Drug Use Controversy
Koch's achievements, along with the extraordinary performances of many other East German female athletes, aroused suspicion that they were achieved with the aid of performance-enhancing drugs. These drugs were and remain illegal, but were not detectable at the time. In 1991 German anti drug activists Brigitte Berendonk and Werner Franke were able to save several doctoral theses and other documents written by scientists working for the East German drug research program. The documents list the dosage and timetables for the administration of anabolic steroids to many athletes of the former GDR, one of them being Marita Koch. According to the sources Koch did use the anabolic steroid Oral-Turinabol from 1981 to 1984 with dosages ranging from 530 to 1460 mg/year. Koch never publicly admitted to this. However, a letter to the head of the state-owned pharmaceutical company was discovered by researcher Werner Frank, in which Marita Koch complained that Bärbel Wöckel received larger doses of steroids than herself, because she had a relative working in the company.
Read more about this topic: Marita Koch
Famous quotes containing the words drug and/or controversy:
“While man can still his body keep
Wine or love drug him to sleep,
Waking he thanks the Lord that he
Has body and its stupidity....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)