I was going to call it the dirty little secret of China’s Olympics, but it’s not so little and it’s not much of a secret. China is and has been a huge source of product for blood-doping, steroid-shooting athletes across the sporting spectrum. Now, ARD, the German television network, has done a terrific documentary on the subject, just in time for the Olympics. An AP story on the ARD documentary says
A German television report on the availability of gene doping in China has stunned anti-doping experts shortly before the Beijing Olympics.
In a documentary by ARD television, a Chinese doctor offers stem-cell therapy to a reporter posing as an American swimming coach.
The report, filmed with a concealed camera, shows the doctor with his face blurred speaking in Chinese and offering the treatment in return for $24,000, according to a translation provided by the ARD television.
The documentary broadcast Monday did not offer evidence that the hospital had provided gene doping to other athletes, but anti-doping officials were appalled that the treatment was so readily available.
“I could not have imagined it in such a provable form,” Mario Thevis, chief of the German center of preventive doping research in Cologne.
Another Cologne expert on gene doping, Patrick Diel, said he was “stunned to see it.”
Here’s the link to the entire story: http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=3501414
Note that the AP story says anti-doping experts are “stunned” by what the ARD report reveals. I’m stunned that they’re stunned. China is and has been for a while a global source for this stuff (just as it’s a global source for pretty much everything else that’s made these days.) Its pharmaceutical-medical-industrial complex sells to all comers, to anyone who can pay.
Still, keep this report in mind as China and its leaders glorify in the country’s medal parade in a couple of weeks, as athlete after athlete collects gold. Think east German swimmer Kornelia Ender (Montreal ’76) sprinter Ben Johnson (Seoul 1988), Ma’s army (Chinese track coach Ma Junren, who had six of his athletes suspended in Sydney 2000 for doping), and Marion Jones, the US track star who “dominated” her events in Sydney and is now serving a six month jail sentence for lying to federal agents about her steroid use.
The anti doping cops can’t keep up with advances made in delivery systems, shielding agents and, most importantly, the stem cell based gene tweaking, which is now the cutting edge of this stuff. For all of the above, China’s a one stop shop.