Phys Ed: Will Olympic Athletes Dope if They Know It Might Kill Them?
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
January 20, 2010, 12:01 AM
New York Times
In November, a study appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine that should give pause to many athletic dopers and those who love them. The study examined the effects of Darbepoetin Alfa, one of a class of drugs commonly known as Epo that is used to stimulate the body’s production of red blood cells. In the experiment, more than 4,000 patients with diabetes, kidney disease and anemia were given either Epo or a placebo. The researchers were testing the impact of the drug when it was used as approved, at moderate doses in sick people. What they found, to their surprise, was that slightly more of the patients taking Epo suffered heart attacks than those in the placebo group, that nearly twice as many suffered a stroke and that the Epo group’s self-reported quality of life, their subjective sense of fatigue and illness, was barely better than with placebo.
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More heart attacks, strokes and cancer....in addition to being a cheat.
Full article here.
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