Human growth hormones and peptides are both on the World Anti-Doping Authority’s banned list, and last week The Daily Telegraph’s Paul Kent managed to procure $1000 worth of the performance enhancing drugs in less than an hour. It is illegal to buy the peptide IGF-1 and human growth hormone Hypertropin without a prescription, but it only took a visit to one of Sydney’s gyms to secure them.
It is difficult to detect either drug without extensive blood testing, but you can find them in nearly any gym you care to walk inside. You naturally produce peptides in your body, and with over 10,000 different kinds, it is virtually impossible for the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to approve them all, or for any doping agency anywhere in the world to identify them all and make a solid ruling on their legality.
The IGF-1 is marketed as an ‘anti-ageing formula’, but when you read the fine print you discover that the fountain of youth comes at a cost. The magic ingredient in IGF-1 is ‘New Zealand Deer Antler Velvet Extract’, which might sound naturopathic and healthy to you, but it actually produces testosterone and is a performance-enhancing substance. It was even revealed recently that IGF-1 is a lozenge version of what golfer Vijay Singh and NFL player Ray Lewis regularly use.
But the buck doesn’t stop with IGF-1. Sources say as many as ‘four to five NRL clubs’ and ‘almost all AFL clubs’ still use the calf’s blood Actovegin, which is manufactured by Takeda Pharmaceuticals. You can only take this supplement if you self-import it with the approval of your doctor, but still sports science is outstripping the drug agencies, and at an accelerating rate.
The reason for this is that the landscape of combinations is so vast that it is too difficult to test for them all, and athletes worldwide happily push their wellness to the edge in a bid for the latest and greatest improvements in performance. Sometimes, the edge is as small as a percentage point, but athletes pay hundreds of thousands for it, and the sports scientists are facilitating it. The question is; where does it end?
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