Even before 1990, few doctors in the United States were willing to prescribe anabolic steroids to build muscle. Research on both HIV and AIDS was sparse. Then, when Congress made steroids a controlled substance, doctors became even more hesitant to prescribe them. There were a couple of physicians in Southern California experimenting with injectable testosterone and nandrolone (the stuff Roger Clemens allegedly used), and a few ongoing studies with oxandrolone (one of the many steroids Russian athletes definitely used). But that was it. For gay and bisexual men, there were few alternatives.
There was also a question of where to get the drugs. Most North American firms had been winding down their research into anabolic steroids following the initial gold rush of steroid patents filed throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s. The domestic selection and availability for the AAS was sadly lacking, as was relevant data. Because of Congress’ shotgun approach, nearly every domestically available anabolic steroid was now controlled. Most steroids available through legitimate pharmacies in the United States were ill-suited for Dr. Dullnig’s situation, as the Food and Drug Administration tended to approve the weaker ones (weaker in anabolic, or muscle-building effect, which doesn’t always translate to being milder on cholesterol and such).
For his first cycle, Dr. Dullnig opted for more cosmopolitan fare than would have been available at the local pharmacy, importing a rare (and thus expensive) form of oral testosterone from Germany, plus injectable methenolone, a non-FDA-approved anabolic (making it both rare and expensive). With that cycle, he started down a path that would result in anabolic steroids becoming accepted adjunct treatment for future HIV-positive men.
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A cure for HIV remains elusive, but medical science has slowly refined the cocktail used to treat the virus, adding year after year to the life expectancy of those afflicted, until it’s drawn nearly even with America’s average life expectancy. Not infrequently, that cocktail includes anabolic steroids, and Doctor Dullnig is one of (if not the primary) reasons for this.
Despite the fact that his work undoubtedly extended (and continues to extend) untold lives, few contemporaries knew his name. That relative obscurity stems from the fact that he was only active in bringing attention to anabolic steroid use in HIV-positive-related wasting for a single year. This was the final year of his life, a length of time bookended by his 1991 diagnosis, the year of his first cycle, and the day of his leave-taking ceremony in 1994. Nonetheless, he produced an impressive body of published work in that relatively short time, plus a manuscript, the progeny of which includes far more than simply the work at hand.
To appreciate the prolific nature of his output, realize that Dr. Dullnig began researching ways to halt the muscle loss that threatened his life, and at that time, the process involved more than typing keywords into a search bar from home. In the early ‘90s, this involved heading to a medical library and photocopying journal articles. A “library” was basically like Google, but IRL (in real life), and “articles” are like internet pages made from trees. Can you believe that? The ‘90s were a wild time.
While the rest of the city was spellbound by the arrest of O.J. Simpson, Dullnig was looping an endless, repetitive circuit from his home to the UCLA medical library. He had planned to author a book, aggregating current research on anabolic steroids, dietary supplements, and combining that with his best thoughts as a medical doctor and human lab rat. All told, 650 pounds of material was photocopied and annotated. This 650-pound gorilla was, of course, ignored by lawmakers, who were only too happy to continue updating steroid legislation without paying attention to scientific literature. Misguided prosecutors, perhaps even well-meaning ones (if such a creature exists in the wild), treated anabolic steroids like traditional street drugs.
The poundage of his research is known because when he realized how little time he had left, and that it would end with him unable to complete a book of the intended magnitude and importance, his work and research material was shipped, and paid by the pound, via Federal Express to Nelson Vergel, who promised to see the work completed.
Meet Dr. Walter Jekot, the doctor featured in an LA WEEKLY article titled “Sympathy For The Devil.” As fate would have it, Vergel’s job had transferred him from Houston to the Los Angeles area in 1990. A chemist by trade, three years earlier he discovered that he was HIV-positive. Shortly thereafter, he was 20 pounds lighter, dropping from 160 to 140. This is when he began looking into anabolic steroids. Eventually, after searching the Los Angeles area, he found Dr. Walter Jekot, a physician who had been prescribing anabolic steroids for HIV-related wasting. Dr. Jekot had been doing this for at least as long as the disease had a name (or at least a permanent name – “gay cancer” was the original moniker, followed by GRID, Gay Related Immune Disease).
Dr. Jekot had been procuring (from overseas sources) non-FDA-approved steroids for his HIV-positive patients. Again, this was due to their relative potency and general unavailability of equivalent drugs in domestically. Those steroids, for many reasons, offered far better therapeutic value than ones domestically available. Many were both more effective in terms of gaining lean mass, while simultaneously producing fewer side effects. The government takes a dim view of prescribing anabolic steroids for off-label use, and an even dimmer view of doing so with ones that are not FDA approved. His average patient wasn’t the typical steroid user trying to look good at the beach, but rather simply trying to survive.
When the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990 went into effect, the Feds wasted little time (almost immediately) arresting Dr. Jekot on a 27-count indictment including both illegal distribution of anabolic steroids as well as steroid possession. This type of prosecution involved minimal effort, because ASCA (1990) was basically a list of every anabolic steroid on the domestic market for the past decade. They were made illegal by virtue of their presence on a list found under Schedule III, and now under the CSA. The Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004 added yet another list of substances to the definition of anabolic steroids, while simultaneously giving the Executive Branch the ability to classify substances that met certain criteria. Of course, this was legislation crafted primarily because of economic and political influence on lawmakers, and not an attempt to install effective policy. But contrast these acts with prosecution under the Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2014, which went unenforced for half a decade, and currently involves prosecuting substances not found under DASCA, in Schedule III, or on any list, anywhere, of controlled substances. In fact, despite being given the authority to add new steroids to Schedule III virtually at will, the Attorney General never attempted to do so. Not even once. The issue was never even discussed.
To be clear, DASCA failed to pass Congress on two prior attempts. It failed because of a provision that would have allowed unlisted substances to be proved anabolic steroids at trial. As a result, this exact type of prosecution was implicitly barred when Congress removed this provision. The DOJ seems to believe they can write the law as they go along, to suit whatever prosecution they want, but legal scholars and the guys who wrote the Constitution say otherwise. This is especially revolting when we consider the untold number of deaths caused by the original steroid control act.
Dr. Jekot’s charges, according to his lawyer, were meant to send a message; that message was loud and clear to the sentencing judge. Dr. Jekot was handed the maximum sentence of five years. This stands as one of the longest given to any doctor for steroids. Most (non-doctors) mixing steroids in their home and selling them online have gotten shorter sentences. Dr. Jekot was sentenced to more time than nearly all of the 100+ defendants swept up in Operation Raw Deal, the government’s largest steroid bust ever. The principals involved in BALCO, when added up, received less time than Dr. Jekot. And let’s not forget, this sentence was given to a doctor for attempting to save lives (and succeeding, according to official records).
Conviction notwithstanding, Dr. Jekot’s work represented a solid foundation on which Dr. Dullnig was able to build upon and develop his own protocol. But while geographic fate allowed Dr. Jekot to be found by both Vergel and Dullnig, the two latter remained mutually unknown to each other. Even without the internet, the gay community were nonetheless able to widely disseminate anabolic steroid information. Most practical data came in this form, anecdotally, and by word of mouth. If you were an HIV-positive gay or bisexual male in the ‘90s, you knew about anabolic steroids, and that information was going to extend your life. But this was only circulating underground and was concentrated in parts of the country with higher gay and bisexual scenes.