Ex-slugger Jose Canseco, whistle blower of the Juiced, has experienced having his career drip away. He lost his wealth, his ex-appeal and now his self-respect. Looking one big shot, Canseco faced ‘ex-actor’ Danny Bonaduce in a recent exhibit match. The New York Daily News said that ex-slugger Canseco have whistled, “Come on, get happy” when he left the Iceworks skating complex last Saturday.

Jose Canseco might have whistled on as he left the Iceworks skating complex Saturday night. The former big league star and admitted steroid user fought to a draw with Danny Bonaduce in a celebrity boxing match. Though Canseco is bigger, the controversy was over who was smarter.

Bonaduce was still standing in almost victory when standing after three one-minute rounds – and Canseco outweighs the actor by 80 pounds and is about a foot taller.

When the bell rang, the situation looked as if Andre the Giant was boxing Verne Troyer. Canseco’s plans seemed to include floating like and elephant and sting like a concrete pillar. Bonaduce on the other hand practically needed to leap just to reach Canseco’s head. The 6’4” tall Canseco, who also weighed 259 pounds stunned Bonaduce with a right jab on the third round but the actor stayed on his feet.

The ex-slugger Canseco also proved that he was recession-proof. Despite having a bad economy, a capacity crowd of 2,000 curiosity seekers paid $50 for ringside and $30 for the cheap seats just to watch the two D-listers pummel each other. It was also on pay per view.

Canseco came up the ring to mostly boos and jeering which only got worse throughout the fight, though there was one fan who wore an A’s jersey.

The former slugger was not that lucky in his first time in the ring. In July, the ex-NFL player Vai Sikahema leveled Canseco in the first round of an Atlantic City bout. Canseco dropped on the mat in just one minute and 37 seconds and was jeered off the premises with chants of “ste-riod!’

Canseco obviously needed the money and a lot more.

It’s been almost a year since Canseco wrote ‘Vindicated,’ the sequel to his tell-all ‘Juiced.’ After the book’s release, where he implied that Alex Rodriguez may have used steroids early in his career, Canseco was interviewed by the FBI with regards to Roger Clemens’ perjury investigation. It is still vague if Canseco had been summoned to Washington, where a jury is currently hearing evidence against Clemens.

Canseco was caught at the border for trying illegally bring in the fertility drug human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) from Mexico last October. A&E showed a documentary on a broke, contrite Canseco later that month. Canseco pleaded guilty of misbranding drugs last November and was sentenced to 12 months’ unsupervised probation.

Canseco got $35,000 from the July fight and last Saturday, both Canseco and Bonaduce got $2 for each pay-per-view customer.

Australian anti-doping expert Robin Parisotto claims that the first case of a cyclist being charged with doping using his blood profile as evidence is expected to be prosecuted in the next following months. The International Cycling Union (UCI) has been continually developing blood profiles of its professional cyclist by obtaining thousands of blood samples over the past years.

Canberra scientist Parisotto who also sits at the UCI panel supervising the anti-doping program said that more than 30 suspicious samples had been analyzed and there was sufficient evidence to track a number of riders who have doping violations.

Parisotto said that they are still collating results at the moment but he expects that the UCI will be taking action against some cyclists in the next few months. It really seems that the decisions about whom to prosecute are alarming.

The profiling of the blood samples was specifically designed to identify any cyclists using illicit performance enhancing drugs or any other methods that manipulates and the blood to improve endurance. Parisotto said that suspect samples usually have high haemoglobin levels, or unusually low levels which would indicate that a cyclist was extracting blood to be re-injected during competition.

Parisotto also said that, there also are current discussions on which are the strongest case to pursue. There are said to be a handful that the UCI can confidently follow up but Parisotto believes that in some cases the results are quite strong and the athletes will have a hard time explaining them. And this first cycling case will be a test on the use of this new method in identifying drug cheats.

According to Parisotto, there was a fewer number of suspect samples than he would have expected if the program had been established in three or four years earlier. He says that, there is more of an effort being made now to get rid of the cheats and for him, some of cheats are really getting nervous. Right now the risk of getting caught is becoming much greater and they are starting to worry about what is in their blood.

Monitoring indices include red blood cell parameters (hematocrit and haemoglobin), EPO and other physiological measures that should be very stable in an individual athlete over time. Parisotto also talks about monitoring of the responses of particular genes to doping drugs as a very interesting development.

Robin Parisotto, the scientist who developed one of the first tests for the blood booster EPO in the lead-up on the last Sydney Olympics, is also currently working on the next tool in the sports anti-doping war – the genetic profiling.

According to the doping expert, the technology is ready to administer gene profiling on blood test. He also said that any use of blood doping will show up in the changes in the athlete’s gene activities.

All the laboratories need to do is to simply chart the abnormal changes that the drugs make to the blood and genes of the athlete.

A “summer camp” for NFL players who have been suspended for steroid use and other violations of illegal substance abuse is what former World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chief, Dick Pound, said about the Canadian Football League (CFL). CFL remains to be the only professional athletic league that has not yet implemented a steroid testing policy for their football players. Authorities from the CFL say that they do not need to test because “there’s no drug use” in their league. But the obvious fact remains that American football players who have been suspended for drug use join the CFL as a refuge.

In the recent WADA Executive Committee and Foundation Board meeting in Montreal, current head of WADA, John Fahey pressured the CFL to implement an anti-doping testing program and join the fight against drugs. He publicly made his comment just before the CFL Grey Cup Final between the Montreal Alouettes and the Calgary Stampeders. After the WADA board meeting, Fahey told Reuters that it was very disappointing to find out that there was no doping code, especially being in Montreal on the weekend of the CFL Grey Cup Final.

However, he was hopeful that recent discussions about the issue will eventually lead to successful drug policy implementation. He said that WADA and CFL have been discussing the issue over a period of time but that this did not necessarily translate to immediate implementation. By not having a doping code, Fahey said that the CFL is drawing “adverse” attention to the game. He could not see any reason why any sport should not have an effective anti-doping program.

His statement, however, was undermined by criticisms that WADA itself does not have an effective anti-doping program, as witnessed in the recent Olympics. British International Olympic Committee member and WADA board member Sir Craig Reedie, who was also present in the WADA Foundation board meeting in Montreal, pointed out that the WADA failed to implement an effective anti-doping program because in the recent Olympics, WADA was not able to get the compliance of over half of the signatories to the WADA code. Half the countries of the world did not enforce the rules that bound athletes to giving details of their daily activities to the drug testers.

Sir Reedie said that “half of the world” did not properly operate the system of reporting to testers regarding their whereabouts for an hour each day. He said that in the Beijing Olympics, half of the world operated the system properly while the other half did not. This information came out in a survey done by national Olympic committees to keep track of how teams are struggling with the system of tracking whereabouts.

In addition to the failure of implementing the WADA regulations properly, the agency also failed to develop an anti-doping protocol for various techniques and substances such as a protocol for closing the testosterone loophole, detecting growth hormone in athletes, and for thwarting the use of blood boosting techniques and banned substances. In this context, Fahey’s criticism of CFL about not seeing a reason why any sport should not have an effective anti-doping program only points back to his agency.

Anti-doping laboratory equipment is big business especially in the Olympics. Anabolic steroid testing is a complicated process and can be rather expensive. This is the reason why full-scale steroid testing could not be done in schools and government agencies such as the police department, because testing costs too much per individual and can thus be done only randomly. In the last Olympics in Beijing, the China Anti-Doping Agency (CADA) spent more than $10 million dollars to create a state-of-the-art testing laboratory, taking a total of took six years to build.

A quarter of that budget, about $2.7 million, was used to purchase various laboratory testing instruments from various laboratory equipment manufacturers. Some of the primary beneficiaries of the purchases included Agilent Technologies, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Phenomenex.
Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Thermo Fisher, Stuart P. Cram, said that their company provided a number of service engineers during the Beijing Olympics who were available 24 hours a day to efficiently maintain the operation of Thermo Fisher testing equipment.

Some of the Thermo Fisher products purchased by the China Anti-Doping Agency (CADA) included triple-quadrupole TSQ Quantum Access liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry systems, DFS Sector Field gas chromatography/mass spectrometry systems, riple-quadrupole TSQ Quantum Access liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry systems, and Delta V isotope ratio mass spectrometer.

They conducted approximately 4,500 drug tests in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, analyzing samples for over 400 different drugs included in the WADA list of banned substances. The drugs were classified in nine categories of performance enhancing drugs which included anabolic steroids, hormone antagonists and modulators, hormones, beta-2 agonists, stimulants, diuretics, cannabinoids, narcotics, and glucocorticosteroids. In the drug testing process, the sample goes through every piece of testing equipment, which provides a unique function.

Once the sample enters the testing laboratory, the first stop is the Agilent 7890A gas chromatograph. The function of which is to isolate and identify the various components of the sample, detecting the named substances from the biological or natural molecules. The sample is then vaporized using heat and the vapor enters the chromatograph’s separation column. The vapor travels through the column at different speeds depending on the atomic weights of its components; the lighter ones move faster and get out of the column first.

The investigators measure the amount, speed, and sequence of the components to identify most of the banned substances. However, it is not that simple. Some compounds on the banned list, such as peptide hormones, are destroyed during the process of vaporization. With these compounds, a liquid chromatograph is required, thus the Agilent 1200 series liquid chromatograph is used.

One out of four samples is analyzed using the liquid chromatography while the rest are analyzed using gas chromatography. However, the use of liquid chromatography is increasing because of the increasing sophistication of designer drugs which contain compounds that are destroyed by the process of vaporization. Once there is a questionable substance identified in either gas- or liquid-chromatograph, the sample goes to the mass spectrometer to confirm the identity of the compound.

Members of the Pakistani women’s cricket team, undergoing rigid training for the Australian World Cup in March, were subjected to dope testing on Saturday in light of controversies surrounding fellow fast bowler Mohammad Asif.The said procedure was a first for female cricket players in Pakistan. The urine samples were collected by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and immediately fowarded to a World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) accredited laboratory based in Malaysia for testing and analysis.

According to news reports, the PCB decided to subject the women’s cricket team to dope testing to prevent further embarrassment during the Australian World Cup competitions. The Pakistani Women’s Cricket team had recently qualified for the World Cup Competitions set to take place in Australia, and will be pitted against India during the opening match on March 7.

The national women’s cricket team will also be competing in a tri-nation tournament which will be held in Bangladesh next month. The Pakistan women’s team will play against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in the prestigious bowling event. The stricter implementation of anti-doping rules, the PCB said, was meant to deter any athlete from planning to take performance-enhancing drugs during training or actual competition.

The PCB had been experiencing humiliation and shame the last couple of years - with two of their male star players, Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif - testing positive for the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone at the height of the Championship Trophy competition in India in 2006. Asif subsequently failed another drug test in May when he played during the Indian Premier League’s inaugural season.

The incidents have cast doubts on the integrity of Pakistani athletes as a whole, and put further pressure on the PCB to have their members come clean. IPL Adjourns Hearing on Asif Doping Case. In a related development, the Indian Premier League hearing looking into Asif’s alleged doping charges had adjourned last Saturday. The IPL tribunal has yet to announce when the proceedings will resume, or when a verdict on the fast bowler’s case will be announced.The committee was composed of Sunil Gavasker, a former India batsman; Shirish Gupte, a lawyer; and Dr. Ravi Bapat, heard and weighed the merits of Asif’s case with the IPL for over four hours before calling for an adjournment.

According to records, Pakistan paceman Mohammad Asif tested positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone at the height of the IPL Twenty Competition last year. He was then playing for the Delhi Daredavils. Following the positive doping test, the Pakistan Cricket Board suspended Asif from playing cricket until the IPL drug tribunal has issued a ruling on his case. The fast bowler was also granted a release from his contract with the Delhi Daredevils last week.

The embattled Asif is at the same time facing some other serious drug charges in the Middle East. In June last year, he was detained at the United Arab Emirates for a full 19 days after inspection officials at the Dubai Airport uncovered 0.24 grams of opium stashed inside his wallet. Asif had claimed that he used opium for medicinal purposes in Pakistan four months prior to him being in the country.

It certainly is a cause for alarm - or a serious reality check. British media reported over the weekend that the incidence of surgery to address “gynecomastia” - or the dreaded man boobs, has increased dramatically in the last five years. Authorities attributed the phenomenon to the widespread use of banned anabolic steroids by British males in the hope of improving their physical appearance. An article in the UK Telegraph cited a report from Britain’s Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, due to be published on Monday, who revealed a 50 percent increase in the number of British men who had requested for breast-reduction surgery in 2008.

Moreover, the Telegraph article added that in as little as five years, the incidences of procedures for gynecomastia have increased drastically from a low 22 in the year 2003 to as high as 224 recorded cases by 2007.

The British Government’s advisers on drugs and banned substances have confirmed that anabolic steroids are indeed gaining ground among common folk in the UK.

Now more than ever, an increasing number of men - most of them non traditional durg users - are turning a blind eye on the possible repercussions of steroid use in exchange for a better looking body.

Mike Linnell, of the Manchester-based Lifeline drugs charity said their volunteers are reporting more and more British men are injecting themselves with steroids for cosmetic purposes. He adds that in the last two years, their group has seen non traditional drug users step into the drug circle because of anabolic steroids. Because men want to look good, and have a healthier self-image, they tend to forget the adverse effects that drug use can bring to them - man boobs not withstanding.

In the UK, and quite possibly in other cities in the world, anabolic steroids are considered as one of the leading causes of treatment in substance abuse centers. More than the increasing threats of gynecomastia brought about by the estorogenic effects of anabolic steroids, it’s injectible nature is what’s causing authorities to worry.

Latest figures released by the British Crime Survey estimated that at least 179,000 people between the ages of 16 and 59 have used anabolic steroids at some point. Some experts even claim that the figures can exceed 200,000 conservatively speaking.

Anabolic steroids are substances which were originally used by athletes as performace-enhancing drugs. Now it seems that the Adonis Complex is the more prevalent reason for its widespread use.

Because of its hormone-like nature, anabolic steroids have been and can still be legally prescribed by medical professionals to address deficiencies in steroid hormones, delayed onset of puberty, AIDS, as well as other illnesses which may bring about muscle loss. Athletes and body builders, however, have tapped into anabolic steroids for its performance-enhancing and muscle-accumulating abilities. Steroids increase muscle mass by hastening the protein synthesis within the cells.

It’s use though, does not come without adverse effects. Of its known side effects is gynecomastia, or the development of man boobs.