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Lead Stories: Friday, July 18, 2008

Athletes on Performance- Enhancing Drugs Risk Harming Their Children

Posted November 30th, 2007 at 4:10 PM by Jamal Walker

Section: News & Results, Nutrition, Supplements, Health & Fitness, Drugs In Sports

drug_needle Some people think that we should let athletes take performance- enhancing drugs because they think that these athletes can only harm themselves and do not harm others. We already know that anabolic steroids can cause liver damage, heart attacks and strokes, and that growth hormone causes heart attacks by causing the heart muscle to outgrow its blood supply. Now a two-year study of former East German athletes shows that athletes who take these drugs can harm their children.

In the 1970s and 80s, almost all government sponsored East German athletes were forced to take anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. A study of 69 children of 52 of these athletes showed that seven had birth defects and four
were mentally retarded, an unusually high incidence for a group of this size. More than 25 percent had allergies and 23 percent had
asthma. The women suffered 32 times the normal incidence of miscarriage and stillbirth, 25 percent suffered cancer and 61 percent had therapy for mental disorders. The study was conducted by Dr. Giselher Spitzer at Humbolt University in Germany.
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Marion Jones’s Letter to Friends and Family

Posted November 24th, 2007 at 4:30 PM by Adam Jacobs

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Olympics, Drugs In Sports

Dear family and close friends,

I hope this letter finds all of you well. I know some of you must be wondering where the pictures are that I so often attach to my emails. Unfortunately, this is a much different type of letter. I write this letter to all of you for a few reasons.

The first is simply because I love you all. Some things will be happening in the next week that I want you all to know about from me FIRST. You deserve this because you have been there for me from the very beginning. You have supported me throughout the many struggles that I have had in my life and continue to do so to this day. You deserve to hear about Marion from Marion and not from the USA Today or CNN.

The second reason is because I finally want to shed much baggage that has been tearing me down for a long time. I want to share with you all my humanness. The fact that I have made mistakes in my life, made bad decisions, and have carried a great amount of pain and hurt throughout my life.
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