The Health Risks of Doping during the Cold War: A Comparative Analysis of the Two Sides of the Iron Curtain

Abstract

This article compares East Germany's Cold War-era approach to doping to that of the USA's in terms of their respective impacts on medical risk. Although deserving of criticism on many levels, the GDR doping programme featured a number of safeguards designed to minimise medical dangers. Unlike their East German counterparts, American governmental units were not directly involved in the administration of performance-enhancing substances. The US approach to doping was not ideal in terms of medical risk, however. As a result of the country's regulatory approach to doping, the country's athletes frequently turned to black market sources for doping agents. It was also relatively common for American athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs without the benefit of medical supervision. The US approach to doping was in these ways inferior to that of East Germany's on the subject of medical risk.

Este artigo compara a abordagem do doping da Alemanha Oriental do período da Guerra Fria à dos Estados Unidos, em termos de seus respectivos impactos no risco médico. Ainda que merecedor de críticas em muitos aspectos, o programa de doping da RDA possuía uma série de defesas destinadas a minimizar os perigos médicos. Diferentemente de seu congênere da Alemanha Oriental, os órgãos de Estado americanos não estavam diretamente envolvidos na administração de substâncias para melhoria no desempenho. No entanto, a abordagem dos EUA ao doping não era ideal, em termos de risco médico. Como resultado da abordagem regulatória ao doping do país, seus atletas frequentemente buscavam fontes do mercado negro para fornecedores de doping. Também era relativamente comum que atletas americanos utilizassem drogas para melhoria de desempenho sem o benefício da supervisão médica. A abordagem dos EUA ao doping era, por isso, inferior à da Alemanha Oriental, no que se refere ao risco médico.

Este artículo compara las prácticas dopantes en la Alemania del Este y en los Estados Unidos durante la Guerra Fría desde el punto de vista de sus respectivos efectos en materia de riesgos médicos. A pesar de que el programa de dopaje de la RDA es criticable en muchos aspectos, activó una serie de medidas destinadas a minimizar los riesgos médicos. A diferencia de sus equivalentes germanoorientales, no hubo organismos gubernamentales norteamericanos directamente implicados en la administración de sustancias mejoradoras del rendimiento. No obstante, la perspectiva estadounidense en relación con el dopaje deja mucho que desear en materia de los riesgos médicos. La regulación estadounidense sobre el dopaje provocó que los deportistas a menudo recurrieran al mercado negro para proveerse de sustancias dopantes. También era relativamente frecuente que los deportistas norteamericanos utilizaran sustancias mejoradoras del rendimiento sin gozar de supervisión médica. Desde este punto de vista la perspectiva estadounidense en relación con el dopaje fue más deficiente que la germanooriental por lo que respecta a los riesgos médicos.

Cet article compare l'approche du dopage en Allemagne de l'Est et aux Etats-Unis pendant la période de la Guerre froide, en termes d'impacts sur le risque médical. Bien que méritant la critique à différents niveaux, le programme de dopage de la RDA prévoit des garde-fous conçus pour minimiser les dangers médicaux. A l'inverse de leurs homologues Est allemands, les services du gouvernement américain n'étaient pas directement engagés dans l'administration de substances améliorant la performance. L'approche américaine du dopage n'est cependant pas idéale en termes de risque médical. En conséquence de la réglementation par l'Etat du dopage, les athlètes se sont fréquemment tournés vers le marché noir pour des produits dopants. Il était aussi relativement commun pour les athlètes américains d'utiliser des substances améliorant la performance sans bénéficier d'un contrôle médical. L'approche du dopage aux USA était donc plus risquée que celle de l'Allemagne de l'Est au niveau médical.

Dieser Artikel vergleicht die Einstellung Ost-Deutschlands zu Doping zur Zeit des Kalten Krieges mit jener der Vereinigten Staaten im Hinblick auf ihre jeweiligen Auswirkungen auf das medizinische Risiko. Obwohl es Kritik auf vielen Ebenen verdiente, wies das Doping-Programm der DDR eine Reihe von Schutzmaßnahmen auf, um medizinische Gefahren zu minimieren. Anders als ihre ostdeutschen Kollegen waren US-amerikanische Regierungseinheiten nicht direkt an der Gabe von leistungssteigernden Substanzen beteiligt. Die US-amerikanische Einstellung zu Doping war jedoch in Bezug auf das medizinische Risiko nicht ideal. Als Ergebnis des regulativen Ansatzes des Landes gegenüber Doping wandten sich die Athleten des Landes häufig den Schwarzmarktquellen für Dopingmittel zu. Für amerikanische Athleten war es auch relativ üblich, leistungssteigernde Drogen ohne die Unterstützung einer medizinischen Aufsicht zu nutzen. Die US-amerikanische Einstellung zur Doping war in dieser Hinsicht, mit Blick auf das medizinische Risiko, jener Ost-Deutschlands unterlegen.

本稿は、冷戦期の東ドイツのドーピングに対するアプローチと、アメリカ合衆国のそれとを、医学的リスクへの影響という見地から比較する。東ドイツのドーピングプログラムについては、様々なレベルでの批判がなされるべきではあるものの、医学上の危険性を最小限に抑えるために数多くの安全策が設けられていた。東ドイツとは違い、米国の政府機関はパフォーマンス向上物質の管理に直接関わっていなかった。しかしながら、医学的リスクという見地から見れば、米国のアプローチは決して理想的なものではなかった。国がドーピングに対して規制的なアプローチを採った結果、米国のアスリートはドーピング薬を手に入れるためにしばしば闇市場へと目を向けることになったからである。また米国のアスリートたちは、パフォーマンス向上薬をしばしば医学的指導の恩恵を受けることなく用いた。このように、ドーピングに対する米国のアプローチは、医学的リスクという点について言えば東ドイツのそれよりも劣っていたと言える。

本文比较了冷战时期东德和美国采用兴奋剂方法对医疗风险各自的影响。虽然东德的兴奋剂计划在很多层面值得批评，但该计划却设计了一些减少医疗风险的保障措施。与东德不同，美国政府没有直接参与兴奋剂的管理。美国对兴奋剂采取的方法在医疗风险方面并不理想。由于政府不参与兴奋剂的监管，美国的运动员经常在黑市寻找兴奋剂的来源。为此，美国运动员在使用兴奋剂时缺乏足够的医务监督显得相对常见。从而使得美国在兴奋剂的医疗风险防范方面逊于东德。

Keywords::

• sport and Cold War
• sport and medical history
• sport and doping
• sport and drugs
• sport and comparative history

Notes

^1.Dennis and Grix, Sport Under Communism, 83. See also Braun, “‘Very Nice, the Enemies are Gone!’.”

^2. See, most prominently, Berendonk, Doping Dokumente; Spitzer, Doping in der DDR; Ungerleider, Faust's Gold; Gerrard, “Playing Foreign Policy Games”; and Franke and Berendonk, “Hormonal Doping.” Some of the non-doping aspects of the GDR sport system have been positively perceived. A number of countries have even gone to considerable effort to incorporate the talent identification and development strategies of the former GDR into their own sport systems. See Green and Oakley, “Elite Sport Development Systems.”

^3. Most of the primary sources used in the East German section of this manuscript come from post-Cold War legal testimonies made by participants in the GDR doping programme. They are held in the Dr Steven Ungerleider GDR Collection in honour of Professor Werner Franke and Brigitte Berendonk, Texas Program in Sports and Media, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX (hereafter Ungerleider Collection). The documents in the Ungerleider Collection should not, of course, be taken at face value; in making use of them, historians must constantly keep in mind that those who testify in court proceedings usually do so in ways that best promote their legal interests. For a longer research note on this and other points regarding the Ungerleider Collection, see Hunt and Mueller, “Dr. Steven Ungerleider GDR Collection.”

^4.Dennis and Grix, Sport Under Communism, 84. On Ewald's career, see Carlson, “Manfred Ewald.” Ewald formally served as president of the German Gymnastics and Sports Association. Dennis and Grix's book above is the best English-language, book-length overview of East German sport. For a shorter (though still excellent) overview to the subject, consult Young, “East versus West.” The political goals that underlay the GDR sport system are also addressed in Carr, “The Use of Sport”; Balbier, “‘A Game, a Competition, an Instrument?’”; and Geyer, “On the Road.” For a broad historiographical overview of German sport, see Schiller and Young, “The History and Historiography.”

^5. Horst Röder, “Comments on the Doping Cases Against Coaches, Sports Doctors and Sports Officials in the GDR,” October 15, 2001 (Translated from German), original in German language, accessed November 15, 2012, http://www.sport-ddr-roeder.de/fragen_antworten_artikel.html

^6. Cited in Ibid.

^7. There is considerable truth to the GDR's perception of doping in other countries. Although its findings remain unverified by other scholars, one recent study commissioned by Germany's Federal Institute for Sport Science and conducted by Berlin's Humboldt University has even asserted that a state-sponsored doping programme existed in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) during the Cold War. A German-language summary report on the study can be found online via the Humboldt University website: http://www.bisp.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/Aktuelles/Inhaltlicher_Bericht_HU.pdf?__blob = publicationFile. For doping in the Federal Republic of Germany, see also Singler and Treutlein, “Doping in West Germany”; Krüger, Nielsen, and Becker, “The Munich Olympics 1972; and Meier and Reinold, “Performance Enhancement.” For an early attempt to elucidate the political relationship between East Germany and West Germany on the subject of sport, see Carr “The Involvement of Politics.” See, for a noteworthy book regarding the political and cultural dynamics at play in West German sport (with the 1972 Games as its analytical lens), Schiller and Young, “The 1972 Munich Olympics.”

^8.Dennis and Grix, Sport Under Communism, 89.

^9. The details of the system are elucidated in Berendonk, Doping Dokumente. Berendonk is within this work decidedly critical of the GDR doping system.

^10. On Jenapharm's anabolic steroid research, consult Latzel, Staatsdoping. See also Schwarz, Onken, and Schubert, “The Steroid Story of Jenapharm.” See p. 443 for Oral-Turinabol in particular. The broader history of pharmaceutical research on testosterone and its steroid derivatives is detailed in Hoberman and Yesalis, “History of Synthetic Testosterone”; Hoberman, Testosterone Dreams. For an accessible history of anabolic steroid use in the context of sport specifically, see Todd, “A History.”

^11.Dennis and Grix, Sport Under Communism, 95.

^12. On the Stasi's involvement in East German sport, consult Dennis, “Securing the Sports ‘Miracle’.” For works that focus on the broader place of the Stasi in East German society, begin with Bruce, The Firm; Gieseke, The History of the Stasi; and Dennis with LaPorte, The Stasi.

^13. Horst Röder, Deposition Transcript, May 4, 1999, Ungerleider Collection, 4. A leading work on East German doping described Höppner's central role in its operation in the following terms: ‘He organized and administered the whole GDR doping system, working with high-level government officials, the pharmaceutical labs, and the sports-medicine doctors’. Ungerleider, Faust's Gold, 147.

^14. Röder, Deposition Transcript, 8–9.

^15. Manfred Höppner, Deposition Transcript, May 21, 1996, Ungerleider Collection, 7–8.

^16. Dr Werner Keyling, Deposition Transcript, September 14, 1999, Ungerleider Collection, 4.

^17. Manfred Höppner, Deposition Transcript, May 22, 1996, Ungerleider Collection, 5.

^18. Manfred Höppner, Deposition Transcript, May 21, 1996, 15.

^19. Röder, Deposition Transcript, 10.

^20. Requests by East German athletes and/or coaches to exceed dosage plans were not uncommon. Moreover, a number of individuals disregarded (or attempted to disregard) the medical advice given to them under the assumption that performance levels increased in direct proportion to the quantity of drugs that were taken. It should also be noted that the efforts by GDR officials to identify instances of variation from approved dosage plans were not always successful. See Berendonk, Doping Dokumente, 86, 188, 193–4.

^21. Dr Thomas Kurt Köhler, Deposition Transcript, April 22, 1999, Ungerleider Collection, 3.

^22. Röder, Deposition Transcript, 9.

^23. Dr Elke Karin Schramm, Deposition Transcript, September 11, 1996, Ungerleider Collection, 9.

^24. Martina Pfüller, Deposition Transcript, May 17, 1994, Ungerleider Collection, 3.

^25. Darja Strobach, Deposition Transcript, March 17, 1998, Ungerleider Collection, 4.

^26. Röder, Deposition Transcript, 12.

^27. Rudolf Schramme, Deposition Transcript, March 30, 1999, Ungerleider Collection, 3.

^28. Höppner, Deposition Transcript, May 21, 1996, 14–15. It should be noted that in comparison to what is known today, relatively little definitive information existed during Höppner's time in office regarding the health effects of steroids.

^29. Dr Thomas Kurt Köhler, Deposition Transcript, 5.

^30. Matuschevski, Deposition Transcript, 2.

^31. Dr Elke Schramm, Deposition Transcript, April 16, 1999, Ungerleider Collection, 5.

^32. Röder, Deposition Transcript, 11.

^33. Estimates as to the number of East Germany athletes who were administered performance-enhancing substances range between 2000 and 10,000. Dennis and Grix, Sport Under Communism, 53.

^34. Manfred Matuschevski, Deposition Transcript, April 26, 1999, Ungerleider Collection, 7. Some of the coaches and trainers who administered performance-enhancing substances in the GDR were themselves unaware as to their actual nature. ‘I was not aware at all, in the beginning, that the tablets I administered were in fact anabolic steroids’, said track and field coach Burkhard Rudolf Kenk. Kenk, Deposition Transcript, May 20, 1999, Ungerleider Collection, 2.

^35. See Swift, “Bodies of Evidence,” 25. A 2008 televised documentary on the GDR doping programme included a powerful set of testimonials by former East German athletes as to the health problems caused by their use of performance-enhancing drugs. Rooper, Doping for Gold.

^36.Ungerleider, Faust's Gold, 52.

^37. Ibid., 99, 100.

^38. Martina Pfüller, Deposition Transcript, May 17, 1994, Ungerleider Collection, 4–5.

^39. See Cole, “The East German Sports System,” 204. On the post-Cold War reunification of German sport, see Hoberman, “The Reunification of German Sports Medicine”; Volkwein and Haag, “Sport in Unified Germany.”

^40. Dr Elke Karin Schramm, Deposition Transcript, September 11, 1996, 7.

^41. For an examination of the different ways in which Western and Soviet-bloc doping are remembered, see Dimeo, “Good versus Evil.”

^42. See Todd, “Anabolic Steroids.” While the number of physicians willing to supervise doping by athletes were limited, some American athletes (as well as some in other Western countries) of course did take performance-enhancing drugs under medical supervision. See Hoberman, “Sports Physicians and the Doping Crisis,” 206–8. This did not, of course, entirely eliminate the risks associated doping. A West German heptathlete Birgit Dressel died at least partially as the result of performance-enhancing drugs (which she used under medical supervision). See Hoberman, Mortal Engines, 1–2; Hoberman, “Sports Physicians, Human Nature,” 268.

^43.Voy and Deeter, Drugs, Sport, and Politics, 11.

^44. Patera quoted in Scott, “It's Not How You Play the Game.”

^45.Todd, “Anabolic Steroids,” 95.

^46.Final Report of the President's Commission on Olympic Sports (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), vol. 1, 123.

^47. Ibid., 123.

^48.Final Report of the President's Commission, vol. 2, 251.

^49. Ibid., 251.

^50. Ibid., 251–2.

^51.Neff, “Caracas,” 18–23.

^52. Ibid., 19.

^53.Chu, “A California Sports Doctor,” 53, 54. The belief as to the incredible potential of HGH was well known in the American sports scene. A popular 1982 ‘how to’ book on performance-enhancing drugs by Dan Duchaine entitled the Underground Steroid Handbook included a passage asserting that HGH was ‘great stuff!’ and that it was the ‘best drug for permanent muscle gains’. Quoted in Todd and Todd, “Significant Events,” 86.

^54.Chu, “A California Sports Doctor,” 54.

^55. Toni Symonds, Untitled Study [attached to ‘Asssemblyman Introduces Steroid Legislation’, News from Assemblyman Gary Condit, December 4, 1985], 5. Document from Todd-McLean Collection, H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports, University of Texas at Austin (hereafter Todd-McLean Collection).

^56. Gary A. Condit, Memorandum to Assembly Subcommittee on Sports and Entertainment of California Legislature, December 4, 1985, Todd-McLean Collection, 2

^57. Symonds, Untitled Study, 5–7.

^58.Johnston, Bachman, and O'Malley, Student Drug Use in America, 15.

^59.Buckley et al., “Estimated Prevalence.”

^60.Weir, “Anti-Steroid Measures,” clipping from Stark Center.

^61. “Steroid Use Widespread and the Drugs are Easy to Obtain, Assembly Subcommittee is Told,” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1985, Todd-McLean Collection.

^62. Symonds, Untitled Study, 3.

^63. U.S. House of Representatives, Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary on H.R. 4658: Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990 (Washington DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990), 24, 27, 28.

^64. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General, Adolescent SteroidUse (February 1991), i.

^65. Ibid., 16.

^66. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General, Adolescents and Steroids (August 1990), 3.

^67. Capitalisation from the original. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Adolescent Steroid Use, 8.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas M. Hunt

Thomas M. Hunt is an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at The University of Texas at Austin, where he also holds an appointment as Assistant Director for Academic Affairs at the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports.

Paul Dimeo

Paul Dimeo is Senior Lecturer at the University of Stirling. His research focuses on the history and politics of drugs in sport.

Florian Hemme

Florian Hemme is a doctoral student in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin.

Anne Mueller

Anne Mueller is a master's student in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin.