Depth Reporting story on hurricane forecasting

Written in early September 2005, this is me writing about a topic I'd like to think I know a lot about. And, to be fair with myself, I know my share. If only I had the math skills necessary to botch seven forecasts a week, I'd have been a on-air met.

This was written for one of my favorite college professors of all time, Chris Waddle, who taught depth journalism at UA. He's a Pulitzer winner, two times over, and hey, he gave me an A on it! How 'bout that? Praise from Caesar...

A Fine Line?

As a record hurricane season rages on, forecasters are trying to convince coastal residents that a hurricane is more than meets the eye.

By Matt Hooper

It was to be a city under water.

Downtown streets turned into canals, high-rise buildings vented by exploding windows, major thoroughfares and access arteries cut off from rescue aid. A city of nearly a half million displaced.

Tampa, Fla., on Friday, Aug. 13, 2004.

***

It had been a full day since the National Hurricane Center’s forecast map placed the residents of Tampa and its sibling city of St. Petersburg in the crosshairs of a violent storm.

Every six hours in the life of a tropical storm or hurricane, the NHC releases an updated forecast map to news outlets across the country. The map details the storm’s current position, denoting it with a brown bulls-eye, and quantifies the system’s proximity to land. From the bulls-eye, there extends a skinny black line that directs the most violent part of the storm, the eyewall, to its forecasted destination. That skinny black line splits a cone of probability, colored in white, which widens as the forecast extends further into the future; serving as a visual representation of the unpredictability of these prodigious storms and marking the extent of the area within which the skinny black line could wobble left or right.

Just before sunrise on Thursday, Aug. 12, Tampa Bay was bisected on the newest forecast map by a skinny black line.

Charley, the third child of the 2004 hurricane season, was born on the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 9, just north of the Venezuelan coast. The forecast called for the storm to move northwest toward an area off the Cuban coast. It would muscle up past tropical storm status to become a hurricane, as happens to all tropical systems that achieve constant wind speeds at or greater than 74 mph.

Monday morning’s skinny black line missed the western coast of Cuba by roughly 90 miles.

Monday afternoon’s skinny black line was shifted nearly 150 miles east.

Now central Cuba was to expect the brunt of Charley and much sooner than expected as almost a full day had been shaved off expected arrival times. Six hours later the skinny black line inched further past Cuba and into the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Just before sunrise on Wednesday, Aug. 11, Charlotte Harbor, an inlet more than 90 miles south of Tampa’s famous crescent, was bisected on the newest forecast map by a skinny black line.

One day later, the track shifted north to Tampa.

Landfall was expected on Friday afternoon. Charley could possibly be a Category 2 hurricane, as measured by intensity scale for these storms, known as the Saffir-Simpson.

A plan for the evacuation of the Tampa region commenced immediately. According to an Aug. 12, 2004 report by CBS News, it was estimated that 380,000 residents of the coastal city were told to pack up and head north. Cars and trucks inched slowly north on Interstate 75 throughout the day on Thursday, while Charley’s swirling winds and drenching downpours walloped the island nation of Cuba and skirted past the Florida Keys.

Lisa Kaminski, the manager of a Days Inn Hotel in Key West told CBS News that while guests were told to high-tail it to Hialeah or motor up to Miami to escape the pounding surf and howling winds, her staff was going nowhere.

“We’re staying,” she said. “This isn’t a big one.”

At 11 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 13, Category 2 Charley and his 110 mph winds were knocking on Tampa’s door, its speed increasing, its eye tightening, its winds strengthening. Tampa was doomed for a direct impact. Port Charlotte, once the forecasts’ focal point, was bumped down to the outermost fringe of the cone of probability.

Around noon, the storm’s energy exploded in a fit of strengthening. What was once only a formidable system became apocalyptic. Its winds held steady at 145 mph with higher gusts, strong enough to rip apart well-built homes, move cars without turning a key, shift a beach hundreds of yards inland or just erase it altogether. Now Category 4 royalty on a scale that halts at five, Tampa’s scenario got bleaker, despite the fact that what first appeared to be a wobble to the right of the hurricane’s set path, was looking more like an out-and-out detour.

The skinny black line stayed put.

John Emmert was the news director at WINK-TV in Fort Myers on that Friday the 13. He tells “The Rundown,” a Web site devoted to the coverage of local television news, that his meteorologists predicted a more southern landfall.

“The Hurricane Center’s forecast has a center line which is the consensus line, which was Tampa,” Emmert explained. “Our guys didn’t think [the storm’s track shift] was a wobble, we went on the air right after that and told people it looked like the hurricane was headed closer to Fort Myers.”

At 2 p.m., the NHC’s skinny black line finally shifted southward, bisecting Charlotte Harbor, staring down Punta Gorda and Fort Myers.

At 3:45 p.m., Charley’s devastating winds, flooding rains and pounding surf permanently altered the landscape of Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda and the lives of its residents.

Ninety miles away from Tampa Bay were 31 dead bodies and more than 11,000 uninhabitable homes and pieces of homes. Much of downtown Punta Gorda was reduced to rubble. Citizens complained that they were unprepared; the NHC blamed the media.

“We’re kind of surprised that people were surprised,” said Robbie Berg, an NHC meteorologist speaking to the Associated Press.

Berg said that the problem lies not with the Center’s forecasted path, but with the media’s fixation on “Tampa, Tampa, Tampa.”

“We always wish we could have more, better guidance,” Berg said. “But with what we had, we did the best we could. Errorwise, we really weren't that bad. It's just that the storm happened to be so intense, that it made a big difference in landfall.”

***

More than 30 years have passed since hurricanes were first tagged with a number on the original Saffir-Simpson scale and first led to shore by a skinny black line. In the late 1970s, hurricane forecasts extended only one day into the future. In the early 1980s and 1990s, the prognostications pushed outward to three days. Now, the Hurricane Center issues a five-day outlook that includes the skinny black line, the cone of probability, a likely cone of probability and the storm’s Saffir-Simpson classification.

Forecasters have become more knowledgeable of the storms they track, computer models are more exact and confidence in forecast accuracy is increasing. Chances are that no tropical meteorologist would argue that the forecasts have not improved markedly over the past 30 years.

But Punta Gorda’s people still claim they were unprepared for Charley. The National Hurricane Center still claims that not only should Punta Gorda have been prepared, despite being 90 miles away from the pinpoint forecast, but that the average margin of error of these storms at 48 hours from predicted landfall is 110 miles.

How does that skinny black line communicate danger to that 110 mile radius? Why not focus only on the cone of probability? Is a five-day outlook in the best interest of the public? Will the confusion that took place on Florida’s western coast happen again if a similar storm threatens another major metropolitan area?

***

It is a city under water.

Downtown streets are canals, high-rise buildings are vented by exploded windows, major thoroughfares and access arteries are cut off from rescue aid. A city of a half million is displaced.

New Orleans, August 29, 2005.

***

New Orleans, a city long-feared to one day wind up in the crosshairs of a deadly cyclone, awoke on Aug. 26, 2005 and the skinny black line was staring at the mouth of Mobile Bay, over 100 miles east of the city.

By lunch time, the line and The Big Easy got cozier and the weather service got nervous. At supper time, Crescent City residents could theoretically have stepped outside their homes, glanced over the skyline, and seen a skinny black line silhouetted in the eastern sky against a rising crescent moon.

The line punctured the southern Louisiana barrier island of Grand Isle before snaking dangerously close to the New Orleans’ ports, to its rebellious French Quarter, to its disadvantaged Ninth Ward. Parked a handful of miles east of the city, the black line was the harbinger for Katrina, the largest and most powerful hurricane to threaten the Gulf Coast since 1969.

Born out of a jumbled mass of thunderstorms and tropical showers, Katrina quickly morphed into a Category 2 spitfire, slicing through South Florida and emerging into the simmering Gulf waters. There it flourished, leaping from two to five on the Saffir-Simpson scale and chugging swiftly north toward the coastline shared by Louisiana and Mississippi.

Evacuations were ordered as hurricane warnings stretched the length of the Magnolia State shoreline and into the Louisiana bayou. A day before the forecasted landfall, the city of New Orleans was forced to flee. Most did, several did not.

News networks across the country sprang into action, with the onus of activity centering on The Big Easy. What was going to happen when a city surrounded by water and resting almost completely under sea level became engulfed in storm surge and tropical downpours?

At 6:10 a.m. on Monday Aug. 29, a slightly-weakened Category 4 Katrina pierced the early morning calm at Grand Isle before barreling east into the Mississippi towns of Waveland and Gulfport. The most despicable winds, the heaviest rains and a 30-foot wall of storm surge ravished the Delta State coast.

New Orleans survived the winds; few structures were flattened by Katrina’s breezes. It succumbed to the rain.

The forecast was not exactly perfect, as the skinny black line was about 15 or 20 miles west of the storm’s actual path, but it was pretty darn close according to a report filed by staff reporters at MSNBC, who declared that “two federal agencies got it right: the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.

“They forecast the path of the storm and the potential for devastation with remarkable accuracy.”

But Jack Crochet of Biloxi, who rode out the storm in his now splintered home, told staff reporters at The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger that “we thought everything was going to New Orleans.”

President George W. Bush, during a question and answer session in Biloxi, himself acknowledged that the coast of Mississippi seemed to pale in comparison to The Crescent City, saying “Mississippi people have got to understand that I know a lot of the focus is on New Orleans.”

This time it was a near perfect forecast, but still there are complaints of citizens who suffered ungodly devastation and felt that they were unprepared, despite hurricane warnings and attempted evacuations. Why? Was everyone too fixated on that skinny black line?

***

Neil Johnson of The Tampa Tribune published an article, “Hurricane Forecast Maps May Lose Direct-Hit Line,” on Oct. 22, 2004, a little over a month following Charley’s unexpected detour into Charlotte Harbor. In it, Johnson addresses this argument by citing Max Mayfield, the director of the National Hurricane Center.

“Don’t focus on that skinny line,” said Mayfield, which also happens to be what he told Congress on Sept. 22, 2005 as he addressed the NHC’s role in forecasting Katrina. Mayfield told Johnson that he wants the line to be removed, but the consensus of the meteorological community was that the skinny black line did more good than harm.

After the 2004 hurricane season, the NHC conducted an email poll to determine whether or not forecasts had reached the end of the skinny black line. According to the AP’s Bill Kaczor, of the 971 email responses from media representatives, meteorologists and local emergency management agencies, 63 percent are in favor of keeping the line in the forecast packages. So the NHC succumbed to the will of the majority.

Chris Landsea is one of the Center’s most seasoned forecasters and was a part of the group of meteorologists that paced up and down the office floor in Miami as Charley hiccupped into Punta Gorda and Katrina careened into the easternmost coast of Louisiana. He described the inaccuracies accompanying that skinny black line.

“A two-day forecast has an average margin of error of 125 to 150 miles or so,” Landsea said. “So it’s something that, if you give an exact point, can be misleading.”

One hundred fifty-six miles separate Birmingham, Ala., from Atlanta, 142 miles separate Cleveland from Columbus, Ohio and 121 miles separate Los Angeles from San Diego.

Massachusetts is 152 miles wide.

Hurricanes themselves can be hundreds of miles in diameter, with its peak winds packed into the eyewall and gale force winds extending up to 100 miles from the center of circulation, but the intensity of the storm is not uniform.

Storms in the Northern Hemisphere have a natural tendency to spin counterclockwise, which takes the circulation from left to right and back again and secures that right side of the storm (if the hurricane is moving north) will always be stronger than the left. Katrina, for example, made landfall with winds of at least 145 mph, moving north at 15 mph. On the left side of the storm, you would subtract the motion of the storm from the wind total. In New Orleans, the winds spun at 130 mph, which is a Category 3 measurement.

On the right side of the storm, you would add the storm’s motion to the wind speed. On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, 160 mph winds sandblasted homes, ripped pavement off of roads, displaced bridges and moved boats miles into dry dock. Those are Category 5 winds, or what Saffir and Simpson referred to as “catastrophic.”

If a 20 mile jog in the forecasted track of a storm that is hundreds of miles wide can mean the difference between moderate damage and catastrophic damage, imagine what 150 miles could do.

One thing that a 150 mile forecast mistake does is give people a false sense of security. Brian Peters, the former chief of Birmingham’s National Weather Service office and now an on-camera forecaster at WBMA ABC 33/40 in The Magic City, says that one bad forecast can contaminate coastal residents for generations.

“Human nature says: ‘Well, they missed it before, and they’ll miss it again,’” Peters said. “Human nature also says: ‘I survived the last one, I’ll survive this one.’”

Peters’ obsession with all things tropical began, ironically, with Hurricane Donna, which slammed into Charlotte Harbor on Sept. 10, 1960, blazing the trail that Charley would follow 44 years later. Since then, he has not only studied some of history’s worst storms, he’s been hunkered down in the midst of them. If anyone knows why there can be 150 miles of forecast error for these systems, he does.

“Well, forecasting is not completely an exact science,” Peters said with a chuckle. “We’d like to think it is, but I don’t think it will be in my lifetime.

“There are many factors. For instance, the eye in a hurricane or tropical storm is constantly changing, constantly changing its character. They don’t move in a straight line, they wobble.”

A wobble, a burp in the not-so-straight path of a hurricane might be normal, leaving the forecasted track unchanged. Or it might signify a shift in the track, as it did for Charley. But even if Charley’s eye had stayed on its original track, the damage was still likely to peak south of the point of landfall. Again, the onus falls on the skinny black line.

“It’s important if you’re a Gulf Coast resident to understand that there is more to a hurricane than the eye,” Peters said. “Historically, that’s what we’ve looked at, statistically it’s an identifiable thing that meteorologists use in trying to evaluate a forecast.”

Dr. Jennings Bryant, a professor and media researcher at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, has studied the role of the media in covering disasters. He believes that the media’s focus on the skinny black line can also give some people that false sense of security.

“People tend to think in terms of central tendencies, always using means and averages,” Bryant said. “People feel like: ‘That line is 20 miles to the east of me, well, I’m safe.’ In terms of public safety, that’s a problem.”

A hurricane is more than the eye, that’s a fact you don’t have to sweat out of forecasters. But the line tracks the eye and only the eye. So how do you sway people away from what Bryant calls “central tendencies?”

The NHC is trying to tackle that problem.

For 2005, a new, experimental map accompanies each tropical system’s forecast package, showing the probability of hurricane or tropical storm force winds striking a particular area with a certain time frame. In addition, the NHC continues to issue hurricane watches and warnings for areas that find themselves within the cone of probability. All of the areas along Florida’s western coast that weathered Charley’s fury were under warnings, the same for Mississippi’s coast during Katrina.

The Weather Channel, America’s 24-hour weather television resource, has eliminated the skinny line completely from their forecasts, relying solely on a “cone of concern.” The same applies at Accuweather.com.

Media, however, still have a tendency to focus on that one point, that skinny black line. Remember forecaster Robbie Berg and his complaint of “Tampa, Tampa, Tampa?” Remember Dr. Bryant’s “central tendencies?”

It appears that the skinny black line is also becoming a money-making obsession. According to “The Rundown’s” story which first told of meteorologists in Fort Myers disagreeing with the NHC’s forecast track, the local television stations in Tampa and St. Petersburg were in a “hotly contested marketing battle” to predict Charley’s correct path, their own skinny black line.

Back in Birmingham, Brian Peters, whose ABC station has been involved in a meteorological arms race with the other major networks in the city since its inception, acknowledges that the media’s role in covering these storms is an important cog in a system designed to save lives.

“If the NHC forecast is good…and I don’t know of anyone who can truly fault their forecasts over the past couple of years…the warnings are for the right areas, the media does their job of conveying that and not focusing on the line, and people respond by being informed, I think the system works fine.”

Peters adds that while he is not in favor of completely eliminating the skinny black line from the forecast package, he is in favor of directing the public’s eyes away from it.

“If there was something that could be used to get people away from the line, I certainly would be in favor of it,” Peters said. “That is, as long as we could continue to convey to people the dangers that they are likely to experience.

“We need to do more education to deemphasize the line.”

The NHC’s Chris Landsea agrees, and emphasizes that the most important forecast tools his office has are hurricane watches and warnings.

“You know, hurricane warnings are put out there when the storm is over a day away to get the point across that there is a region that is going to be impacted,” Landsea said. “With regard to Katrina, all of Mississippi’s coast was warned that: ‘Hey, there’s a hurricane coming and you’d better get ready now.’

“It’s unfortunate that people came away with a wrong notion.”

Investigative Story on the benefits of steroid use

Another piece for Waddle and his depth reporting class. And, what'll you know, another A! My humility must be refreshing for you. Written in December of 2005.

You Juice, Too

Some take steroids to run faster, some to jump higher, some to get bigger muscles. You juiced to stop your post-nasal drip.

By Matt Hooper

I’ve taken steroids and so have you.

Really, you have.

Most of the time, you and I didn’t even know we were doing it. They were given to us and we took them. You probably didn’t ask any questions.

Your body probably shows no ill side effects.

Go on, check for yourself.

Is your back covered in fields of acne? Is your hair retreating to the back of your neck? Do you speak in a baritone? Experiencing any violent mood shifts?

Me neither.

You’re not ashamed of what you did and neither am I. In fact, I’ll do it again. Not because I want to, but because I have to. And you will too.

I have juiced and so have you.

***

I, like most sports fans in recent years, find it almost impossible to surf channels, eavesdrop on talk radio or crack open the sports section of the local newspaper and not find a reference to an athlete “abusing steroids.”

On Dec. 2, 2004, The San Francisco Chronicle published the grand jury testimony of New York Yankees’ first-baseman Jason Giambi. In it, Giambi admitted that he had been juicing since the 2001 season and that he had received his performance-enhancers from Greg Anderson, the personal trainer of San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds.

Now for those of you who don’t follow the apple-pie American sport of baseball, Barry Bonds is about to shatter one of the sports’ most hallowed records. He is just 48 home runs away from overtaking the venerable Hank Aaron as the all-time greatest home run hitter in a sport defined by the long ball.

When he was 37 years-old he hit 73 home runs. More homers in one season than any other player in the history of the game. That was 2001, the same year that Jason Giambi began ingesting the juice. Talk radio enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists rejoice in the ongoing debate of whether or not those two facts share any connection. Bonds continues to deny he has ever taken steroids.

Then there’s Bill Romanoski. The former NFL linebacker was the poster child for how to prepare one’s body for competition in the most brutal of sports. Sixteen seasons playing one of the toughest positions on the gridiron and “Romo” never ever missed a game due to injury. He was revered as a “never-take-a-down-off” kind of player.

And he cheated.

Romo admits to Scott Pelley, a correspondent for the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” that he ingested THG, a steroid compound known on the street as “the clear.” He received the potion from Victor Conte, who allegedly supplied Greg Anderson with his cache of “gym candy.”

The self-proclaimed “hardest-working S.O.B. that ever stepped onto the field,” the man who spent nearly $200,000 a year on supplements, treatments, specialists and trainers to keep his body intact and well-tuned, admits he overstepped the line.

“I compromised my morality to get ahead, to play another year, to play two more years, to win another Super Bowl,” Romanowski confessed.

This is what Americans think about when they hear the term “steroids.” Athletes, rippled with muscle, selfishly abusing themselves and the sport that made them famous by going underground to acquire illegal, performance-enhancing drugs.

The abuse of the drug among professional athletes is such a prominent issue that Congress has begun to hold special hearings on the matter. Famous ballplayers have testified in front of Senate committees denouncing the use of the illegal drugs. One player, Rafael Palmerio of the Baltimore Orioles, was later suspended for violating Major League Baseball’s steroid policy.

Stories are told and retold at these hearings of high-school kids trying to get an edge on the playing field by purchasing illegal steroids, only to suffer irreversible nerve damage, or even death, as a result of the juice. Jason Giambi himself suffered through several irrational medical ailments before coming clean about his juicing problem, including a benign tumor and a nagging intestinal parasite.

***

All the news there is to hear about steroids is bad news, or at least, so I thought.

They were the topic of conversation one morning while I was on the phone with my mother, Linda. She’s a registered nurse and lab coordinator at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, which houses one of the nation’s most prestigious medical schools. It was revealed during this conversation that I was to be lumped together with the Giambis, Palmieros and Romanoskis of the world. For I, too, had juiced.

She told me that several years ago, during a nasty bout with sinus pressure and pain, I was prescribed Prednisone, which treats, among other ailments, allergic reactions pertaining to the nose and eyes. Prednisone is an anti-inflammatory, an immune system suppressant, and, to my surprise, a steroid.

I had juiced, and, although I wasn’t head-to-toe in rippling muscle as I thought I would be if I ever touched the stuff, it did help my immediate situation. My head cleared, so did my nose, and all was right with the world again.

So are steroids more common than most would like to believe? Can they even be classified as beneficial? Wikipedia Online reveals the following factoids:

If you had asthma, you could take Prednisone to help your clear airways of inflammation.

If you had Crohn’s Disease, an inflammation in the digestive tract, Prednisone could sooth the flare-ups.

Suffer from arthritis or an injury that causes inflammation? Then you could be given a hydrocortisone shot. It too, is a steroid.

If you had psoriasis, you could run down to the local drug store and pick up a tube of cortisone cream. It’s a steroid that is cheap, effective and legal to purchase over-the-counter.

Vitamin D is a steroid. The same essential vitamin that promotes bone strength and prevents osteoporosis, helps fight several different types of cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, mental illness, heart disease, arthritis, tuberculosis, and yes, psoriasis and Crohn’s disease, is a part of the steroid family. It can be found in fortified foods, such as vitamin-enriched milk, eggs, and some fishes.

It is naturally produced in your body when you are exposed to sunlight.

***

So what’s the difference between these beneficial drugs and the performance-enhancing substances that allow records to be broken under false pretenses?

First, they are a minority in the general steroid population. Dr. Rebecca Greenwood, an assistant professor at UAB’s renowned nursing school and a registered nurse, explains that “gym candies” make up a tiny percentage of the drug class itself.

“I would say that there are probably 50 to 100 drugs on the market that have some kind of steroid component,” Greenwood said. “But the percentage of performance-enhancing steroids is very small, maybe 10 percent.”

The steroids that make-up that 10 percent are generally known as anabolic steroids. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, these drugs are closely related to the male sex hormone testosterone, which aids in stimulating muscle growth.

When combined with regular gym workouts, muscle growth is enhanced even further, as muscles are able to recover faster and more workouts can be crammed into a shorter period of time.

Bodybuilders and other athletes will typically ingest the drugs via a method known as “cycling,” wherein the steroids are taken in several doses during a set time frame before being stopped and started again. Some users will take a variety of anabolics at one time to gain the most mass, a process known as “stacking.”

But the risks that accompany anabolic abuse are not to be taken lightly. According to the NIDA, steroids can cause cancer risks to skyrocket, as well as the threat of tumor development. The skin can develop a yellowish tint, cholesterol and blood pressure can spike, severe acne can break out and body tissues can withhold large amounts of fluid. Men can suffer from breast enlargement and testicular shrinkage. Sperm counts can drop and so can hair counts. Women can experience male-pattern baldness, enlargement of sex organs, a deeper voice and the emergence of facial hair.

With all of these side-effects, the majority of which are well-known among the general public, it is no wonder that steroids have been saddled with a bad rap. But while bodybuilders and ballplayers are injecting themselves with harmful steroid substances in order to achieve greater muscle mass or a league MVP trophy, the medical profession is using them to quell inflamed joints and facilitate organ transfers.

“Steroids are life-saving for many people,” says Greenwood. “Doctors use steroids, in most cases, to relieve inflammation and also to reduce the action of the immune system. There are many types of patients who need that.”

Transplant recipients fall into that category. When a donor organ is placed inside a body that needs that new organ, the body, despite the apparent need, can simply reject the part and shut it down. Drugs are administered for the duration that the new organ is in the body in order to prevent this from occurring. Steroids are among the cache of pills.

“The reason that the transplant population is on steroids is that the drugs blunt the response of the immune system so that it will not attack the new organ,” Greenwood explained. “It is very important; they would not be alive without them.”

Greenwood also listed some common ailments that steroids can be prescribed to treat.

“For patients that have bronchitis and asthma, Prednisone and other types of steroids can be prescribed to reduce inflammation in the airways,” Greenwood said. “For a sinus-type infection you might get a steroid in the form of a nasal spray.

“Any injury, such as a skeletal-muscular injury, that causes inflammation can have steroids prescribed to treat it. Something like arthritis can be treated with steroids.”

According to Greenwood, most steroids are prescribed for a short period of time and, consequently, the chances for harmful side effects are slim and none. But in the case of a transplant recipient or someone with chronic pulmonary disease, long-term use of the drugs can lead to some pretty serious consequences.

Wounds can heal slowly, the chance of infection rises, appetite increases, as does the opportunity for weight gain. Joints can degenerate and osteoporosis can develop, blood-sugar levels can jump, leading to a higher risk of diabetes. Mood swings and depression are also a possibility. But this is exclusively tied to long-term steroid use, and, even still, is not guaranteed to occur.

***

Greenwood expresses concern over the public’s perception of such a beneficial class of drugs. She said my initial shock of finding out about my prior juicing experience was nothing out of the ordinary. Her father shared a similar experience a short time ago.

“He was having glaucoma surgery and had to take drugs prior to his procedure,” Greenwood recalls. “When I told him that one of them was a steroid, he was horrified.

“The public has a very negative connotation when indeed steroids are life-saving drugs, and yes, I am concerned about that.”

***

That negative connotation takes us back to that 10 percent minority of drugs that has sports fans spouting on the airwaves, legislators searching for answers and league commissioners caught in the crossfire.

Derivatives of the male sex hormone testosterone, anabolic steroids make up the lion’s share of that 10 percent category of performance-enhancing steroids. Technically, they are known by such names as Anatrofin, Dehydropiandrosterone, Durabolin and Maxibolin. On the street they are “gym candies,” “pumpers,” “stackers,” “Arnolds,” “bulls” or “juice.” These are the drugs that make you bigger, stronger and faster. These are the drugs that prompt Congressional hearings and investigative reporting.

Anabolic steroids are older than you might think. A little research on their history at SteroidInformation.com reveals that the Nazis first started testing the drugs on animals back in the 1930s before administering them on their own soldiers during World War II. Soon afterward, athletes throughout Europe began to realize the drug’s potential and steroid use boomed. It wasn’t for several years that the effects of abusing the drugs became readily apparent.

Dave Bush knows those effects better than most. A certified athletic trainer at the sports-rehabilitation leviathan, HealthSouth, Bush has treated amateur, semi-professional and professional athletes competing in everything from high school baseball to arena football to professional wrestling. Currently the head trainer for the Troy Trojans’ athletics program, Bush describes what can happen as a result of steroid abuse.

“Besides the obvious side effects, like the acne, shrinkage of the testicles, deepening of the voice in women, steroids can lead to a lot of heart and brain disorders,” Bush said. “I mean, look at Alzado.”

Lyle Alzado was a 15-year NFL veteran for three different teams back in the 1970’s and into the early 1980s. An undersized but overachieving player at Yankton College, a NAIA school in South Dakota, Alzado figured he needed an edge.

According to ESPN’s Mike Puma, Alzado began popping pumpers at Yankton. Soon after, he started dominating at his defensive end spot, allowing for his star to shine brightly through the thick obscurity of playing in rural South Dakota. The Denver Broncos selected him in the 1971 draft as their fourth pick, perhaps not knowing what they were getting themselves into.

Alzado later admitted he was out-of-control.

“My first year with the Broncos, I was like a maniac,” Alzado said. “I outran, outhit, outanythinged everybody. All along I was taking steroids and I saw that they made me play better and better.”

He was just as dominant on football’s greatest stage as he was on one of its smallest. By 1977, he was the Defensive Player of the Year in the American Conference, but contract disputes forced him out of “The Mile-High City” and on to Cleveland. After a couple of disappointing years with the Browns, Alzado was traded to Oakland, where everybody, from the team’s owner to its diehard fans, is a few degrees north of eccentric.

He won a Super Bowl in Oaktown, but the effects of his long-term steroid abuse had already taken its toll. In 1985, Alzado suffered an injury to his Achilles tendon, which he later attributed to his rampant steroid use and which forced him into an early retirement. By April of 1992, he was diagnosed with brain cancer. The former Defensive Player of the Year and Super Bowl champion could no longer walk a straight line.

A year later he was dead.

Bush commonly uses the Alzado case as a warning when he speaks to high school kids on the dangers of abusing performance-enhancing steroids. He also relates to them the experiences he has had in treating those who abuse the drugs.

“HeathSouth gets a lot of athletes to come in from around the country, including professional WWF and WWE wrestlers,” Bush says. “They would always come in with soft tissue and muscle injuries because they are packing so much weight on their limbs that their tendons can’t support it. And this is obviously a result of being on steroids.

“So I make sure to tell the kids that I treat that by abusing these drugs they are setting themselves up to be disappointed. The long-term affects of these drugs outweighs any short-term benefits.”

***

Steroids are like a lot of medicines available to the general public today. They are remarkably beneficial: able to soothe sore throats, relieve asthma inflammation and even protect us from some cancers. Ninety percent of the steroids on the market couldn’t do a single thing to help you run faster, jump higher or lift any more weight.

It’s that 10 percent; the handful of drugs that prompt so much discussion and controversy, and not to mention ghastly side effects, that are the headliners. They are the bad seeds planted in the minds of Americans that sprout when that “s”-word is leaked over the airwaves or printed in bold-type headlines in the sports section.

Until athletes realize that the risks outweigh the rewards. Until the debate of whether or not record books should be rewritten with disclaimers has been expunged from daily sports talk shows. Until Americans realize that many steroids are a healthy part of everyday life that we all share in; that bad seed will sprout and bitter fruit will continue to be reaped from the branches of a life-saving tree.

Public Relations and Marketing Writing

Examples of my PR and marketing writing can be found at the links below:

Alabama Steeldogs:

All of the stories from 1/31/05 until 12/06 were composed by myself:
http://www.steeldogs.com/scripts/news.asp