LeMond III

[HelmutRoole]

Re: Re:

...Eddy B. did not send Greg to Poland. Greg did one race in Poland as part of a series of races he did in Europe, based out of a friend's house in Switzerland if I remember correctly.

In Lemond's autobiography (the one with Kent Gordis) it says Eddie organized their participation in the race. Which, if you ask me, makes pretty good sense. Eddie would have had all the contacts there, so no need to doubt Lemond's words. Whether that counts as "sending" or not is a matter of taste. In the post you just quoted I said "arranged", which seems to be a fair choice of words judging from Lemond's autobiography.

edit: thanks for reposting the link to Inga Thompson's interview. Anyone who reads it will be able to make up their own minds about Eddie B.
As to your suggestion that some riders have vouched for Eddie: you'll no doubt remember that several riders vouched for Ferrari, for Del Moral, for Pepe Marti, or for Geert Leinders. It really means very little.

Inga Thompson had little to no interaction with Eddy B. She refused to blood dope at the 84 Olympics (17 of the 24 riders refused) and found it morally outrageous. A justified reaction in my opinion. She felt "run out of the sport" (worked too hard) as retribution for refusing to dope.

But here's the thing. Sixteen other riders refused. That's a large majority of the Olympic squad. I find it hard to believe that Eddy B would toss 71% of his top talent for any reason.

I'd like to ask you a couple questions: What is Steve Tilford's stance on doping and the riders who dope? Do you think Steve Tilford is a doper?

Here's Steve's first hand account of his time with Eddy B. http://stevetilford.com/2013/02/19/eddie-b/

John Swanson

Did they? Is that what they said?

Goodness. I don't think Alexi Grewal would've turned down a transfusion. He sure rode like he downed a pint. And Connie Carpenter? She beats Twigg, a track athlete with chops, in a two-up sprint? And Twigg, According to herself, she was up a pint when she lost to Carpenter, who was riding, at the time...clean?

Does it really seem plausible?

Well, I know if I won a gold medal and someone ask me if I blood doped I say say no too. Come to think of it, most do, right?

 

[sniper]

Re:

Squaw Valley!

Junior Doping Camp.

I'm amazed none of this stuff has really come to the surface before. The Germans have at least thrown light on their junior doping past from the communist era with research studies and newspaper articles dedicated to that. The US not really, at least to my knowledge, athough there are some works circulating that do address it. (I will refer to, and cite from, these studies later)

So to get this straight: in 1976, Irving Dardik, as head of the USOC Medical Committee, makes several recommendations to USOC *explicitly* stressing the need for PED experimentation on American athletes (particularly juniors), including anabolic steroids and blood doping, with the purpose of closing the gap with East Germany and Russia. Closing this gap was high on the political agenda (cf. Amateur Sports Act) even more so after those two countries had gotten the better of the US in the medal table of the Montreal Games 1976.

Remarkably, Don Miller (head of USOC) likes the sound of what Dardik is saying and appoints Dardik, together with Hagerman (who by that time had studies on anabolic steroids and 'cardiorespiratory conditioning' on his resumee) and some others, to establish the department for sports medical science and exercise physiology at the heart of the first US OTC in Squaw Valley. The OTC in Squaw Valley opens in 1977, and one year later a second OTC opens in Colorado Springs, again with Dr. Irving Dardik as a driving force.
(If somebody has more details on this, i'd be obliged)

I will post up more links and quotes later. I need to organize the information but I have little time right now.
Much of what I'm finding comes from Google books which has no copy-paste function and so I have to type things off.

It sounds dramatic, but this has ramifications for how we view all US top performances and top athletes that emerged in the late 70s/early 80s through the OTC.

 

[blutto]

Re: Re:

Squaw Valley!

Junior Doping Camp.

I'm amazed none of this stuff has really come to the surface before. The Germans have at least thrown light on their junior doping past from the communist era with research studies and newspaper articles dedicated to that. The US not really, at least to my knowledge, athough there are some works circulating that do address it. (I will refer to, and cite from, these studies later)

So to get this straight: in 1976, Irving Dardik, as head of the USOC Medical Committee, makes several recommendations to USOC *explicitly* stressing the need for PED experimentation on American athletes (particularly juniors), including anabolic steroids and blood doping, with the purpose of closing the gap with East Germany and Russia. Closing this gap was high on the political agenda (cf. Amateur Sports Act) even more so after those two countries had gotten the better of the US in the medal table of the Montreal Games 1976.

Remarkably, Don Miller (head of USOC) likes the sound of what Dardik is saying and appoints Dardik, together with Hagerman (who by that time had studies on anabolic steroids and 'cardiorespiratory conditioning' on his resumee) and some others, to establish the department for sports medical science and exercise physiology at the heart of the first US OTC in Squaw Valley. The OTC in Squaw Valley opens in 1977, and one year later a second OTC opens in Colorado Springs, again with Dr. Irving Dardik as a driving force.
(If somebody has more details on this, i'd be obliged)

I will post up more links and quotes later. I need to organize the information but I have little time right now.
Much of what I'm finding comes from Google books which has no copy-paste function and so I have to type things off.

It sounds dramatic, but this has ramifications for how we view all US top performances and top athletes that emerged in the late 70s/early 80s through the OTC.

....and this idea of sports organizations being actively involved in "helping" the athletes under their umbrella goes back a ways....

... I remember back in the 60's reading this article in a magazine called Strength and Health ( ok a little background....weight training which definitely has benefits for a great number of sporting/fitness activities was in those days something hidden in back corners of western culture....in North America it was found in Charles Atlas ads in the backs of comic books and in two magazine chains, one run by the Weider brothers, and which primarily pushed bodybuilding and was the platform that launched Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger, and the other run by a guy named Bob Hoffman, whose primary interest was competitive weight lifting but who also covered bodybuilding because that was what probably paid the bills....anyway these magazines were one the few sources of info on training with weights so if that was an interest you piled thru these magazines and the cultures they represented....)

....anyways piling thru one of these magazines I run into a bit of 50's weight lifting history that kinda blew my mind...Hoffman, who had been involved with the US Olympic weight lifting team was faced with a big leap forward in the performance performance of the Soviet team...some sleuthing on his part revealed the Soviets were using agricultural grade steroids to push their program forward....so what is Hoffman's response to this? or rather what does he see as the problem....well, the big problem for Hoffman was how the crude agricultural steroids were destroying the Soviet athletes....and the solution?....go to a US drug company to develop steroids that were "safe" for human use which the drug company was apparently very happy to do....and that is, at least according to Hoffman, how the US became for a time a world leader in PED warfare....that bit of history was what the article unequivocally stated and he was proud as punch about this....

....so the moral of the story is Western sports organizations have a history being actively involved in pushing performance thru, uhhh, science ( read it just weren't the nasty communists that were doing that )....and these organizations, by necessity also got very good at covering their tracks ( see how the umbrella US track organization was shown to operate in the 90's....read, their mandate seemed more focused on covering up drug use than preventing it, and of course winning regularly...do remember that Carl Lewis had 6 positives covered up before the famous Ben Johnson fiasco....and then there were the Grewel cover-ups....)....

....so if US cycling was in the 70's being pushed to become more, uhhh, professional there is a fairly good chance they were following a pattern already well established and functioning quite successfully....do remember this was a period where the arms race very much extended to sports and winning was absolutely everything....

....just sayin' eh....

Cheers

 

[Zypherov]

Re: Re:

Mitochondrial DNA and Disease: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199601253340415

We were quite surprised that the remarkable review of mitochondrial DNA and disease by Johns (Sept. 7 issue)1 ended with the assumption that the American cyclist Greg LeMond retired in 1994 because of a “mitochondrial myopathy.” The genetics of mitochondrial DNA still present several enigmas, and certain mutations can be present at birth and become clinically manifest only in adulthood.2 Nevertheless, we think that the ATP-generating capacity of Greg LeMond's muscles should have fallen below their energy threshold well before 1993, the year of his last Tour de France race. The mitochondrial genome has an underdeveloped DNA-repair system and is liable to mutations provoked by exogenous as well as endogenous factors. So far, the only acquired mitochondrial myopathy identified is the one caused by long-term zidovudine therapy,3 and obviously, such an abnormality is not responsible for this champion's pathologic process.

Having had the privilege to follow Greg medically during certain of his races, we are very doubtful about the diagnosis of mitochondrial myopathy. Greg won the Tour de France three times (in 1986, 1989, and 1990). Each Tour de France includes at least 21 consecutive days of racing. The energy expenditure per day is estimated to be between 8000 and 9000 calories, especially when the course includes roads that wind up and down through the Alps and the Pyrenees.

A person with a genuine mitochondrial myopathy could not finish even one day of such a race and would not be selected to compete in this fantastic sporting event, which involves the 200 best cyclists in the world. Recently, Valberg et al.4 reported that, after running a mere five minutes, an Arabian mare had numerous abnormal mitochondria and complex I insufficiency (NADH coenzyme Q reductase) on muscle biopsy. It is very probable that Greg LeMond had a few modified mitochondria in his lower limbs, as we have found in other champion cyclists, especially those hampered by severe cramps.5 In addition, it is well known that abnormal mitochondria can be observed by electron-microscopical examination of muscle-biopsy specimens from patients with many disorders other than mitochondrial myopathy.5 Even though we know that age can reveal a mitochondrial myopathy,2 we think that such is not the case for Greg LeMond. He won his third Tour de France in 1990, and as enthusiastic fans of cycling races, we can hardly believe that such a gifted champion was already suffering from a mitochondrial myopathy. We think that all those who have won the Tour de France might have their mothers to thank for providing them with extraordinarily powerful mitochondria.

...so what exactly is the deal....the comments above seem to indicate that mitochondrial myopathy was not likely to have affected LeMond....and yet this idea was being "sold" by LeMond long after 93 ( he even went to the trouble of speaking to mito support groups )....so was this an elaborate charade ? because medical personnel can't be that incompetent for that long ( symptoms would start develop into some very serious issues...blindness, deafness, lot of muscle control and balance are biggies here )....and if so, what exactly was this charade hiding...

.....seems the longer we look at this the more correct sniper seems to get....and that this myopathy may well have been drug related...or an entirely new myopathy disease called LeMondiosis.....

Cheers

Could the mitochondrial myopathy have been caused by the lead fragments present in his body from the hunting accident ? But why then did the myopathy not manifest itself from the beginning after the hunting accident ? His dramatic rise to form during the 1989 Giro after been given Iron shots was outstanding. Went on to win the worlds,
and two more Tours and we all know what occured after that, his fall was as dramatic as his sudden rise.


http://topics.sciencedirect.com/topics/page/Mitochondrial_diseases

Greg LeMond’s mitochondrial myopathy

The mitochondrial diseases listed above are identified by specific enzymatic deficiencies. Greg LeMond was not born with any mitochondrial deficiencies, in fact he had
very strong mitochondria as evidenced by his superior athletic ability. Unlike the genetic diseases listed above, Greg LeMond contracted an acquired form of mitochondrial myopathy.
After winning the Tour de France in 1986, Greg began the next season racing and training in Europe when he crashed and broke his left hand. He felt fortunate because he could still fly fish with his right arm. While recuperating in the U.S. in the spring of 1987, Greg went on an impromptu turkey hunting expedition in a remote area of California with his uncle and brother-in-law. Turkeys have keen vision, so hunters must lie in wait from concealed positions. In a hunting accident, Greg’s back and right side were blasted with lead #2 shot pellets each 0.15" (3.8 mm) from a 12 gauge shotgun. The damage was extensive with collapse of his right lung, 5 pellets lodged in or around his heart, 5 pellets lodged in his liver, multiple pellets in his lungs, some pellets ripping through and through, an estimated 60 percent loss of his blood volume, and perhaps being only 15 minutes from death. If not for helicopter evacuation to University of California Davis Medical Center, he would have died out in the field. After surgery, three dozen lead pellets remained in his body and in vital organs. Removing all of them would have been too dangerous.
The severe injuries and painful recovery resulted in Greg losing a tremendous amount of muscle mass and fitness. In the first race he entered after the accident, he could only ride 1 mile. In the second race, he could only ride 12 miles. Despite an intestinal complication requiring a second operation, teams giving up on him, and a severe fitness deficit, Greg eventually came back to the sport he loved. With a disappointing start in the 1989 Giro d’Italia, Greg was ready to quit racing altogether, but with the encouragement of his wife Kathy, he tried to endure for a few more days. Toward the end of the Giro, he started feeling stronger and in the final Giro time trial he rode as hard as he could to test himself, beating his arch rival, Laurent Fignon. Greg knew he could be a Tour contender again. LeMond went on to win the 1989 Tour de France later that season by the closest margin ever (8 seconds), the 1989 world championship to cap his amazing comeback year, and then the 1990 Tour de France for his third and last Tour de France victory.
In subsequent years, Greg’s performance began to falter. The same riders he could easily drop on the mountain climbs were now dropping him. In an agonizing and frustrating period of his career, his body was letting him down. He could not figure out if he was overtraining or undertraining. Nothing was working. As it turned out, the shotgun pellets deep inside his body were leaching elemental lead into his blood stream and poisoning his mitochondria. Lead competes with calcium, binding to and interfering with critical mitochondrial enzymes. The result was altered cell calcium flow, impaired electron transport, increased reactive oxygen species, impaired antioxidant defenses, disrupted membrane ion channels, and ultimately diminished ATP energy generation from his mitochondria. Normally a single bullet does not cause lead poisoning because scar tissue surrounds the bullet and minimal lead is released into the body. In Greg’s case, the high number of pellets increased their surface area and several were lodged in the fluid spaces of his lungs’ pleural spaces and his heart’s pericardial space, allowing more lead to be dissolved. Also, when shotgun pellets collide with each other
and with bone, they create micro lead fragments, which are hard to see on X-rays but again increase the amount of lead that can be dissolved. When Greg exercises for more than an hour, his blood lead levels rise. Greg was diagnosed with a muscle biopsy which revealed the ragged red fibers that indicate mitochondrial myopathy. Greg’s case is very unique because it is rare for world class athlete in his prime to be affected by lead poisoning or have an acquired mitochondrial myopathy. Greg’s diagnosis was unusual because most laypeople had never heard of the disease and most doctors at the time had never diagnosed or treated patients with mitochondrial diseases. Greg LeMond’s diagnosis made the general public aware of mitochondrial disease and made physicians and researchers more attentive to mitochondrial science.

“We are at a crucial juncture in the perception of these disorders. The recent announcement by the American cyclist Greg LeMond that he is retiring from competitive cycling because of a mitochondrial myopathy has brought these mysterious disorders to the attention of the public.… This announcement has been a seminal event in the public awareness of the mitochondrial disorders.”

 

[blutto]

Re:

I think there's some misunderstanding. Myopathy is a disease of the muscles. Mitochondrial myopathy is a very particular form of myopathy and is *genetic* in cause. You can not dope your way to mitochondrial myopathy. Full stop.

John Swanson

....so what do you think of the following....

Greg LeMond’s mitochondrial myopathy

The mitochondrial diseases listed above are identified by specific enzymatic deficiencies. Greg LeMond was not born with any mitochondrial deficiencies, in fact he had very strong mitochondria as evidenced by his superior athletic ability. Unlike the genetic diseases listed above, Greg LeMond contracted an acquired form of mitochondrial myopathy.

Cheers

 

[blutto]

....and just to complicate things in an already complex situation there is also this....

In summary, because of the innate interconnectivity of mitochondrial complex I dysfunction, iron accumulation, oxidative stress, and inflammation, probably the initiation of any one of these factors will induce or enhance the others through the generation of a positive feedback loop that in time will end in apoptotic neuronal death. Still unanswered is the question of why neurons of the SNc are so particularly prone to carry-on this cycle. On examination of this cycle, several therapeutic targets come to mind. Its intervention should result in prolonged life of the affected neurons.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3948003/

....and this...which sounds oddly familiar doesn't it...

Excess free iron is a mitochondrial toxin that leads to derangements in energy metabolism

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1011689-overview


Cheers

 

[Maxiton]

Re: Re:

Could the mitochondrial myopathy have been caused by the lead fragments present in his body from the hunting accident ? But why then did the myopathy not manifest itself from the beginning after the hunting accident ? His dramatic rise to form during the 1989 Giro after been given Iron shots was outstanding. Went on to win the worlds,
and two more Tours and we all know what occured after that, his fall was as dramatic as his sudden rise.


http://topics.sciencedirect.com/topics/page/Mitochondrial_diseases

Greg LeMond’s mitochondrial myopathy

The mitochondrial diseases listed above are identified by specific enzymatic deficiencies. Greg LeMond was not born with any mitochondrial deficiencies, in fact he had
very strong mitochondria as evidenced by his superior athletic ability. Unlike the genetic diseases listed above, Greg LeMond contracted an acquired form of mitochondrial myopathy.

As it turned out, the shotgun pellets deep inside his body were leaching elemental lead into his blood stream and poisoning his mitochondria. Lead competes with calcium, binding to and interfering with critical mitochondrial enzymes. The result was altered cell calcium flow, impaired electron transport, increased reactive oxygen species, impaired antioxidant defenses, disrupted membrane ion channels, and ultimately diminished ATP energy generation from his mitochondria. Normally a single bullet does not cause lead poisoning because scar tissue surrounds the bullet and minimal lead is released into the body. In Greg’s case, the high number of pellets increased their surface area and several were lodged in the fluid spaces of his lungs’ pleural spaces and his heart’s pericardial space, allowing more lead to be dissolved. Also, when shotgun pellets collide with each other
and with bone, they create micro lead fragments, which are hard to see on X-rays but again increase the amount of lead that can be dissolved. When Greg exercises for more than an hour, his blood lead levels rise. Greg was diagnosed with a muscle biopsy which revealed the ragged red fibers that indicate mitochondrial myopathy. Greg’s case is very unique because it is rare for world class athlete in his prime to be affected by lead poisoning or have an acquired mitochondrial myopathy. Greg’s diagnosis was unusual because most laypeople had never heard of the disease and most doctors at the time had never diagnosed or treated patients with mitochondrial diseases.

I would just point out that the above extract is from a book called The Science of Fitness. The book's authors are listed as Greg LeMond and Mark Horn, M.D., "a Johns Hopkins University trained biologist (B.A. in Biology with Honors)".

Setting aside the obvious conflict of interest, the passage quoted does describe a mechanism by which lead pellets lodged in the body might induce a form of mitochondrial myopathy. At the very least this hypothesis has the tacit approval of Doctor Horn, and he may be the one who developed it.

Unless it can be shown that the mechanism described is not scientifically sound, it would seem to put to bed the idea that LeMond's particular form of myopathy was drug induced.

I post the above not as a participant in the debate, but as a moderator seeking to maintain balance.

 

[djpbaltimore]

According to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, these are the causes of Mitochondrial Myopathy.

What causes mitochondrial myopathies?
Mitochondrial myopathies are caused by mutations, or changes, in genes — the cells' blueprint for making proteins. They are inheritable, although they can occur with no family history, and they often affect members of the same family in different ways. For more, see Causes/Inheritance.

https://www.mda.org/disease/mitochondrial-myopathies

 

[Maxiton]

Re:

According to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, these are the causes of Mitochondrial Myopathy.

What causes mitochondrial myopathies?
Mitochondrial myopathies are caused by mutations, or changes, in genes — the cells' blueprint for making proteins. They are inheritable, although they can occur with no family history, and they often affect members of the same family in different ways. For more, see Causes/Inheritance.

https://www.mda.org/disease/mitochondrial-myopathies

Since we can take it as pretty much a given that the MDA knows whereof it speaks, then, it follows that the extract I quoted is hogwash, at least insofar as it concerns itself with mitochondrial myopathies. Would that be right?

 

[blutto]

Re: Re:

Could the mitochondrial myopathy have been caused by the lead fragments present in his body from the hunting accident ? But why then did the myopathy not manifest itself from the beginning after the hunting accident ? His dramatic rise to form during the 1989 Giro after been given Iron shots was outstanding. Went on to win the worlds,
and two more Tours and we all know what occured after that, his fall was as dramatic as his sudden rise.


http://topics.sciencedirect.com/topics/page/Mitochondrial_diseases

Greg LeMond’s mitochondrial myopathy

The mitochondrial diseases listed above are identified by specific enzymatic deficiencies. Greg LeMond was not born with any mitochondrial deficiencies, in fact he had
very strong mitochondria as evidenced by his superior athletic ability. Unlike the genetic diseases listed above, Greg LeMond contracted an acquired form of mitochondrial myopathy.

As it turned out, the shotgun pellets deep inside his body were leaching elemental lead into his blood stream and poisoning his mitochondria. Lead competes with calcium, binding to and interfering with critical mitochondrial enzymes. The result was altered cell calcium flow, impaired electron transport, increased reactive oxygen species, impaired antioxidant defenses, disrupted membrane ion channels, and ultimately diminished ATP energy generation from his mitochondria. Normally a single bullet does not cause lead poisoning because scar tissue surrounds the bullet and minimal lead is released into the body. In Greg’s case, the high number of pellets increased their surface area and several were lodged in the fluid spaces of his lungs’ pleural spaces and his heart’s pericardial space, allowing more lead to be dissolved. Also, when shotgun pellets collide with each other
and with bone, they create micro lead fragments, which are hard to see on X-rays but again increase the amount of lead that can be dissolved. When Greg exercises for more than an hour, his blood lead levels rise. Greg was diagnosed with a muscle biopsy which revealed the ragged red fibers that indicate mitochondrial myopathy. Greg’s case is very unique because it is rare for world class athlete in his prime to be affected by lead poisoning or have an acquired mitochondrial myopathy. Greg’s diagnosis was unusual because most laypeople had never heard of the disease and most doctors at the time had never diagnosed or treated patients with mitochondrial diseases.

I would just point out that the above extract is from a book called The Science of Fitness. The book's authors are listed as Greg LeMond and Mark Horn, M.D., "a Johns Hopkins University trained biologist (B.A. in Biology with Honors)".

Setting aside the obvious conflict of interest, the passage quoted does describe a mechanism by which lead pellets lodged in the body might induce a form of mitochondrial myopathy. At the very least this hypothesis has the tacit approval of Doctor Horn, and he may be the one who developed it.

Unless it can be shown that the mechanism described is not scientifically sound, it would seem to put to bed the idea that LeMond's particular form of myopathy was drug induced.

I post the above not as a participant in the debate, but as a moderator seeking to maintain balance.

....so we have LeMond as a co-author of an article that tries to map out a plausible reason for the appearance in LeMond of mitochondrial myopathy symptoms....and the best they can do is postulate a "might" connection to the lead pellets...the article might as well be called an advertorial....

...kinda ironic this comes from Johns Hopkins, the epicentre of advertorial production designed to further the validity of the war on drugs....

....which brings me back to something I asked several pages ago....what are they trying to hide with this pile of mito fueled BS ....and its not like they bring out peer reviewed studies to bolster their case. no, no, they go to a lot of trouble to write a fluff piece....the former would strengthen their case the latter is almost a smoking gun and we looked around more closely wouldn't be surprised if we didn't find a corpse full of lead , and the perp's fingerprints all over the place, and the perp's signature on a cheque to pay for the co-author's time....given what has been presented this looks real bad...

...and btw do note Horn is a radiologist.....and the following is a capsule view of the authors of Mitochondrial Fitness: The Science of Athletic Energy....

Greg LeMond is a legendary and pioneering bicyclist, three-time winner of the Tour de France (1986, 1989, and 1990), three-time World Cycling Champion (1979 junior, 1983, and 1989), author of "Greg LeMond's Complete Book of Bicycling”" (1988, with Kent Gordis), founder of the LeMond Fitness company, bicycle technology innovator, and fitness expert. Greg LeMond runs his company at GregLeMond.com, is a leader in the latest training equipment and power (watts) training devices, and has recently reintroduced his brand of LeMond bicycles. He contributes in many cycling periodicals, including Cycling News. He recently joined Eurosport as their Global Cycling Ambassador and as a TV sports commentator. Greg is uniquely qualified to describe the importance of mitochondria during the height of his racing career and also when mitochondrial myopathy resulted in his premature retirement from racing. He will explain why modern athletes need to know the science of fitness.

Dr. Mark Hom, M.D. is a Johns Hopkins University trained biologist (B.A. in Biology with Honors), an award winning artist (Kenan Art Award, first place), an award winning medical illustrator while attending medical school at the University of North Carolina (a UNC Dean's grant recipient and also a UNC Holderness Fellowship recipient), a practicing interventional radiologist (one of the most in demand medical specialties), an educator of young doctors (an Assistant Professor of Radiology), and an avid fitness cyclist (riding 4,000 miles per year). Dr. Hom will explain how the human body, various organ systems, and individual cells function in the biologic process of exercise. Dr. Hom will show that mitochondria are at the center of cell energy production, metabolism, and athletic performance, as well as an underlying cause of degeneration, aging, and many diseases. He is currently a member of the Department of Radiology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.

....and that bolded sentence is just a work of art, ain't it...jeez you would think they could have got someone to proof that...

Cheers

 

[blutto]

Re: Re:

According to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, these are the causes of Mitochondrial Myopathy.

What causes mitochondrial myopathies?
Mitochondrial myopathies are caused by mutations, or changes, in genes — the cells' blueprint for making proteins. They are inheritable, although they can occur with no family history, and they often affect members of the same family in different ways. For more, see Causes/Inheritance.

https://www.mda.org/disease/mitochondrial-myopathies

Since we can take it as pretty much a given that the MDA knows whereof it speaks, then, it follows that the extract I quoted is hogwash, at least insofar as it concerns itself with mitochondrial myopathies. Would that be right?

....presented that, uhhh, article to my wife, who btw is a medical researcher...the response started with WTF and then laughter and then belly laughs and then AYFKM...hogwash doesn't even begin to describe that, errr, article as presented....self-serving crap maybe ?....but who knows maybe that was a really bad choice of excerpt and the book is actually brilliant...

....find below something that may be germane to this....

To date, however, there are no investigations on the effect of low level lead exposure on striated muscles,

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9745908

Cheers

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...Did they? Is that what they said?

Goodness. I don't think Alexi Grewal would've turned down a transfusion. He sure rode like he downed a pint. And Connie Carpenter? She beats Twigg, a track athlete with chops, in a two-up sprint? And Twigg, According to herself, she was up a pint when she lost to Carpenter, who was riding, at the time...clean?

Does it really seem plausible?

Well, I know if I won a gold medal and someone ask me if I blood doped I say say no too.

Presenting all this stuff from the horse's mouth as fact doesn't really cut it, does it. Should we believe Wiggins when he says he never doped? Or Wiggins' wife when she says he would never lie?
Cancellara when he swears he'd never use a motor? Or Riis when he backs up Cancellara's story?

Here's an article from 1985 about the 1984 scandal.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19850222&id=mAsdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PX8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=7093,1678622&hl=en
The article mentions how they approached one rider to talk on the record about the matter, but the rider refused, because he was "fearful of repercussions from 7-Eleven, one of the sport's generous sponsors".
Go figure.

 

[blutto]

Re:

According to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, these are the causes of Mitochondrial Myopathy.

What causes mitochondrial myopathies?
Mitochondrial myopathies are caused by mutations, or changes, in genes — the cells' blueprint for making proteins. They are inheritable, although they can occur with no family history, and they often affect members of the same family in different ways. For more, see Causes/Inheritance.

https://www.mda.org/disease/mitochondrial-myopathies

Mitochondrial disorders may be caused by mutations, acquired or inherited, in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) or in nuclear genes that code for mitochondrial components. They may also be the result of acquired mitochondrial dysfunction due to adverse effects of drugs, infections, or other environmental causes (see MeSH).

Cheers

 

[Maxiton]

In fairness, though, we must look at the pathology and consider the hypothesis put forth to account for its development, regardless of the name given to the pathology. Sure, they called it "mitochondrial myopathy", perhaps to avoid any hint that it might have been drug induced, but could it have been a pathology with symptoms similar to mitochondrial myopathy, one genuinely induced by lead pellets? What are we to make of the mechanism described in the extract I quoted above? Is it reasonable? Or not?

 

[Starstruck]

Why did you delete that post? The previous one (the other day) was flippant (sort of) but to suppose that his mitochondrial myopathy could have been the long term result of nuclear testing isn't crazy. Do you know the answer? It's an environmental condition that he grew up in.

 

[Starstruck]

Hey look:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09553002.2010.486019?journalCode=irab20

It turns out that radiation exposure is a major cause of gene mutation, wow. The guy was raised in Nevada. Hello trinity and beyond.

 

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

Squaw Valley!

Junior Doping Camp.

I'm amazed none of this stuff has really come to the surface before. The Germans have at least thrown light on their junior doping past from the communist era with research studies and newspaper articles dedicated to that. The US not really, at least to my knowledge, athough there are some works circulating that do address it. (I will refer to, and cite from, these studies later)

So to get this straight: in 1976, Irving Dardik, as head of the USOC Medical Committee, makes several recommendations to USOC *explicitly* stressing the need for PED experimentation on American athletes (particularly juniors), including anabolic steroids and blood doping, with the purpose of closing the gap with East Germany and Russia. Closing this gap was high on the political agenda (cf. Amateur Sports Act) even more so after those two countries had gotten the better of the US in the medal table of the Montreal Games 1976.

Remarkably, Don Miller (head of USOC) likes the sound of what Dardik is saying and appoints Dardik, together with Hagerman (who by that time had studies on anabolic steroids and 'cardiorespiratory conditioning' on his resumee) and some others, to establish the department for sports medical science and exercise physiology at the heart of the first US OTC in Squaw Valley. The OTC in Squaw Valley opens in 1977, and one year later a second OTC opens in Colorado Springs, again with Dr. Irving Dardik as a driving force.
(If somebody has more details on this, i'd be obliged)

I will post up more links and quotes later. I need to organize the information but I have little time right now.
Much of what I'm finding comes from Google books which has no copy-paste function and so I have to type things off.

It sounds dramatic, but this has ramifications for how we view all US top performances and top athletes that emerged in the late 70s/early 80s through the OTC.

not sure if it was an apparatchik in Brezhnev or Khrushchev, but I go Leonid Brezhnev, height of cold war, an apparatchik is doing a learning tour in the US with an american supervisor, and he asked the American supervisor, words to the effect of, remember, give me some berth and licence, "how do you get all the newspapers to print the same line, we have to twist the editor's arm at Pravda"....

 

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

Squaw Valley!

Junior Doping Camp.

I'm amazed none of this stuff has really come to the surface before. The Germans have at least thrown light on their junior doping past from the communist era with research studies and newspaper articles dedicated to that. The US not really, at least to my knowledge, athough there are some works circulating that do address it. (I will refer to, and cite from, these studies later)

So to get this straight: in 1976, Irving Dardik, as head of the USOC Medical Committee, makes several recommendations to USOC *explicitly* stressing the need for PED experimentation on American athletes (particularly juniors), including anabolic steroids and blood doping, with the purpose of closing the gap with East Germany and Russia. Closing this gap was high on the political agenda (cf. Amateur Sports Act) even more so after those two countries had gotten the better of the US in the medal table of the Montreal Games 1976.

Remarkably, Don Miller (head of USOC) likes the sound of what Dardik is saying and appoints Dardik, together with Hagerman (who by that time had studies on anabolic steroids and 'cardiorespiratory conditioning' on his resumee) and some others, to establish the department for sports medical science and exercise physiology at the heart of the first US OTC in Squaw Valley. The OTC in Squaw Valley opens in 1977, and one year later a second OTC opens in Colorado Springs, again with Dr. Irving Dardik as a driving force.
(If somebody has more details on this, i'd be obliged)

I will post up more links and quotes later. I need to organize the information but I have little time right now.
Much of what I'm finding comes from Google books which has no copy-paste function and so I have to type things off.

It sounds dramatic, but this has ramifications for how we view all US top performances and top athletes that emerged in the late 70s/early 80s through the OTC.

....and this idea of sports organizations being actively involved in "helping" the athletes under their umbrella goes back a ways....

... I remember back in the 60's reading this article in a magazine called Strength and Health ( ok a little background....weight training which definitely has benefits for a great number of sporting/fitness activities was in those days something hidden in back corners of western culture....in North America it was found in Charles Atlas ads in the backs of comic books and in two magazine chains, one run by the Weider brothers, and which primarily pushed bodybuilding and was the platform that launched Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger, and the other run by a guy named Bob Hoffman, whose primary interest was competitive weight lifting but who also covered bodybuilding because that was what probably paid the bills....anyway these magazines were one the few sources of info on training with weights so if that was an interest you piled thru these magazines and the cultures they represented....)

....anyways piling thru one of these magazines I run into a bit of 50's weight lifting history that kinda blew my mind...Hoffman, who had been involved with the US Olympic weight lifting team was faced with a big leap forward in the performance performance of the Soviet team...some sleuthing on his part revealed the Soviets were using agricultural grade steroids to push their program forward....so what is Hoffman's response to this? or rather what does he see as the problem....well, the big problem for Hoffman was how the crude agricultural steroids were destroying the Soviet athletes....and the solution?....go to a US drug company to develop steroids that were "safe" for human use which the drug company was apparently very happy to do....and that is, at least according to Hoffman, how the US became for a time a world leader in PED warfare....that bit of history was what the article unequivocally stated and he was proud as punch about this....

....so the moral of the story is Western sports organizations have a history being actively involved in pushing performance thru, uhhh, science ( read it just weren't the nasty communists that were doing that )....and these organizations, by necessity also got very good at covering their tracks ( see how the umbrella US track organization was shown to operate in the 90's....read, their mandate seemed more focused on covering up drug use than preventing it, and of course winning regularly...do remember that Carl Lewis had 6 positives covered up before the famous Ben Johnson fiasco....and then there were the Grewel cover-ups....)....

....so if US cycling was in the 70's being pushed to become more, uhhh, professional there is a fairly good chance they were following a pattern already well established and functioning quite successfully....do remember this was a period where the arms race very much extended to sports and winning was absolutely everything....

....just sayin' eh....

Cheers

the Americans have just managed the PR a darn sight better than those from the East.

no difference

 

[Maxiton]

Re:

Why did you delete that post? The previous one (the other day) was flippant (sort of) but to suppose that his mitochondrial myopathy could have been the long term result of nuclear testing isn't crazy. Do you know the answer? It's an environmental condition that he grew up in.

Hey look:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09553002.2010.486019?journalCode=irab20

It turns out that radiation exposure is a major cause of gene mutation, wow. The guy was raised in Nevada. Hello trinity and beyond.

After your first flippant post, your next one made my spidey-sense tingle. In any case, it's a human being in the regular world we're talking about, not a character in a Marvel comic book.

If there were mass issues with genetic mutations in NorCal/Nevada for whatever reason, we'd have heard about it by now. Seems it hasn't happened, but full marks for thinking creatively.

 

[Starstruck]

Re: Re:

After your first flippant post, your next one made my spidey-sense tingle. In any case, it's a human being in the regular world we're talking about, not a character in a Marvel comic book.

If there were mass issues with genetic mutations in NorCal/Nevada for whatever reason, we'd have heard about it by now. Seems it hasn't happened, but full marks for thinking creatively.

I'm not aware of studies on the effects of all that nuclear testing to have an informed opinion one way or the other. It seems naïve to think there were no effects...

 

[aphronesis]

@blackcat: diffuse vs. concentrated spectacle. same difference at the mid-level mechanisms.

 

[blutto]

Re: Re:

If there were mass issues with genetic mutations in NorCal/Nevada for whatever reason, we'd have heard about it by now. Seems it hasn't happened, but full marks for thinking creatively.

....there is a study around that mapped IQ test scores ( and SAT scores and the like....anything that was "robust" and had a proven history ) across down-winder areas....the author found a significant downward variation...so while perhaps not genetic in nature down-winders were affected by their proximity to fall out patterns...

Cheers

 

[sniper]

In relation to / expanding on:
viewtopic.php?p=1915300#p1915300
viewtopic.php?p=1915443#p1915443
viewtopic.php?p=1915464#p1915464
viewtopic.php?p=1915473#p1915473

Getting back to Dr. Irving Dardik, the beginnings of the US Olympic Training Centers in Squaw Valley (1977) and Colorado Springs (1978), and state-sponsored doping of Olympic athletes.

Read things carefully and brace yourselves.

This is a summary of the minutes from a 1976 USOC board meeting where Dardik (member of USOC Medical Committee) presents his plans.

The U.S. Olympic Committee has approved the formation of a panel of experts to study the scientific and medical aspects of sports and their effect on the performance of world-class ath- : letes, the-New York Times reported. '. Coordinating the program will be Dr. Irving Dardik, a cardiovascular surgeon from Tenafly, N.J. who was a member of the USOC's medical staff at the Montreal Olympics, the Tunes reported in its Sunday editions. Dardik said the panel would explore a variety of areas, including nutrition, pharmacology and advanced medical approaches to training. Physicians, orthopedic surgeons, exercise physiologists and pharmacologists will be asked to participate in the program, and leading athletes will also be interviewed for their thoughts on .'the issues. "We want to develop methods and modalities for working with athletes that .would enhance their performances and be safe," Dardik told-the Times. "We'll be reviewing as much information as we can in the European sector, directly and indirectly, and explore what's being done elsewhere." Some American athletes have contended that, sports medicine programs developed by Eastern European nations have contributed markedly to upgrading the performance of those nations' athletes. The outstanding performance by the East Germans at the Olympics - reinforced these claims. Dardik said the panel was prepared to investigate controversial areas of sports medicine, including the effects of anabolic steroids and blood doping on performance, and make judgements, on their po- tentiar benefits to American athletes.

Source: The Robesonian (1976) --> https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/43349025/

Drawing a.o. on a Dardik presentation from 1977, Thomas Hunt's dissertation titled "Drug Games: The International Politics of Doping and the Olympic Movement, 1960-2007" (2007, pp. 86, 87) provides a bit more background and analysis:

Future American success, according to [U.S. long-jumper Willye] White, therefore required a cynical incorporation of East German methods: “If we’re going to compete against synthetic athletes, we must become syntheti[c] athletes.”
Ironically, given their condemnation of the GDR doping regime, this is exactly the strategy that USOC leaders chose to adopt. Shortly after the conclusion of the Montreal Games, USOC officials approved the formation of a panel, headed by cardiovascular surgeon Irving Dardik, to study the application of scientific and medical advances to athletics. “We want to develop methods and modalities for working with athletes that would enhance their performances,” Dardik explained. As part of this effort, the panel would even “look into areas considered taboo” among members of the public; these would include the possible uses of performance-enhancing drugs.” Privately, Dardik tried to mollify concerns by asserting that while the “ultimate function . . . of the Olympic Sports medicine Committee is to provide . . . scientific and technological assistance for maintenance and improvement in athletic performance,” the panel would “draw the line where sports medical aid stops and physical manipulation begins.”
As a long-jumper who had to compete with the East Germans, Willye White exclaimed that “this is the kind of program we’ve needed for a long time. If the U.S.O.C. lets Dardik operate, there’s no telling how far we could go.” While most American officials never adopted such a broad interpretation, this was the sort of attitude that characterized the connections within the Olympic movement between nationalist forces and the increasing popularity of performance-enhancing drugs.

(Hunt's source for Dardik's qoutes: Dr. Dardik’s Sports Medicine Presentation, Athletes Advisory Council Meeting, Squaw Valley, California, April 2, 1977, appended as Exhibit “A” in Proceedings of the Quadrennial Meeting of the United States Olympic Committee, General Business Session, April 29, 1977, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Vol. 1, USOCLA.)

Enter Don Miller (USOC director):

“1977 January 28 – Dr. Irving Dardik meets with Colonel Don Miller, USOC executive director, to discuss the first phase of budgetary requirements to establish a sports medicine program at the USOC training center in Squaw Valley, California. Drug testing is one reason for the establishment of the program”.
source: (p. 75 of “Doping in Elite Sport: The Politics of Drugs in the Olympic Movement”, 2001, Wilson & Derse eds.)

1978: “Continuing in their effort to help American athletes gain the opportunity to have training that will enable them to compete internationally and give their best effort in all sports, the USOC recently opened another training center, this one in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
http://www.arielnet.com/articles/show/adi-pub-01202/the-center-of-attention

Despite their 1976 proposal to merely study the potential of performance-enhancing drugs in an expanded medical program, American officials took a more progressive stance in the run-up to the Moscow Games.14 In November of 1978, a new USOC medical taskforce recommended the implementation of comprehensive drug tests at all national championships. Describing the proposal as “a positive step,” USOC Executive Director Don Miller asserted that “we have to identify where drugs are being used to centralize our effort. The only way you can do this is through an effective drug testing program.”

source: Hunt 2007, p. 95

More highly informative (and at times mindboggling) background reading:
http://www.arielnet.com/articles/show/adi-pub-01202/the-center-of-attention (Hagerman, Dardik, a.o.)
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/14/sports/drug-control-brings-controversy.html?pagewanted=all (Dardik, Miller, a.o.)

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re: Re:

After your first flippant post, your next one made my spidey-sense tingle. In any case, it's a human being in the regular world we're talking about, not a character in a Marvel comic book.

If there were mass issues with genetic mutations in NorCal/Nevada for whatever reason, we'd have heard about it by now. Seems it hasn't happened, but full marks for thinking creatively.

I'm not aware of studies on the effects of all that nuclear testing to have an informed opinion one way or the other. It seems naïve to think there were no effects...

Due to all the open air nuclear detonations in the 50's and 60's there was a global increase in the rates of certain types of cancer. Data for local populations near test sites in Nevada and processing areas like Hanford is sketchy. Probably a combo of not wanting to look too hard and small population samples. That's the effect.

John Swanson

 

[sniper]

Andy Bohlman was Colorado Springs race director and was in charge of drug testing for the U.S. Cycling Federation from 1984 to 1991. He says this about Eddie B.:

A promising young athlete from Florida, Carmichael was named to the U.S. Junior World Championship team in 1978. In the early 1980s he came under the guidance of a Polish coach named Edward Borysewicz, better known as “Eddie B.,” who Bohlman calls “The father of American doping,” saying he brought Eastern Bloc tactics to the relatively clean sport of cycling in America.

And to get back once more to the alleged 'fact' that 2/3rds of the US team didn't undergo blood doping in 1984:

In 1984, Borysewicz coached the U.S. Olympic Cycling Team, which Carmichael was on. The team won a record nine medals, but a few months later Rolling Stone revealed that one-third of the riders had doped by injecting extra blood into their veins. Carmichael was not named as one of the cyclists who doped, but Bohlman said it is telling he [Chris Carmichael] did not say anything or break with the team afterward.

In this context, also worth recalling Hampsten in that interview I linked upthread pretending there was no blood doping in the 80s, and claiming other doping doesn't work, despite some of his teammates (Hegg, Grewal, a.o.) being exposed (blood) dopers at the time, and despite Hampsten attending the Olympic Training Center between 1982-1984.