Were that to happen, “the effects,”
Mr. Phillips says tersely, “could be painful.”
Finally, Mr. Phillips turns to what he
terms America’s “calcified” political system. We may need new regulations to
deal with the debt mess, along with an energy policy to address the changing
world of oil, but Washington, he says, has become dedicated to “the politics of
evasion,” reluctant to pass dramatic reforms or to call for sacrifice from the
public. Democrats and Republicans alike are so entrenched, so dependent on
campaign money and special interests, that “the notion of a breath of fresh air
has become almost a contradiction in terms.” Instead of a “vital center” in
Washington, we now have a “venal center.” Mr. Phillips holds out little hope of
improvement from a new president; he doubts that any administration could do
much, even though “the crisis is no longer in the future, but upon us.”
Is such pessimism justified? Mr.
Phillips says he is making no predictions, but that’s not quite true.
Throughout his book he tends to lean on the darkest analyses, though others
might be less grim. And as readers of his earlier books know, he has a penchant
for seeing parallels between the current situation in the United States and the
declines of 17th-century Spain, the 18th-century Dutch Republic and
early-20th-century Britain.
But historical comparisons are always
dangerous playthings (remember all those foreign-policy analogies to Munich?):
you necessarily have to cherry-pick eras and evidence from history’s panorama.
Perhaps there are similarities in the financial arrangements of monarchical
Spain and democratic America, as Mr. Phillips says, but the differences between
the two societies are far greater. It’s hard not to feel that Mr. Phillips’s
argument has been shaped not only by his facts but also by his temperament.
Still, even if his pessimism doesn’t
seem wholly warranted, a sense of foreboding surely is, which is why his
warnings have to be taken seriously. Mr. Phillips writes that the inventors and
marketers of the new financial instruments didn’t entirely understand them. An
executive of Fidelity International says a panicky feeling has set in on Wall
Street because no one knows where the risks really are. The finance minister of
France observes that investments may have reached such a level of complexity
that no one can assess them. And Charles R. Morris, in his own gloomy book,
“The Trillion Dollar Meltdown,” reports that even Citigroup’s chief financial officer
“did not know how to value his holdings.”
The screenwriter William Goldman once
declared that in Hollywood “nobody knows anything.” When Wall Street begins to
resemble the American Dream Factory, it’s a safe bet that something has gone
terribly wrong.
Roberto Clemente, the superb right
fielder of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1955 to 1972, the year he died in a
plane crash, exists in a baseball Eden of the mind. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/page1.aspx
Cut down just past his prime and just
before the free-agency era, he avoided the embarrassments the sport hands out
to its greatest stars: mercenary team-hopping, years of declining performance,
drug scandals, card shows. For those who can remember, he’s forever winding up
for another monstrous throw to home plate.
“Roberto Clemente,” an “American
Experience” documentary on most PBS stations Monday night, is not out to
disturb this picture. If anything, it wants to put the halo more firmly in
place, concentrating on his pride in his Puerto Rican heritage and his roles as
a racial trailblazer and humanitarian. (He was taking supplies to earthquake victims
when he died.)
But this absorbing account of his life
also reminds us that the picture was more complicated. Clemente faced
discrimination, suspicion and ridicule through much of his career; he was a
moody, private and sensitive man who had a tense relationship with the press.
“I can’t say I enjoyed talking with him,” the Pittsburgh sportswriter Roy
McHugh recalls.
It seems likely that if Clemente were
playing baseball today, he’d join Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds in the ranks
of baseball’s tabloid antiheroes, worshiped when hitting well and vilified the
rest of the time. The film’s reference to his early adoption of protein shakes
and other “odd concoctions” even makes you wonder what he would have done if
told that the occasional shot of human-growth hormone would help his injuries
heal faster.
The attractions of “Roberto Clemente”
include interviews with Pirates teammates like Al Oliver and Manny Sanguillen
and fascinating film of the Puerto Rican winter league when it was a haven for
African-American players unwelcome in the majors. One complaint: the emphasis
on Clemente’s life outside baseball cuts into the time spent on the field. And
no matter how admirable his sentiments, the true poetry of Roberto Clemente
lies in the uninterrupted flight of a baseball from the warning track to the
catcher’s mitt. You can’t watch that too many times.
A woman convicted two weeks ago of
running a Washington call-girl ring that catered to the capital’s power elite
was found dead here Thursday, and the authorities said she had apparently
hanged herself.
The body of the woman, Deborah Jeane
Palfrey, 52, was found in a shed at her mother’s home here about 20 miles
northwest of Tampa. http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/page1.aspx
The police said Ms. Palfrey had left a
notebook containing at least two suicide notes and other messages to her
family, but they did not give additional details.
Ms. Palfrey, who had quickly become
known as the D.C. Madam when the case against her began unfolding, apparently
hanged herself from the shed’s ceiling with nylon rope, the police said. Her
mother, Blanche Palfrey, discovered the body.
Blanche Palfrey had no sign that her
daughter was suicidal, and there was no immediate indication that alcohol or
drugs were involved, Capt. Jeffrey Young of the Tarpon Springs Police
Department said.
A man who answered a phone listed for
the elder Ms. Palfrey declined to comment.
Preston Burton, a lawyer who
represented Deborah Jeane Palfrey at her trial, said, “This is tragic news, and
my heart goes out to her mother.”
A federal jury in Washington found Ms.
Palfrey guilty on April 15 of running a prostitution service that catered to
powerful figures including Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana. She
was convicted of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and
racketeering.
Ms. Palfrey had denied that her escort
service had been involved in prostitution, saying that if any of the women had
engaged in sexual acts for money, they had done so without her knowledge.
In the aftermath of her conviction,
she remained free while awaiting sentencing on July 24. Under sentencing guidelines,
she faced about five or six years in prison, Channing Phillips, the spokesman
for the United States attorney in the District of Columbia, said Thursday.
But Ms. Palfrey had vowed that she
would never go to prison. When she disclosed telephone records last year that
revealed the identity of some of her clients, she told ABC: “I’m sure as heck
not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone four to eight
years, because I’m shy about bringing in the deputy secretary of whatever. Not for
a second. I’ll bring every last one of them in if necessary.”
Despite that threat, Ms. Palfrey’s
trial concluded without the testimony of either Mr. Vitter or another
particularly prominent client, Randall L. Tobias. Mr. Tobias resigned as a
senior State Department official last year after he had been linked to the
escort service, though he said he had used it only for massages. Mr. Vitter,
who is married and has four children, remains a first-term member of the
Senate.
Dan Moldea, a Washington writer who
befriended Ms. Palfrey while considering writing a book about her, said she had
been cautiously optimistic about her trial.
After the conviction, however, Mr.
Moldea sent her two messages but did not hear back, he said.
After hearing of her death Thursday,
he recalled a conversation over dinner last year when the subject of prison
came up. http://louis-j-sheehan.org/
“I will commit suicide first,” he
remembered her saying.
One of the escort service’s employees
was Brandy Britton, a former professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore
County, who was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. Ms. Britton committed
suicide in January before she could go to trial.
As other cities look to replace their
blighted downtowns with new development, Las Vegas, known for its extravagant
facsimiles of European and American landmarks, has come up with an unusual
approach: Build another downtown, right next to the decaying one.
On Thursday, the city will formally
inaugurate a new urban core on a 61-acre, undeveloped parcel of land — a
project that some experts say is unprecedented in city planning. Called Union
Park, its supporters hope it will revive the historic downtown just to the east,
where the region’s courthouses, government offices and oldest casinos are
clustered.
More than $6 billion in mostly private
money has been announced for five ambitious projects: an Alzheimer’s research
center, designed by Frank Gehry; a 60-story international center for jewelry
trading; a hotel by the celebrity chef Charlie Palmer; a casino-resort;
thousands of residential units and square feet of office space, and, as its
centerpiece, a $360 million performing arts center.
Construction on the rippled Gehry
building and utility lines is under way on this former brownfield, once a
chemical dumping ground for the Union Pacific Railroad.
“It’s quite unusual that there’s a big
swath of downtown ground just sitting there without having to go through a whole
rigmarole to acquire,” said Bill Hudnut, a senior fellow at the Urban Land
Institute in Washington. Mr. Hudnut, the former mayor of Indianapolis, recalled
that acquiring just three blocks of that city “involved some legal fights and
eminent domain, the demolition of buildings, numerous deals with numerous
owners.” In Las Vegas, he added, “they’re just building new stuff.”
It is an approach recommended to the
mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman, a criminal defense lawyer famed for
defending mafia figures, by major developers brought in to tutor him in
redevelopment after his election in 1999. The mayor, who admits he ran “almost
as a game” to win, said he quickly realized that reversing the downtown area’s
decline could become his most important legacy. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/page1.aspx
(Downtown Las Vegas is immediately
north of the Strip.)
“They all told me I couldn’t do
anything because I didn’t have what I needed,” which was land, recalled Mr.
Goodman, now in his third and final term. “I despaired. Then I looked out my
window and saw this fallow 61 acres of brownfield.”
The city acquired it by swapping other
land with the holding company that owned the parcel. But it would take five years
and several failed deals with developers before the city signed with Newland
Communities to manage and design the site.
In the meantime, the city’s
acquisition spurred other developers to snap up vacant land nearby. Union Park
is now surrounded by an outlet mall and 3 of 10 buildings planned for the $3
billion World Market Center, a furniture-industry exposition space. The city’s
plans “created the credibility of a Las Vegas that’s open for business outside
of the Strip,” said Robert J. Maricich, chief executive and president of World
Market Center.
But the national economic downturn may
play a role in how soon all of Union Park is realized. Already, the opening
date for the $700 million World Jewelry Center has been pushed back one year,
and questions abound as to whether the more than 3,000 residential units
planned to be built will sell in a state with one of the highest foreclosure
rates in the United States.
“There’s no question that the Union
Park property is going be developed,” said Matt Ward, editor of the weekly Las
Vegas Business Press. “The question is whether some of these projects that were
supposed to break ground this year will do so. We’re mainly talking about
delays, I think. Are you going to see business leaders in town talking openly
about that? Probably not.”
Mr. Goodman has brought his boisterous
personality and decades of friendships in the community to bear, persuading the
region’s top liquor distributor, Larry Ruvo, to build the Lou Ruvo Brain
Institute. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/
The research center, named for Mr.
Ruvo’s father, who died of Alzheimer’s disease, is a partnership with the
University of Nevada School of Medicine.
The linchpin, though, is the Smith Center
for the Performing Arts, Las Vegas’s first stab at a Lincoln Center-style
facility that can be home for ballet and philharmonic companies. It will break
ground in August.
“We don’t have a cultural hub right
now,” said Rita Brandin, the vice president and development director for
Newland. “This provides that community gathering place.”
Union Park does have skeptics,
including Dave Hickey, culture critic for Vanity Fair, who is baffled by how
the development will interconnect with the older downtown area and help in its
resurgence. Mr. Hickey’s wife, Libby Lumpkin, is executive director of the Las
Vegas Art Museum, and Mr. Hickey noted that Ms. Lumpkin rejected efforts to
move that museum to Union Park.
“The idea is that they’re going to put
in these public buildings and this is going to make a respectful downtown for
Las Vegas without all the glitz and glamour, I guess, but I think it’ll be a
ghost town,” Mr. Hickey said. “I don’t see how the comings and goings will be
facilitated. And those open spaces that landscape architects so love are not
really conducive to the desert climate.”
It also leaves the question of whether
the city is abandoning the historic downtown, where all of Las Vegas was born
100 years ago.
Defenders like Ms. Brandin counter:
“We’ve got an existing downtown. This is an urban core. It’s complementary.”
And Mr. Goodman said the Union Park
effort had helped kick off a decade of redevelopment in the older downtown
region, which he expects to connect to Union Park via pedestrian bridges over
the railroad tracks that run along the site’s eastern edge. http://louis-j-sheehan.org/page1.aspx
http://louis1j1sheehan.us/Several casinos have new owners spending millions to upgrade, a
bar district is starting to blossom and an old post office is being restored
for use as a museum focused on mafia history, complete with interactive
wiretapping exhibits. Most important, the mayor noted, are the half-dozen
condominium towers nearing completion there.
At a time when the world’s top climate
experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global
warming, Italy’s major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive
power plant here from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth.
Over the next five years, Italy will
increase its reliance on coal to 33 percent from 14 percent. Power generated by
Enel from coal will rise to 50 percent.
And Italy is not alone in its return
to coal. Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices,
concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European
countries are expected to put into operation about 50 coal-fired plants over
the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades.
In the United States, fewer new coal
plants are likely to begin operations, in part because it is becoming harder to
get regulatory permits and in part because nuclear power remains an
alternative. Of 151 proposals in early 2007, more than 60 had been dropped by
the year’s end, many blocked by state governments. Dozens of other are stuck in
court challenges.
The fast-expanding developing
economies of India and China, where coal remains a major fuel source for more
than two billion people, have long been regarded as among the biggest
challenges to reducing carbon emissions. But the return now to coal even in
eco-conscious Europe is sowing real alarm among environmentalists who warn that
it is setting the world on a disastrous trajectory that will make controlling
global warming impossible.
They are aghast at the renaissance of
coal, a fuel more commonly associated with the sooty factories of Dickens
novels, and one that was on its way out just a decade ago.
There have been protests here in
Civitavecchia, at a new coal plant in Germany, and at one in the Czech
Republic, as well as at the Kingsnorth power station in Kent, which is slated
to become Britain’s first new coal-fired plant in more than a decade.
Europe’s power station owners
emphasize that they are making the new coal plants as clean as possible. But
critics say that “clean coal” is a pipe dream, an oxymoron in terms of the
carbon emissions that count most toward climate change. http://louis-j-sheehan.com/page1.aspx
They call the building spurt
shortsighted.
“Building new coal-fired power plants
is ill conceived,” said James E. Hansen, a leading climatologist at the NASA
Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “Given our knowledge about what needs to
be done to stabilize climate, this plan is like barging into a war without
having a plan for how it should be conducted, even though information is
available.
“We need a moratorium on coal now,” he
added, “with phase-out of existing plants over the next two decades.”
Enel and many other electricity
companies say they have little choice but to build coal plants to replace aging
infrastructure, particularly in countries like Italy and Germany that have
banned the building of nuclear power plants. Fuel costs have risen 151 percent
since 1996, and Italians pay the highest electricity costs in Europe.
In terms of cost and energy security,
coal has all the advantages, its proponents argue. Coal reserves will last for
200 years, rather than 50 years for gas and oil. Coal is relatively cheap
compared with oil and natural gas, although coal prices have tripled in the past
few years. More important, dozens of countries export coal — there is not a
coal cartel — so there is more room to negotiate prices.
“In order to get over oil, which is
getting more and more expensive, our plan is to convert all oil plants to coal
using clean-coal technologies,” said Gianfilippo Mancini, Enel’s chief of
generation and energy management. “This will be the cleanest coal plant in
Europe. We are hoping to prove that it will be possible to make sustainable and
environmentally friendly use of coal.”
“Clean coal” is a term coined by the
industry decades ago, referring to its efforts to reduce local pollution. Using
new technology, clean coal plants sharply reduced the number of sooty particles
spewed into the air, as well as gases like sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide.
The technology has minimal effect on carbon emissions.
In fact, the technology that the
industry is counting on to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that add to
global warning — carbon capture and storage — is not now commercially
available. No one knows if it is feasible on a large, cost-effective scale.
The task — in which carbon emissions
are pumped into underground reservoirs rather than released — is challenging
for any fuel source, but particularly so for coal, which produces more carbon
dioxide than oil or natural gas.
Under optimal current conditions, coal
produces more than twice as much carbon dioxide per unit of electricity as natural
gas, the second most common fuel used for electricity generation, according to
the Electric Power Research Institute. In the developing world, where even new
coal plants use lower grade coal and less efficient machinery, the equation is
even worse.
Without carbon capture and storage,
coal cannot be green. But solving that problem will take global coordination
and billions of dollars in investment, which no one country or company seems
inclined to spend, said Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at
Columbia University.
“Figuring out carbon capture is really
critical — it may not work in the end — and if it is not viable, the situation,
with respect to climate change, is far more dire,” Mr. Sachs said.
There are a few dozen small demonstration
projects in Europe and in the United States, most in the early stages. But
progress has not been promising.
At the end of January, the Bush
administration canceled what was previously by far the United States’ biggest
carbon-capture demonstration project, at a coal-fired plant in Illinois,
because of huge cost overruns. The costs of the project, undertaken in 2003
with a budget of $950 million, had spiraled to $1.5 billion this year, and it
was far from complete.
The European Union had pledged to develop
12 pilot carbon-capture projects for Europe, but says that is not enough.
Many have likened carbon capture’s
road from the demonstration lab to a safe, cheap, available reality as a
challenge equivalent to putting a man on the moon. Norway, which is investing
heavily to test the technology, calls carbon capture its “moon landing.”
http://louis2j2sheehan.us/page1.aspx It is a moon landing that must be replicated daily at thousands
of coal plants in hundreds of countries — many of them poor. There is a new
coal-fired plant going up in India or China almost every week, and most of
those are not constructed in a way that is amenable to carbon capture, even if
it were developed.
Plants that could someday be adapted
to carbon capture cost 10 to 20 percent more to build, and only a handful exist
today. For most coal power plants the costs of converting would be
“phenomenal,” concluded a report by the United States Environmental Protection
Agency.
Then there is the problem of storing
the carbon dioxide, which is at some level an inherently local issue.
Geologists have to determine if there is a suitable underground site, calculate
how much carbon dioxide it can hold and then equip it in a way that prevents
leaks and ensures safety. A large leak of underground carbon dioxide could be
as dangerous as a leak of nuclear fuel, critics say.
As for its plant here, Enel says it
will start experimenting with carbon-capture technology in 2015, in the hopes
of “a solution” by 2020.
“That’s too late,” Mr. Sachs said.
In the meantime, it and other new coal
plants will be spewing more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere than
ever before, meaning that current climate predictions — dire as they are — may
still be “too optimistic,” Mr. Sachs said. “They assume the old energy mix,
even though coal will be a larger and larger part.”
On many other fronts, the new Enel
plant is a model of efficiency and recycling. The nitrous oxide is chemically
altered to generate ammonia, which is then sold. The resulting coal ash and
gypsum are sold to the cement industry.
An on-site desalination plant means
that the operation generates its own water for cooling. Even the heated water
that comes out of the plant is not wasted: it heats a fish farm, one of Italy’s
largest.
But Enel’s plan to deal with the new
plant’s carbon emissions consists mostly of a map of Italy with several huge
white ovals superimposed — subterranean cavities where carbon dioxide
potentially could be stored.
The sites have not been fully studied
by geologists as yet to make sure they are safe storage sites and well sealed.
There is no infrastructure or equipment that could move carbon into them.
The new Enel plant here opens its
first boiler in two months. It will immediately produce fewer carbon emissions
than the ancient oil boiler it replaces, but only because it will produce less
electricity, officials here admit. http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.blogspot.com/
In the towns surrounding
Civitavecchia, the impending arrival of a huge coal plant, with its three
silvery domes, is being greeted with a hefty dose of dread.
“They call it clean coal because they
use some filters, but it is really nonsense,” said Marza Marzioli of the No
Coal citizens group in the nearby ancient Etruscan town of Tarquinia. “If you
compare it to old plants, yes it’s better, but it’s not ‘clean’ in any way.”
The group says that Enel has won
approval for a dangerous new coal plant by buying machines for a local hospital
and by carrying out a public relations campaign. Enel advertisements for the
project show a young girl erasing a plant’s smokestack.
Most people who took part in a 2007
local referendum voted no, but the plant went ahead anyway, the group said.
The European Union, through its
emissions trading scheme, has tried to make power plants consider the costs of
carbon, forcing them to buy “permits” for emissions. But with the price of oil
so high, coal is far cheaper, even with the cost of permits to pollute factored
in, Enel has calculated.
Stephan Singer, who runs the European
energy and climate office of WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund, in Brussels,
said that math was shortsighted: the cost of coal and permits will almost
certainly rise over the next decade.
“If they want coal to be part of the
energy solution, they have to show us that carbon capture can be done now, that
they can really reduce emissions” to an acceptable level, Mr. Singer said.
This article has been revised to
reflect the following correction:
“They wouldn’t have given you a
plugged nickel eight years ago that there would ever be a high-rise residential
building in downtown Las Vegas,” Mr. Goodman said with a laugh. “It was unheard
of.”
And Union Park is now desirable enough
to be a bargaining chip. Next month, the City Council is expected to finalize a
plan in which a developer will build a new $150 million City Hall in the older
downtown area in exchange for a parcel in Union Park where a casino-hotel can
be built.
Still, the enduring down-at-the-heels
reputation of the old downtown was a factor in Mr. Palmer’s decision to build
in Union Park instead of the old downtown. “I call it the new Las Vegas,” said
Richard Femenella, chief financial officer of the Charlie Palmer Group. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
“They say they’re revitalizing downtown, but truthfully,
everything west of the railroad tracks is all brand new. It was dirt.”
Whether the old downtown is left
behind is a concern of Linda Lera-Randle El, an activist for homeless people,
who said that none of the residential units in Union Park were designated as
affordable housing and that she worried that homeless people who squat on the
vacant land would be displaced.
Not all of the mayor’s dreams have
come to fruition. Several attempts to get a developer to build a sports arena,
first at Union Park and then elsewhere, appear to have stalled. Mr. Goodman
aggressively courted the Cleveland Clinic to take up residence, only to have
the respected hospital pass. But the results of Union Park nonetheless stand to
rewrite the national impression of Mr. Goodman as a Vegas caricature given to
outlandish acts like suggesting that graffiti artists be de-thumbed or running
a seminar on making martinis.
“I don’t always agree with Oscar, but
I do think that Union Park is going to make it,” said a councilwoman, Lois
Tarkanian, one of Mr. Goodman’s most vocal detractors.
“Even if you disagree with him on this
or that,” Ms. Tarkanian said, “you have to give him credit for the part of his
personality that can get this done.”
Joe Zealberg, a psychiatrist in
Charleston, S.C., prescribed generic dOne day last week, David Jacobs took out
two measuring cups, put a pot on the stove at his home here and demonstrated
how he used to turn raw powder into steroids.
For more than a year, Jacobs operated
a makeshift pharmaceutical lab out of his kitchen in his one-story suburban
home. Each month, he said, he sold about a thousand of his own bottles of
steroids and another thousand kits of human growth hormone smuggled from China
to dealers across the United States. Among the dealers he supplied were two N.F.L.
players, Jacobs said, who would then supply a handful of other N.F.L. players
with the banned substances.
Jacobs’s business as one of the
largest steroid producers in Texas came to a halt in April 2007 when federal
agents raided his home and confiscated thousands of units of steroids. Later,
as part of Operation Raw Deal, a nationwide investigation of the importation
and distribution of performance-enhancing drugs, he pleaded guilty to
conspiring to distribute anabolic steroids. http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
On Thursday in Sherman, Tex., Jacobs
was sentenced to three years of probation.
Jacobs, a former body builder, said he
advised about 10 N.F.L. players on how to exploit loopholes in the league’s
drug-testing program. One way, he said, was to have team doctors write them
prescriptions for drugs that would mask steroid use.
Jacobs’s case received national
attention because a Web site for his supplements store boasted of providing
counseling to several players on the Dallas Cowboys and the Atlanta Falcons.
The New York Times reported last month
that information from the government’s investigation of Jacobs had led federal
prosecutors to investigate Matt Lehr, an offensive lineman for the New Orleans
Saints, on the suspicion he distributed performance-enhancing drugs. In recent
years, investigators have focused largely on the distributors of drugs, not
athletes or other users.
Lehr’s lawyer has denied that his
client ever sold steroids or H.G.H. and said Jacobs fabricated information
about Lehr after he refused to pay Jacobs’s legal fees. Jacobs said he never
asked Lehr to give him money for legal expenses.
In interviews here last week, Jacobs
said he sold hundreds of bottles of steroids and H.G.H. to Lehr and another
N.F.L. player. Those players, Jacobs said, sold the substances to other players
in 2006 and 2007.
“I thought the fewer the people I was
selling to, the safer it would be,” Jacobs said. “There were many players who
wanted drugs, but I didn’t want to have direct transactions with a bunch of
people.”
Lehr tested positive and was suspended
for four games in 2006 for testing positive for steroids, but he has not been
charged in this case.
Jacobs said he advised players,
including Lehr, to ask their team doctors to write them prescriptions for
finasteride, a drug used to treat balding in young men. http://louis-j-sheehan.us/
Jacobs said a Falcons team doctor
wrote Lehr a prescription for the substance. He said a bottle of finasteride
labeled as prescribed for Lehr was seized from his own house in April 2007.
“The excuse they did it under was that
the players were losing their hair because they were taking their helmets on
and off,” Jacobs said, echoing similar statements that were published Sunday in
The Dallas Morning News.
The N.F.L. does not test for the
substance, and it is not on its list of banned substances.
“We do not comment on any medical
procedures or information about any of our players,” Reggie Roberts, a
spokesman for the Falcons, said in a telephone interview.
Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the
N.F.L., said the league’s independent scientific and medical advisers reviewed
finasteride before and after it was banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency in
2005, but recommended that it not be banned.
Don Catlin, the head of the
independent organization Anti-Doping Research, said in a telephone interview
that finasteride could mask the use of some substances normally detected
through urine testing.
Jacobs, who said he stopped using
steroids in April 2007, said he also advised players to use steroids only in
the off-season.
“The players know the testing is
tougher in-season, so they use human growth hormone year round and only use
steroids in the off-season,” he said.
The N.F.L. tests its players year
round for steroids but does not test players for H.G.H. Of the 12,000 tests the
league performs, 4,000 are in the off-season.
Jacobs said he suggested that players
say they were out of town or on vacation with their wives when they received
phone calls about pending drug tests.
He also said he would then provide the
player with an herbal supplement intended to cleanse the system of steroids
without being detected.
“A week later, they would be tested
and they would pass,” Jacobs said.
Under the World Anti-Doping Agency
rules, which apply to Olympic athletes, three missed tests by one athlete
within 18 months can result in a suspension for the athlete.
Aiello said players had to provide the
league’s drug tester with their off-season locations and a number where they
could be reached at all times.
“The program’s independent adviser has
the full authority to determine if a player is evading testing in violation of
the program and makes a determination on a case-by-case basis,” Aiello said.
After his sentencing Thursday, Jacobs
said he was willing to cooperate with N.F.L. officials, who had reached out to
him several months ago to learn more about his dealings with league players.
“I plan to travel to New York in the
next month to meet with them and tell them about the loopholes in their
program,” Jacobs said.
As for whether he intends to share
names with the league, Jacobs said, “Only if the N.F.L. guarantees their lives
won’t be destroyed like mine.” http://louis2j2sheehan.us/page.aspx
Notes of Louis Sheehan
rugs to patients for years and rarely
had problems -- until last year. A number of patients who had done very well on
brand-name medications "crashed and burned" when they switched to
generics, he says.
One woman "went from being
perfectly fine to crying inconsolably 24 hours a day" after she switched
from one generic antidepressant to another, Dr. Zealberg says. Another patient
was sold a generic version of his attention-deficit drug that contained no
identifying markings whatsoever -- a violation of federal rules.
Ten of his patients switched to a new
generic version of the antidepressant Wellbutrin, but eight of them changed
back, saying they felt anxious or shaky or their depression had returned.
Several complained that the generic drug had a bad smell, he says.
Generic medications have been a boon
to consumers around the world, allowing millions to buy lifesaving drugs for
pennies a day. http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com/
Some 65% of all prescriptions
dispensed in the U.S. are for generics, though they account for only 20% of the
dollars spent, according to the Generic Pharmaceutical Association.
While there is no hard evidence of
growing problems from generics, consumers and physicians are increasingly
concerned as cost pressures push more patients away from brand-name drugs. At
the same time, the globalization of pharmaceutical manufacturing has revealed
regulatory lapses.
By law, generics must have the same
active ingredient and the same action as the brand-name version, which allows
them to piggyback on the original safety and efficacy trials. But generics do
have different inactive ingredients, which can affect how they are absorbed
into the body. Generics can produce blood levels as much as 20% below or 25%
above that of the original drug and still be considered
"bioequivalent," according to Food and Drug Administration guidelines.
Some patients are more sensitive to
those differences than others, and people who experience problems with
medications are advised to contact their doctors, the drug manufacturer and the
FDA's MedWatch.
Wellbutrin, made by Biovail Corp. of
Canada and marketed by GlaxoSmithKline PLC, is one of the best-selling
antidepressants in the U.S., with sales of $1.8 billion in 2006. The FDA
approved a generic version of Wellbutrin XL 300, a long-acting once-daily
version, in December 2006. The generic, named Budeprion XL 300, soon accounted
for roughly 40% of the one million monthly prescriptions for the
antidepressant.
But patients soon started logging
complaints about Budeprion at PeoplesPharmacy.com, a Web site that has become a
clearinghouse for medication gripes. "We've received hundreds of
complaints about generic drugs in general. But with this one drug, all of a
sudden -- kaboom -- right after it was approved," says Joe Graedon, a
pharmacologist who runs People's Pharmacy with his wife. Readers' postings cite
side effects such as tremors, headaches, anxiety and sleep disturbances. Some
consumers said their depression had returned, in some cases bringing thoughts
of suicide. Many reported that their adverse effects stopped when they returned
to the brand-name drug.
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