WASHINGTON (AFP) — Major League Baseball officials reportedly want to have a blood test available starting next season to screen players for Human Growth Hormone (HGH).
Gary Green, a major league consultant who is a doctor at the University of California at Los Angeles, told USA Today that Bud Selig, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, supports the idea of an HGH test.
"We're cautiously optimistic," Green said. "Talking to the commissioner, if the test becomes widely available, he certainly would be in favor of getting that implemented."
The effort comes in the wake of HGH links to high-profile major leaguers Gary Sheffield and Rick Ankiel and centers upon a blood test developed under oversight of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
The test was used on a limited basis at the 2004 Athens Olympics and 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, according to WADA director of science Olivier Rabin, who said the test would be available for widespread use within months.
"This is great news because we strongly believe that human growth hormone is abused in sports," Rabin told USA Today.
Major League Baseball officials would need several months to study the accuracy of the tests once they become available, Green said, and the players union would have to agree to adding an HGH test to the drug test program.
But no US sport has been struck harder by doping allegations than baseball, with links to the BALCO steroid scandal haunting Barry Bonds' march to the major league career home run record.
US lawmakers have threatened the commissioners of baseball and other sports to impove WADA-style tests upon their leagues if they do not pass stringent measures to safeguard the jeopardized integrity and credibility of the leagues.
National Football League players union chief Gene Upshaw told the newspaper that he opposed a new testing policy, saying, "There's no way I'm having my guys punched for a blood test every time they walk into a locker room."
The problem is, growing evidence of doping in US sports punches the inegrity of the results and efforts in the gut, with hulking figures hurtling into each other in American football at ever-faster speeds.
And the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that Major League Baseball officials want to speak with Los Angeles Angels outfielder Gary Matthews regarding claims he received an HGH shipment.
Matthews declined to comment to the Times, but his agent Scott Levanthal said no meetings had been requested and not saying how Matthews would respond, saying, "We'll address that at the time."
HGH was not banned in baseball until 2005 and is legal with a prescription.
Matthews denied using HGH last March after allegations were reported by Sports Illustrated that in 2004 he received genotropin, an HGH that the New York Daily News reported is the same type Ankiel received the same year.
Ankiel, a St. Louis Cardinals outfielder whose heartwarming comeback story has been turned on its ear, was questioned by Major League Baseball officials about allegations he received HGH in 2004, the News reported Thursday.
Both are linked to the investigation launched by New York state officials that led to raids in Florida earlier this year on a scheme to have prescriptions written to unseen patients over the internet.
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
