I saw the same documentary.
One very interesting part was the amount of GH that was being used all the way back in '84. Most of the samples taken in '84 that were tested today were positive for HGH.
Makes you wonder if the bodybuilders from the 80's weren't using HGH long before we all think.
When did you think bodybuilders first started taking HGH?
From Sports Illustrated, October 15, 1984.The author Terry Todd is talking about cadaver GH here. Recombinant HGH was waiting to be approved of by the FDA at the time....
"All of the hGH produced and distributed by the NHPP goes to children who need it. There are two other sources for hGH sold in the U.S.—Italy and Sweden—but because supplies from those countries are also limited,
athletes are, in effect, competing with children for the substance.
In a recent letter to the editor of Flex, a bodybuilding magazine, Dr. Louis E. Underwood, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of North Carolina and an expert in hGH physiology and pharmacology, addressed this issue in responding to an article by Dr. Robert F. Kerr, a California physician (The Steroid Predicament, SI, Aug. 1, 1983).
Kerr wrote that he had prescribed hGH for hundreds of athletes—and claimed there had been no harmful side effects. Wrote Underwood: "Every unit of Growth Hormone used by bodybuilders denies a short, growth-hormone deficient child the chance to achieve normal growth and an acceptable adult height....
I personally am appalled to learn that Dr. Kerr has supervised the use of growth hormone in 150 bodybuilders."
Underwood was astonished when several bodybuilders, who had misread his comments in the magazine, phoned him asking for help in getting hGH for themselves. "Such selfish stupidity," he says, "is no doubt responsible for the fact that I now have 40 children in my care who need hGH and can't get it."
"Another factor that has added to the appeal of hGH is the boosterism, beginning with its publication in 1981, of the small but influential Underground Steroid Handbook. The publisher-editor, Dan Duchaine, reveals in his definition of hGH the far-out mind-set shared by many young athletes: "Wow, this is great stuff. It is the best drug for permanent muscle gains. It...makes your whole body grow.... This is the only drug that can remedy bad genetics, as it will make anybody grow. A few side effects can occur, however. It may elongate your chin, feet, and hands, but this is arrested with cessation of the drug. Diabetes in teenagers is possible with it.... Massive increases in weight over such a short time can, of course, give you heart problems.... GH use is the biggest gamble that an athlete can take, as the side effects are irreversible. Even with all that, we LOVE the stuff."
"The demand for hGH doesn't come only from athletes in Olympic sports. A strength coach who wishes to remain anonymous and who's associated with a big university, admits to having used hGH and having supplied it to athletes. He also maintains that
GH is or has been used by at least 60 NCAA, NFL and USFL football players in his immediate area alone."
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1122701/2/index.htm
