Word: steroid
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...ruling erases all of Plucknett's performances since January, including one world record set last May in Modesto, Calif., and the second in Stockholm this month. He will, however, retain a less desirable record: first person to lose a world mark because of steroid use. That distinction is unlikely to last. Scores of athletes routinely use steroids, and as Plucknett knows, records are made to be broken...
Soviet authorities deny that their athletes use steroids, chemicals that promote muscle development but are outlawed in international competition. A few athletes have defected to the West with tales of widespread steroid use, but such charges are difficult to prove. Still the Soviet athletic establishment is under intense pressure to succeed, and athletes are sometimes asked to take up unpopular sports. Several years ago, the Sports Committee decided that Olympic gold could be mined from handball-a sport not seriously pursued in the Soviet Union. Word went out to the local sports schools to set up crash training programs...
Last week a British research team at the University of Warwick announced that it has isolated a steroid in the sweat of males. Highly purified, the substance smells like sandalwood oil, which is used as an ingredient in perfumes. But that is not half its charm. The researchers claim that the steroid is a pheromone, one of a group of chemicals with scents that influence behavior in many species of the animal world. Even better, it is apparently a male sex pheromone, which has a scent that attracts females. Equivalent pheromones exuded by some female insects, for example, draw males...
Dorothy Harris, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, said many women athletes now take a male steroid to increase muscularity and improve their performance...
...casketmaker from Chula Vista, Calif., visited a general practioner in 1972, complaining about a pain in his right shoulder. The doctor diagnosed his problem as arthritis, ignored a suggestion by a consulting radiologist that "a tumor must also be considered," and gave him 41 costly shots of a steroid drug over a three-month period. As the pain in his shoulder intensified, Tweed consulted an orthopedic surgeon, who X-rayed him and misdiagnosed the problem. Eight months later, an associate of the orthopedic surgeon happened to see Tweed's X rays and identified the illness as bone cancer...