Secret world of doping

The dark side: The secret world of sports doping

Al Jazeera Staff

Al Jazeera

27 December 2015

The dark side: The secret world of sports doping

Inside a hotel room in Austin, Texas, a pharmacist advises a professional athlete on taking performance-enhancing drugs.

"One anabolic, and I can give you something to use right now is this Delta 2 stuff.

It's a steroid. There's a bunch of football players who take this,” he tells Liam Collins, a British hurdler reporting undercover.

In another conversation, a Vancouver pharmacist poses a question to the same athlete.

"Have I doped people? Oh yeah. And no one's got caught because the system is so easy to beat. That's the sad fact."

Later, a naturopath doctor explains how he would destroy medical records if investigators came looking for them.

"I can just document everything not in this chart but on my own chart. And if somebody ever comes sniffing for it, it's very easy to just delete and say no, this is the real chart. If say, WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) comes sniffing around."

Normally these conversations take place behind closed doors, but a new investigation by Al Jazeera is bringing them to light.

Liam Collins, working on behalf of Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, spent six months undercover investigating the murky world of performance enhancing drugs - what athletes refer to as "the dark side".

"For me, it was an opportunity to be the guy, to go undercover, and make a change," said Collins.

At 37, he competes as a hurdler at an international level. For the investigation he claimed that he was making one last push for the Rio Olympics and was willing to do "whatever it takes" to get there.

The investigation has exposed the crucial role of pharmacists and doctors in creating and prescribing programs of performance enhancing drugs designed to cheat the testing system.

It also raises questions about some well-known athletes in American football and baseball who the medical professionals claim to work with.

The athletes and medical professionals who responded to requests for comment denied any wrongdoing.

This includes Payton Manning, a football player for the Denver Broncos, whose wife, one pharmacist alleged, was supplied with human growth hormone. in 2011 while he was recovering from surgery.

That pharmacist, Charlie Sly, has disavowed his statements to Collins that were caught on hidden camera.

Manning has emphatically denied the allegation, telling ESPN it is "complete garbage" and "totally made up".

In a statement, the Broncos said: "Knowing Peyton Manning and everything he stands for, the Denver Broncos support him 100 percent. These are false claims made to Al Jazeera, and we don't believe the report."

Sly also named baseball players Ryan Zimmerman of the Washington Nationals and Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies as athletes he supplied with human growth hormone. Both have denied the allegations.

But the investigation raises questions about whether medical professionals are helping athletes cross to the dark side, and whether doping in sport is reaching new levels.

By Deborah Davies, Jeremy Young, Kevin Hirten and Craig Pennington

Al Jazeera Investigates: The Dark Side: Secrets of the Sports Dopers

Production team:

Peter Charley - Executive Producer

Deborah Davies - Reporter

Jeremy Young - Senior Producer/Director

Kevin Hirten - Producer

Craig Pennington - Director of Photography

Nicholas Dove - Editor

Business environment, rule of law key to economic growth

By Paul Burrowes

For an economy to grow, a country must have well-run legal and judicial institutions.
In short, the rule of law impacts the quality of regulations for operating an efficient business.
According to the World Justice Project, the rule of law reigns in Denmark while Singapore tops regulatory quality and efficiency for businesses.
More specifically, the rules by which market functions provide the means to resolve disputes, protect economic and social rights and hold governments accountable for their actions.
When a country promotes investment, a good justice system can contribute to economic growth and development.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says that “the centrality of a strong justice mechanism lies in its essential contribution to fostering economic stability and growth, and to enabling all manner of disputes to be resolved within a structured and orderly framework” [UNODC, 2011*]. 
Legal framework apart, government attitudes toward markets and freedoms and the efficiency of their operations are also very important: excessive bureaucracy and red tape, overregulation, corruption, dishonesty in dealing with public contracts, lack of transparency and trustworthiness, inability to provide appropriate services for the business sector and political dependence of the judicial system impose significant economic costs to businesses and slow the process of economic development.
Data compiled by two independent international agencies clearly show that the overall quality of the legal system as well as the quality of justice (both civil and criminal) are directly correlated with the business environment and economic performance.
Where, therefore, does Jamaica rank in the quality of the its legal system and the efficiency of its business environment.
Those independent international agencies, the World Justice Project and World Bank's Doing Business 2016 as it relates to regulatory quality and efficiency, put Jamaica at 42 in the 2015 rule of law overall score and 79 in the regulatory efficiency of the business environment.
If Jamaica does well in dealing with construction permits, enforcing contracts, getting credit and electricity, paying taxes, protecting minority investors, registering property, and starting a business under a competent and effective legal framework, the sky's the limit for the land of wood and precious water.
Legislators have to work on limiting government powers, rooting out corruption, maintaining order and security with crime under control, protecting fundamental rights, enforcing regulations for businesses, and improving civil and criminal justice.
Denmark and Singapore are showing the way, but so too have Norway, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Austria, Germany and Australia especially in the rule of law.
While on the regulatory enivronment front, add South Korea, United Kingdom, Canada, and the cities of New York City, Hong Kong, Los Angleles, and Taiwan to those already mentioned.

Ganja good for epilepsy

Purified marijuana compound may reduce stubborn epileptic seizures

(Reuters Health) - A purified compound derived from marijuana may help reduce seizures in children and young adults with severe forms of epilepsy that resist other treatments, a new study suggests.

Patients who added a 99 percent-cannabidiol (CBD) oil to their current treatments went from an average of 30 seizures a month to fewer than 16 - representing a 37 percent reduction over 12 weeks, researchers report in Lancet Neurology.

"In this group that has been extremely treatment resistant, this was an incredibly positive finding with the caveat that we didn’t have a comparison group," said lead author Dr. Orrin Devinsky, of NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.

CBD is a compound found naturally in marijuana and known to affect the brain. But it's important to note that CBD does not produce a high, Devinsky said, and the new findings have no bearing on use of medical marijuana or other compounds from the plant.

The form of CBD used in the new study was a solution of the extract in oil called Epidiolex from GW Pharmaceuticals, which partly funded the new study. The drug is currently being evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Previous research into the effects of CBD and medical marijuana on various types of epilepsy has been limited and produced mixed results with some people having fewer seizures and others having more.

For the new study, the researchers enrolled 214 patients between 2014 and 2015 from 11 U.S. epilepsy treatment centers. They included people with different forms of epilepsy like Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut syndromes. The participants were typically among the centers' most resistant to existing epilepsy treatments.

The goal of the study was to inform future research by tracking doses, side effects and whether or not the patients improved.

Participants were started on 2 milligrams (mg) to 5 mg of the solution, broken into two daily doses. The dosage slowly increased to 25 mg or 50 mg daily over the 12 weeks. Patients continued taking their existing medications.

Of those who started the study, 52 patients were lost to follow up and 11 stopped taking CBD before the study ended. Others were excluded from part of the analysis due to age, other health conditions or not experiencing seizures.

About 37 percent of patients had their seizures reduced by at least half. The researchers point out that 22 percent of patients had seizures reduced by at least 70 percent and 8 percent had their seizures reduced by at least 90 percent.

Overall, 20 patients had severe side effects possibly related to CBD. The most common was a severe bout of seizures known as status epilepticus. Only five participants stopped taking the solution due to side effects, however.

Less severe side effects included drowsiness, diarrhea, loss of appetite, fatigue and convulsions.

Devinsky said ongoing double-blind randomized controlled trials, which are considered the gold standard of medical research, will be able to shine more light on CBD's effectiveness and which side effects are caused by the drug.

Dr. Kevin Chapman, of Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora, said he'll be interested to see the results of those trials.

"From my standpoint, I don’t think it’s going to quite be the panacea we’re hoping it to be," said Chapman, who studies CBD for epilepsy but wasn't involved in the new study.

For example, he said, the side effects found in the new study suggest CBD's safety is similar to that of current drugs. Also, the study suggests there may be better outcomes among people taking CBD and another popular epilepsy drug known as clobazam.

"I think it raises some questions about the utility for CBD, but it lays the groundwork for future studies," Chapman said.

Devinsky said his team's ongoing clinical trials of CBD should be completed around February.