatuer pelotons in the early to mid 90's. In addition, naturally, to the fact that Dr. Conconi began doing EPO trial tests on Italian Olympic athletes, including cyclists, with CONI's support in the 80's. Yet the environment believed that it was a drug first produced by NASA, which to me is an astounding position, as I literally said to this guy, astounding position, both in the sensational nature of the claim and the presupposition upon which it was founded.

Mine is just an attempt, at the level of intellectual detachment, to comprehend how such rumors gain widespread currency.

As to the Lance rumors: pretty much what 131313 was told, I have heard the same ones.

 

[Tinman]

Again not to go down the road of conspiracy theories, however, one cogent reason why NASA would have taken a keen interest in EPO (which one of the links I posted clearly demonstrated that it did from the 60's, thus coinciding with the lunar mission), was the problem of no gravity induced low hematocrit levels and re-entry boosts for astronauts. Given the sophisticated nature of the NASA research and development capacity, it seems at least plausible that it would not have been beyond its means to fabricate a precocious synthetic version of the hormone in laboratory.

Perhaps it then found its way into the pharm companies (through a lucrative deal?) and, by extension, eventually athletes. I know that sounds rather like a Bionic Man scenario, although precisely such a TV series during the 70's demonstrates a certain level of pop mystique and enigma about the non-disclosed technological advancements of NASA before the general public, from which it isn't a far leap to make to arrive at the type of convictions maintained by my Italian cyclist. This at least seems to be the general line of thought from which such convictions have arrise here. In any case this is what, more or less, Italian cyclists were being told and believed about the history of EPO, at the time it went mainstream in the pro and amatuer pelotons in the early to mid 90's: apart from the fact that Dr. Conconi began doing EPO trial tests on Italian Olympic athletes, including cyclists, with CONI's support in the 80's.

In the pure spirit of conjecture, mind you.

As to the Lance rumors: pretty much what 131313 was told, I have heard the same ones.

Re NASA: Conjecture yes, likelihood close to zero (say less than 1%). This is not Velcro or Spandex type of discovery.