By Bill Fancher
March 1, 2002
(AgapePress) - As the Olympics ended in Salt Lake City, examples of blood doping by athletes surfaced, tainting the closing of the Games. Blood doping has been a huge problem for the Olympics for some now -- and now there are reports it even involves abortion.
Raising HCG levels in blood through transfusions or by chemicals has been used to enhance athletic performance. But Mark Crutcher of the pro-life group Life Dynamics, Inc., says increased HCG levels occur naturally with pregnancy, and some women athletes are using that to their advantage.
"They would get pregnant on purpose for the benefit of having an increased athletic performance -- and once that was accomplished, they would have an abortion," he says.
According to research, the abortion does not have to take place after the event. "You can have the abortion before the athletic event, if you do it close enough to the event, because the HCG levels and ... other hormones in testosterone ... will continue for a certain time after the abortion," Crutcher says.
The pro-life leader adds that blood doping has been known to increase performance by as much as ten percent. "The difference between winning and losing is so infinitesimally small that anything you do that gives you just a one-percent edge can mean the difference finishing first and finishing tenth," he says.
Crutcher says eastern European nations have used this form of blood doping for their female athletes for years. He says an eastern European female athlete in the 1984 Olympics reported that the Eastern bloc countries would tell their female athletes that if they did not have a boyfriend or if they were not married, that the coaches would impregnate them.
According to Crutcher, athletes have tried to raise HCG levels artificially before competition and have been caught at it -- "but if you can do it by some natural means, then there's really no way that the officials can do anything about it."
He says it is unfortunate that this type of blood doping cannot be stopped.
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