The news of the week is that there looks like there is, at least, a reliable test for HGH use. I wrote in the book:
Many players who used steroids have moved to hGH. While it doesn’t help building the massive muscle bulk that anabolic steroids do, it has many of the beneficial effects players, especially older ones, generally look to steroids for. It’s not that hard to get, though it can be quite expensive. Most importantly, while hGH is banned, there’s no proven test for it right now. If a test can be proven reliable, the players will almost certainly have to sign up for blood draws, which would have to go through the collective bargaining process, and while players as a whole were willing to concede to urine tests in order to help their sport, getting them to take regular blood tests could be another matter entirely.
Can I just say thanks for coming out with this news while the book’s at the printer? Great timing.
This test is a blood test, as everyone suspected would be the case, so there’s that barrier, but the short time window is an even larger problem. Players aren’t going to agree to a blood draw every three days.
The good news, from a detection standpoint, is that random tests in-season should still catch users. A normal dosage schedule of HGH for people taking it for general anti-aging purposes is an injected dose 4-5 times a week. We can figure that’s the minimum an athlete using the stuff is taking. The chance they’ll be on a course of HGH and dodge a test is pretty slim.
If baseball implements any kind of testing, the effect will be huge. As you probably know, in the Grimsley Incident, we heard that athletes who previously used steroids moved to HGH to get many of the same benefits (and without some of the more horrible side effects). If HGH is on the same punishment schedule, with a 30-day suspension for first detection, it’s unlikely players will take that chance, and we’ll see a mass abandonment of HGH. Considering that HGH was there waiting, undetectable, with open arms for players who were on steroids before, there’s a quite real chance that we’ll see the kind of performance crash that people thought would happen in the first year of penalty-phase testing for anabolic steroids.
But if we get random testing, and players abandon, what happens then? I’ll write more about the future of the arms race, but we know they’re not all going to stop using performance-enhancing drugs if they’re forced to give up any one.
Zachary | 05-Feb-07 at 2:55 pm | Permalink
Honestly though, what are the chances that the MLBPA agrees to random blood tests…if they can’t even get blood testing in the NFL (where the union is much weaker), what reason do we have to believe that Fehr and Co. won’t drag their feet on this one forever?
Matthew | 05-Feb-07 at 5:10 pm | Permalink
because the NFL, for whatever reason, isn’t facing Congressional involvement?
DMZ | 06-Feb-07 at 12:34 am | Permalink
It certainly could drag out. But baseball’s been trying to get out ahead of criticism for a long time, and we’ve seen both MLB and the player’s association willing to make huge concessions that were unthinkable even a few years ago. I don’t know that willingness to agree to blood testing will be that huge of a deal.
The problem I see being tough to solve is related to the recent decision about sample matching, and I’m going to write about that in a future post.
M Harvey | 16-Mar-07 at 1:12 pm | Permalink
Most players in the know are moving to homeopathic HGH oral sprays because they achieve 60%-80% of the same results of pharmaceutical injections and are approved for over the counter sales by the FDA. The sprays trigger your liver to produce IGF-1 which is what gives the invigoration properties. There is no appreciable rise in HGH levels so it’s undetectible.
There are at least 30 websites selling homeopathic oral sprays, perfectly legally. The most popular with athletes is http://www.21stcenturyhgh.com but they all sell the same generic product.
DMZ | 16-Mar-07 at 1:26 pm | Permalink
I’m skeptical of the claim that you could possibly get that much of the benefit of direct injection of HGH through an oral spray.
Even on the site, it says “There are no reliable studies that equate homeopathic spray results with injections”
Plus, their dilution “recipe” page is pretty bogus.
gffg | 24-Apr-07 at 8:41 pm | Permalink
HGH actually isn’t a performance enhancing drug, and shouldn’t be lumped in with steroids.