>From what I've read of performance enhancing drug use, it's not at all >uncommon for athletes to experiement with truly experimental drugs to get >that extra edge. So something that was "developed" by '83 was probably in >R&D by at least '80 and may have been making the rounds that far back.
Not a chance in the case of EPO. As I said in the previous post, the EPO gene wasn't even discovered until 1985, so any date before that just isn't possible. You'll have to look to some other drug, steroids perhaps, to point the finger at back in those days. Interestingly, the Scandinavians have been measuring and keeping track of the hematocrit of elite cross country skier at major championships since 1987. Their data shows that as recently as the early 1990s the skiers hematocrits measured BELOW normal. It wasn't until 1994 that they really started climbing - suggesting EPO use. They've been climbing ever since. So in that sport at least, the data suggests that EPO use didn't take off until about 8 to 10 years ago. You can read a summary of their scientific study at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10755280&dopt=Abstract Kurt Bray _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
