"Stewart Fleming" wrote in message
...

Bob Schwartz wrote:

One would imagine that steriods are the most abused performance drug
but the testing does not support that. Out of those 6890 tests only
18 came up positive under 'Anabolic Agents'. Four of those were from
the Balco THG crowd, another 6 were Nandrolone-Oh-my-God-I-took-a-

Forgot to mention, the only revelation in Swart's TV interview that was
news to me was that THG was specifically designed to disintegrate during
the testing process. Anyone got confirmation on that? (I hadn't heard
that claimed before, is all)

I hadn't heard that, but it is theoretically possible, at least if the
steriod testing is done using electron impact gas chromatography mass
spectrometry (the most common method for identifying drugs and/or their
metabolites in biological fluids). If so, you'd build into the molecule some
particularly weak structure/bonds, most likely away from the active part of
the compound. That would result in greater fragmentation in the EI source,
yielding ions of lower mass than those being scanned for.

Andy Coggan