LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - More than 48,000 people have signed a petition that they posted on the White House website demanding that British CNN talk show host Piers Morgan be deported over comments he made on air about gun control.
Morgan last week lambasted pro-gun guests on his show, after the December 14 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman shot dead 26 people, including 20 children.
"We demand that Mr. Morgan be deported immediately for his effort to undermine the Bill of Rights and for exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens," the petition said.
The petition, started on December 21 by a man identified as Kurt N. from Austin, Texas, accuses Morgan of subverting the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms.
U.S. citizens can file a petition on the White House website, whitehouse.gov, if they collect at least 25,000 signatures within 30 days. The White House is then obliged to issue a response.
Morgan, 47, a former newspaper editor in London, shot back at his critics on Twitter. He repeated his past calls for the United States to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and conduct background checks on all gun purchases.
Five days after the Connecticut massacre, Morgan called a guest, Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners for America, an "idiot," "dangerous" and an "unbelievably stupid man" when Pratt argued that more guns were needed to combat crime in the United States.
"I don't care about a petition to deport me. I do care about poor NY firefighters murdered/injured with an assault weapon today. #GunControlNow," Morgan tweeted on Monday, referring to a shooting in New York that killed three people, including the gunman.
Christa Robinson, a CNN spokeswoman, said the network had no immediate comment on the petition.
Publicist Howard Bragman, vice chairman of Reputation.com, said the controversy will get Morgan attention that may translate into higher ratings and wouldn't harm his reputation.
"A lot of it comes from his being British, he's seen the differences between the U.S. and UK, he's passionate and authentic in taking this issue on, and it's probably only going to help him attract more people to his show," Bragman, told Reuters.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy and Eric Kelsey; editing by Christopher Wilson)
Children with chronic conditions increasingly use available resources in children's hospitals Public release date: 24-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rob Graham or Erin Tornatore Rob.Graham@childrens.harvard.edu 617-919-3110 JAMA and Archives Journals
CHICAGO Children with chronic conditions increasingly used more resources in a group of children's hospitals compared with patients without a chronic condition, according to a report that analyzed data from 28 U.S. children's hospitals between 2004 and 2009, and is being published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.
To compare inpatient resource use trends for healthy children and children with chronic health conditions of varying degrees of medical complexity, Jay G. Berry, M.D., M.P.H., with Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues, analyzed data from 1,526,051 unique patients hospitalized from January 2004 through December 2009, who were assigned to one of five chronic condition groups.
The authors found that between 2004 and 2009, hospitals experienced a greater increase in the number of children hospitalized with vs. without a chronic condition (19.2 percent vs. 13.7 percent) and the greatest cumulative increase (32.5 percent) was attributable to children with a significant chronic condition affecting two or more body systems. These children accounted for 19.2 percent (n=63,203) of patients, 27.2 percent (n=111,685) of hospital discharges, 48.9 percent (n=1.1 million) of hospital days, and 53.2 percent (n=$9.2 billion) of hospital charges in 2009.
"Children's hospitals must ensure that their inpatient care systems and payment structures are equipped to meet the protean needs of this important population of children," the authors conclude.
(Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Published online December 24, 2012. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.432. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: This study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development career development award, a grant from the National Center for Research Resources and Seattle Children's Hospital. One author also reported that he is a co-developer of CRGs and receives a consultation fee from the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions for classification research. The Child Health Corporation for America received the CRGs for this analysis from 3M Health Information Systems on a no-cost license. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Editorial: What Can Be Learned by Residents Caring for Children with Lifelong, Chronic, Complex Conditions?
In an accompanying editorial, Julia A. McMillan, M.D., with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, writes, "if the data provided by Berry et al can be assumed to be representative of other large pediatric hospitals, there are important implications for pediatric resident education."
"The challenge for residency program directors is to ensure that the lessons learned caring for complex patients with lifelong chronic illness in the inpatient setting are not forgotten when residents see those patients during subspecialty clinic assignments or during their continuity clinic," they conclude.
(Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Published online December 24, 2012. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.406. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: No conflicts of interest were reported. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Editorial: Implications of the Growing Use of Freestanding Children's Hospitals
In another accompanying editorial, Evan S. Fieldston, M.D., M.B.A., M.S., and Steven M. Altschuler, M.D., of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, write, "Freestanding children's hospitals play a unique role in caring for children, particularly those with special needsTherefore, the implications for the future of pediatric health care and its reimbursement are profound"
"Challenges will continue to be present in how to match patient needs and preferences and how to properly align payment for them. Given limited resources, the obligation of pediatric health care providers to society is to do our best to promote the best outcomes at the right level of efficiency and cost," they conclude.
(Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Published online December 24, 2012. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.126. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: No conflicts of interest were reported. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
###
For more information, contact JAMA Network Media Relations at 312-464-JAMA (5262) or email mediarelations@jamanetwork.org.
Media Advisory: To contact Jay G. Berry, M.D., M.P.H., call Rob Graham or Erin Tornatore at 617-919-3110 or email Rob.Graham@childrens.harvard.edu or erin.tornatore@childrens.harvard.edu. To contact editorial author Julia A. McMillan, M.D., call Kim Hoppe at 410-502-9430 or email khoppe1@jhmi.edu. To contact editorial corresponding author Steven M. Altschuler, M.D., call Ashley Moore at 267-426-6050 or 267-426-6071.
An author podcast will be available on the journal website after the embargo lifts: http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Children with chronic conditions increasingly use available resources in children's hospitals Public release date: 24-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rob Graham or Erin Tornatore Rob.Graham@childrens.harvard.edu 617-919-3110 JAMA and Archives Journals
CHICAGO Children with chronic conditions increasingly used more resources in a group of children's hospitals compared with patients without a chronic condition, according to a report that analyzed data from 28 U.S. children's hospitals between 2004 and 2009, and is being published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.
To compare inpatient resource use trends for healthy children and children with chronic health conditions of varying degrees of medical complexity, Jay G. Berry, M.D., M.P.H., with Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues, analyzed data from 1,526,051 unique patients hospitalized from January 2004 through December 2009, who were assigned to one of five chronic condition groups.
The authors found that between 2004 and 2009, hospitals experienced a greater increase in the number of children hospitalized with vs. without a chronic condition (19.2 percent vs. 13.7 percent) and the greatest cumulative increase (32.5 percent) was attributable to children with a significant chronic condition affecting two or more body systems. These children accounted for 19.2 percent (n=63,203) of patients, 27.2 percent (n=111,685) of hospital discharges, 48.9 percent (n=1.1 million) of hospital days, and 53.2 percent (n=$9.2 billion) of hospital charges in 2009.
"Children's hospitals must ensure that their inpatient care systems and payment structures are equipped to meet the protean needs of this important population of children," the authors conclude.
(Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Published online December 24, 2012. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.432. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: This study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development career development award, a grant from the National Center for Research Resources and Seattle Children's Hospital. One author also reported that he is a co-developer of CRGs and receives a consultation fee from the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions for classification research. The Child Health Corporation for America received the CRGs for this analysis from 3M Health Information Systems on a no-cost license. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Editorial: What Can Be Learned by Residents Caring for Children with Lifelong, Chronic, Complex Conditions?
In an accompanying editorial, Julia A. McMillan, M.D., with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, writes, "if the data provided by Berry et al can be assumed to be representative of other large pediatric hospitals, there are important implications for pediatric resident education."
"The challenge for residency program directors is to ensure that the lessons learned caring for complex patients with lifelong chronic illness in the inpatient setting are not forgotten when residents see those patients during subspecialty clinic assignments or during their continuity clinic," they conclude.
(Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Published online December 24, 2012. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.406. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: No conflicts of interest were reported. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Editorial: Implications of the Growing Use of Freestanding Children's Hospitals
In another accompanying editorial, Evan S. Fieldston, M.D., M.B.A., M.S., and Steven M. Altschuler, M.D., of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, write, "Freestanding children's hospitals play a unique role in caring for children, particularly those with special needsTherefore, the implications for the future of pediatric health care and its reimbursement are profound"
"Challenges will continue to be present in how to match patient needs and preferences and how to properly align payment for them. Given limited resources, the obligation of pediatric health care providers to society is to do our best to promote the best outcomes at the right level of efficiency and cost," they conclude.
(Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Published online December 24, 2012. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.126. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: No conflicts of interest were reported. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
###
For more information, contact JAMA Network Media Relations at 312-464-JAMA (5262) or email mediarelations@jamanetwork.org.
Media Advisory: To contact Jay G. Berry, M.D., M.P.H., call Rob Graham or Erin Tornatore at 617-919-3110 or email Rob.Graham@childrens.harvard.edu or erin.tornatore@childrens.harvard.edu. To contact editorial author Julia A. McMillan, M.D., call Kim Hoppe at 410-502-9430 or email khoppe1@jhmi.edu. To contact editorial corresponding author Steven M. Altschuler, M.D., call Ashley Moore at 267-426-6050 or 267-426-6071.
An author podcast will be available on the journal website after the embargo lifts: http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
In cases like this, an one-day usability most popular observe workshop transfers the necessary or a minimum of elementary usability competencies to the Internet staff. If a charge card firm decides fraud has occurred, website owners will not less than get their finances again. However, when you are needing an simple internet online site and typically do not ever head about attendees, you just ought to test it out. Regardless of whether you run a retail opportunity, provider business or perhaps company empire, the 1st informational flyer men and women will find to learn your enterprise is using the web so it is always more effective to have your own personal website that promotes your corporation exactly the way you?re looking for it. Detail listed here may cover anything from effortless text messages to slide and video clip displays showcasing corporation account to valued clients or informing about future tasks to staff. Sign-up as near the registrar as is possible (get rid of as a great deal of links inside the chain). You?ll discover an exceedingly great amount of people and companies offering web style products and for that reason it really should not be troublesome to bag all by yourself a good deal. To ensure that maximum uptime, installation of redundant back-up solutions is important. The corporate would make certain to shield and consistently update the providers by most effective wares on the whole with the data server business. For this you will need an online hosting (as my associates say in Sweden webbhotell) program. Secondly, the Linux committed web web hosting has help for the scripting languages like Perl and PHP. This lets anyone know a little bit extra a few website?s origins. Getting an individual there to reply your thoughts in case you must have them answered can be a giant moreover. Traditionally, shared hosting is taken into account as an less expensive answer, in spite of this with shared word wide web web hosting you won?t obtain an entire handle in excess of your site. Your website has also to become purposeful to fetch optimum gains. One can find sexual predators that cloak on their own with relatively sympathetic concepts to anybody who has a main problem. This Adobe online site has virtually practically nothing to carry out with ?mouse click ideal here?. For back-end builders, you can find only a solitary version of internet sites which has being current. Configuring Domain Title System (DNS) for Energetic Directory This objective features the Setup parts. When they uncovered it, they?d buy it and you also is going to be abundant, abundant, loaded! If it does not the shoppers is probably not capable to receive the pertinent information on time. This assessment is meant for Important information resource analysts who develop and utilize directories over the Venture, even when guaranteeing brilliant levels of information accessibility. People who use your site will arrive to learn it with the domain identify. Websites templates make it possible for webmasters to pay additional particular attention to this significant facet of internet site growth, and therefore usually tend to acquire targeted visitors from look for engines. In either situation, a firm can unfastened its most respected belongings toward securing new contracts: favorable word of mouth and impeccable references. This tends to get you used on the notion of marketing, and facilitate to build the transition from no matter line of labor you used to be in to on the net marketer a clean an individual. An excellent thing it is possible to do is use relative text sizing (not pixels) that enables the browser to regard the user?s preferred text size. Get available on the market and sustain in tune with precisely what is happening on other internet sites similar towards your private. As soon as you might need further guidance for your committed online web hosting, your expenditure will expand. Exhibiting the design temporary to lots of different folk will emphasize remarkable dissimilarities in feeling with regard to the operating instances and aspirations within your group. For using the web marketers and webmasters, Search engine marketing web layout is in high gear to be the competition has heated up enormously inside quest for prime rankings and SE (search engine) desirability. An E-Commerce information site must have payment attributes and safety tightly integrated. You can easily get a hold of big selection of low-priced internet hosting that gives less costly reseller internet hosting and hosting bundle to start your internet online site or reseller web hosting service. Following the introduction of like new domain names, below are the various top-level domains which require the .aero, .biz, .coop, .data, .museum, .identify, and .professional. Web-based project-management-system lets the mangers to distribute the workload as stated by the capability of human reference or resource (HR).
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It took a long while, but The Wall Street Journal has finally come to Apple's iOS Newsstand. The paper joins thousands of other publications that are publishing via the magazine/newspaper service, and like many, the Journal's gone for a traditional layout that echoes that of the dead tree version. That said, the Newsstand distribution of the Journal is significantly more flexible than its paper cousin, offering full-screen image viewing, three text sizes, social network sharing options (that frustratingly don't use the built-in iOS sharing and require separate authorizations), and faster navigation between articles. It's not quite the authentically-digital that is The Magazine, but it's better than the PNG/JPG images that many publications are unfortunately vomiting into Newsstand.
The app uses a traditional newspaper-style layout, putting the headlines and preview ledes for multiple stories on a single page with an assortment of thumbnail images as well as larger stand-alone photos and videos (the only way you're getting video with the paper version is by using it as a massive flipbook). Navigation between pages of both the article preview grids and within the articles themselves is accomplished with a simple swipe to the left or right, though you'll have to contend with numerous fullscreen ads interspersed throughout. Apparently the $12.99 the paper asks per month for an iPhone subscription or the $21.99 a month they want if you want full access on an iPad (which also includes iPhone and website access) isn't enough to cover their needs, though it is worth noting that's the same price the Journal charges outside of the App Store system, and through Newsstand Apple's going to be taking a 30% cut. Additionally, the pinch gesture works as a back command, dropping you out of the article and into the previews, and from there to the 'start screen'.
As is standard for Newsstand subscriptions, the latest daily edition of The Wall Street Journal will download itself in the background. The Newsstand edition of the Journal also allows you to save articles for offline reading and offers up-to-the-second stock quotes and market news - it is The Wall Street Journal, after all. Many of the articles throughout the app are marked with little key icons, indicating that you're going to need a paid subscription to read them. There are still plenty of articles that aren't locked down, though those are mostly general news you can get anywhere and not the in-depth market and economic reporting for which the Journal is known.
By accepting the 30% cut demanded by Apple, The Wall Street Journal is acknowledging that they need to be present in full on smartphones and tablets like the iPhone and iPad. You're welcome to balk at the monthly cost of the subscription (especially if you're wanting to read the Journal on an iPad, as the same content is offered to smartphone users, it's just... smaller), but that's increasingly becoming the rule when it comes to 'old' media making the transition to new platforms.
Free ($12.99-$21.99 subscription optional) -?Download now
If you thought the tale of how Mitt Romney lost the general election was already told, you would be wrong. Because there is so much left to tell, like how Mitt never wanted to be President anyway.?
RELATED: Tagg Romney Wanted to Punch Obama at the Debate
At least, that's what Tagg Romney says in this new Boston Globe report on what went wrong with Romney's campaign. While the rest of the piece seems to say the problems lay in the Romney campaign's lack of technical advantage, and refusal to introduce the world to Mitt Romney, the human being, this little morsel from the Republican's son points to a larger problem:
?He wanted to be president less than anyone I?ve met in my life. He had no desire to .?.?. run,? said Tagg, who worked with his mother, Ann, to persuade his father to seek the presidency. ?If he could have found someone else to take his place .?.?. he would have been ecstatic to step aside.?
So, yeah, that might explain why Mitt lost. Not wanting the job you need to publicly campaign for more than a year to get is step one in the "Not Getting Elected Guide for Dummies" book. Again, the rest of the mammoth piece, which you really should read, paints a larger picture of the struggle between Mitt's inner circle and his campaign advisors over whether they should humanize Mitt, which was ultimately their downfall. And, also, the Obama campaign had more staff and cooler tech stuff, like an app named Gordon,?"after the person who punched Houdini in the stomach shortly before the magician died," and Narwhal, named after the Internet's favorite arctic whale. ?
RELATED: Tagg Gets Credit for Revealing the 'Real' Romney
For humans to grow and to replace and heal damaged tissues, the body's cells must continually reproduce, a process known as "cell division," by which one cell becomes two, two become four, and so on. A key question of biomedical research is how chromosomes, which are duplicated during cell division so that each daughter cell receives an exact copy of a person's genome, are arranged during this process.
Now, scientists at the Salk Institute have discovered a new characteristic of human cell division that may help explain how our DNA is organized in the nucleus as cells reproduce. They found that telomeres, molecular caps that protect the ends of the chromosomes, move to the outer edge of the cell's nucleus after they have been duplicated.
While the implications of this spatial reorganization of telomeres are not yet clear, the findings may shed light on how our genes are regulated and how gene expression programs are altered during cell division, an important step in understanding aging and diseases that stem from genetic mutations, such as cancer.
"What we discovered is that telomeres not only protect our chromosomes, they also help organize our genetic material in the nucleus," says Jan Karlseder, a professor in Salk's Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory and the Donald and Darlene Shiley Chair. "This is important, because the three-dimensional position of DNA in the nucleus influences gene expression profiles and how the genome morphs over time."
Telomeres, a combination of proteins and DNA, are crucial in DNA replication, tumor suppression and aging. Every time a primary human cell divides, its telomeres get shorter, until critically short telomeres lead cells to self-destruct. Much of Karlseder's research has focused on understanding telomere dynamics in order to develop ways to influence the aging process, and as a result, restrict cancer cell growth.
In addition to exploring the involvement of telomeres in premature aging diseases and interactions between the DNA damage machinery and telomeres, Karlseder studies the role of telomeres during the cell cycle. Previous studies on human cells have shown that telomeres change positions during cell division, suggesting they might also play a role in organizing DNA in the nucleus. But these studies provided only isolated snapshots of telomeres at various stages of the cell cycle.
In their new study, the Salk researchers used advanced time-lapse live-cell confocal microscopy to track telomere movement in real time throughout the cell cycle. They followed the telomeres for 20 hours in living cells by labeling them with molecules that glowed under the microscope. They also recorded the movement of chromatin, a combination of DNA and proteins that forms chromosomes.
The scientists found that the telomeres moved to the outer periphery of the nuclear envelope of each daughter cell nucleus as they assemble after mitosis, the stage of cell division during which the cell's DNA is duplicated to provide each daughter cell with its own copy. By exploring the underlying molecular pathways, the researchers determined that interactions between two proteins, RAP1 and Sun1, seem to tether the telomeres to the nuclear envelope. Sun1 alone was also capable of attracting the telomeres to the nuclear envelope, suggesting the protein is essential for the process and that other elements might be able to replace RAP1 during tethering.
"The tethering of telomeres to the nuclear envelope may serve as an anchor point to reorganize chromatin after each cell division, so that our DNA is correctly situated for gene expression," Karlseder says. "This tethering could also play a role in the maintenance of telomeres, thereby influencing aging, cancer development and other disorders associated with DNA damage. We plan to explore these possibilities in future experiments."
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Salk Institute: http://www.salk.edu
Thanks to Salk Institute for this article.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? With steroids easy to buy, testing weak and punishments inconsistent, college football players are packing on significant weight ? 30 pounds or more in a single year, sometimes ? without drawing much attention from their schools or the NCAA in a sport that earns tens of billions of dollars for teams.
Rules vary so widely that, on any given game day, a team with a strict no-steroid policy can face a team whose players have repeatedly tested positive.
An investigation by The Associated Press ? based on interviews with players, testers, dealers and experts and an analysis of weight records for more than 61,000 players ? revealed that while those running the multibillion-dollar sport say they believe the problem is under control, that control is hardly evident.
The sport's near-zero rate of positive steroids tests isn't an accurate gauge among college athletes. Random tests provide weak deterrence and, by design, fail to catch every player using steroids. Colleges also are reluctant to spend money on expensive steroid testing when cheaper ones for drugs like marijuana allow them to say they're doing everything they can to keep drugs out of football.
"It's nothing like what's going on in reality," said Don Catlin, an anti-doping pioneer who spent years conducting the NCAA's laboratory tests at UCLA. He became so frustrated with the college system that it was part of the reason he left the testing industry to focus on anti-doping research.
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EDITOR'S NOTE ? Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the first of a two-part series.
___
While other major sports have been beset by revelations of steroid use, college football has operated with barely a whiff of scandal. Between 1996 and 2010 ? the era of Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong ? the failure rate for NCAA steroid tests fell even closer to zero from an already low rate of less than 1 percent.
The AP's investigation, drawing upon more than a decade of official rosters from all 120 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, found thousands of players quickly putting on significant weight, even more than their fellow players. The information compiled by the AP included players who appeared for multiple years on the same teams.
For decades, scientific studies have shown that anabolic steroid use leads to an increase in body weight. Weight gain alone doesn't prove steroid use, but very rapid weight gain is one factor that would be deemed suspicious, said Kathy Turpin, senior director of sport drug testing for the National Center for Drug Free Sport, which conducts tests for the NCAA and more than 300 schools.
Yet the NCAA has never studied weight gain or considered it in regard to its steroid testing policies, said Mary Wilfert, the NCAA's associate director of health and safety.
The NCAA attributes the decline in positive tests to its year-round drug testing program, combined with anti-drug education and testing conducted by schools.
The AP's analysis found that, regardless of school, conference and won-loss record, many players gained weight at exceptional rates compared with their fellow athletes and while accounting for their heights.
Adding more than 20 or 25 pounds of lean muscle in a year is nearly impossible through diet and exercise alone, said Dan Benardot, director of the Laboratory for Elite Athlete Performance at Georgia State University.
In nearly all the rarest cases of weight gain in the AP study, players were offensive or defensive linemen, hulking giants who tower above 6-foot-3 and weigh 300 pounds or more. Four of those players interviewed by the AP said that they never used steroids and gained weight through dramatic increases in eating, up to six meals a day. Two said they were aware of other players using steroids.
"I ate 5-6 times a day," said Clint Oldenburg, who played for Colorado State starting in 2002 and for five years in the NFL. Oldenburg's weight increased over four years from 212 to 290.
Oldenburg told the AP he was surprised at the scope of steroid use in college football, even in Colorado State's locker room. "There were a lot of guys even on my team that were using." He declined to identify any of them.
The AP found more than 4,700 players ? or about 7 percent of all players ? who gained more than 20 pounds overall in a single year. It was common for the athletes to gain 10, 15 and up to 20 pounds in their first year under a rigorous regimen of weightlifting and diet. Others gained 25, 35 and 40 pounds in a season. In roughly 100 cases, players packed on as much 80 pounds in a single year.
In at least 11 instances, players that AP identified as packing on significant weight in college went on to fail NFL drug tests. But pro football's confidentiality rules make it impossible to know for certain which drugs were used and how many others failed tests that never became public.
Even though testers consider rapid weight gain suspicious, in practice it doesn't result in testing. Ben Lamaak, who arrived at Iowa State in 2006, said he weighed 225 pounds in high school. He graduated as a 320-pound offensive lineman and said he did it all naturally.
"I was just a young kid at that time, and I was still growing into my body," he said. "It really wasn't that hard for me to gain the weight. I love to eat."
In addition to random drug testing, Iowa State is one of many schools that have "reasonable suspicion" testing. That means players can be tested when their behavior or physical symptoms suggest drug use. Despite gaining 81 pounds in a year, Lamaak said he was never singled out for testing.
The associate athletics director for athletic training at Iowa State, Mark Coberley, said coaches and trainers use body composition, strength data and other factors to spot suspected cheaters. Lamaak, he said, was not suspicious because he gained a lot of "non-lean" weight.
But looking solely at the most significant weight gainers also ignores players like Bryan Maneafaiga.
In the summer of 2004, Bryan Maneafaiga was an undersized 180-pound running back trying to make the University of Hawaii football team. Twice ? once in pre-season and once in the fall ? he failed school drug tests, showing up positive for marijuana use but not steroids.
He'd started injecting stanozolol, a steroid, in the summer to help bulk up to a roster weight of 200 pounds. Once on the team, he'd occasionally inject the milky liquid into his buttocks the day before games.
"Food and good training will only get you so far," he told the AP recently.
Maneafaiga's former coach, June Jones, said it was news to him that one of his players had used steroids. Jones, who now coaches at Southern Methodist University, believes the NCAA does a good job rooting out steroid use.
On paper, college football has a strong drug policy. The NCAA conducts random, unannounced drug testing and the penalties for failure are severe. Players lose an entire year of eligibility after a first positive test. A second offense means permanent ineligibility for sports.
In practice, though, the NCAA's roughly 11,000 annual tests amount to a fraction of all athletes in Division I and II schools. Exactly how many tests are conducted each year on football players is unclear because the NCAA hasn't published its data for two years. And when it did, it periodically changed the formats, making it impossible to compare one year of football to the next.
Even when players are tested by the NCAA, experts like Catlin say it's easy enough to anticipate the test and develop a doping routine that results in a clean test by the time it occurs. NCAA rules say players can be notified up to two days in advance of a test, which Catlin says is plenty of time to beat a test if players have designed the right doping regimen. By comparison, Olympic athletes are given no notice.
Most schools that use Drug Free Sport do not test for anabolic steroids, Turpin said. Some are worried about the cost. Others don't think they have a problem. And others believe that since the NCAA tests for steroids their money is best spent testing for street drugs, she said.
Doping is a bigger deal at some schools than others.
At Notre Dame and Alabama, the teams that will soon compete for the national championship, players don't automatically miss games for testing positive for steroids. At Alabama, coaches have wide discretion. Notre Dame's student-athlete handbook says a player who fails a test can return to the field once the steroids are out of his system.
The University of North Carolina kicks players off the team after a single positive test for steroids. Auburn's student-athlete handbook calls for a half-season suspension for any athlete caught using performance-enhancing drugs.
At UCLA, home of the laboratory that for years set the standard for cutting-edge steroid testing, athletes can fail three drug tests before being suspended. At Bowling Green, testing is voluntary.
At the University of Maryland, students must get counseling after testing positive, but school officials are prohibited from disciplining first-time steroid users.
Only about half the student athletes in a 2009 NCAA survey said they believed school testing deterred drug use. As an association of colleges and universities, the NCAA could not unilaterally force schools to institute uniform testing policies and sanctions, Wilfert said.
"We can't tell them what to do, but if went through a membership process where they determined that this is what should be done, then it could happen," she said.
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Associated Press writers Ryan Foley in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; David Brandt in Jackson, Miss.; David Skretta in Lawrence, Kan.; Don Thompson in Sacramento, Calif., and Alexa Olesen in Shanghai, China, and researchers Susan James in New York and Monika Mathur in Washington contributed to this report.
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Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations (at) ap.org.
Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the first of a two-part series.
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Public release date: 24-Dec-2012
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