Steroid Research Coming Up Short : Drugs: Despite the death of Alzado, NFL prefers to focus on testing rather than the long-term dangers of usage.

Even as his body was lowered into the ground last month in a cemetery in Oregon, the question remained. What really killed Lyle Alzado?

This was a guy who used to bench-press 650 pounds. A man whose presence was so big at Gold’s Gym in Venice that his sea of admirers nearly parted when he walked in the door. Within a year, these same people saw Alzado reduced to half his size, lose his hair, his voice, his strength . . . his life.

But during that time, he never lost his message.

In most bodybuilding circles and locker rooms across the country, Alzado’s belief that his brain cancer was caused by longtime use of anabolic steroids and later, the human growth hormone, was met by doubt and condemnation. But to some steroid users and steroid wanna-bes, the message Alzado fervently preached from the time he was diagnosed in April of 1991 until his death, May 14, 1992, has lingered hauntingly.

Could steroids and cancer be linked?

So little is known about the long-term side effects of steroids, that doctors say they cannot support Alzado’s claim. If his message did nothing more, it reconfirmed to some scientists and doctors that research is needed. It is estimated that there are more than 1-million users nationwide, nearly half of them high school students, according to Dr. Charles Yesalis, a noted expert in the research of long-term health effects. He also estimates there have been 3-million users in the past 50 years.

Yesalis, a professor at Penn State, and other experts say no study on the long-term effects of steroids has ever been done, although Yesalis has tried: Three times federal agencies have denied his grant proposals.

“Why don’t we just start?” Yesalis asks. “One-half million kids are current or past users, If they choose to use tobacco, alcohol or cocaine they have an informed choice. If they contemplate using steroids they don’t have that information.”

To Dr. Robert Huizenga, former team internist for the Raiders who treated Alzado this past year, the best group to use for a study is former football players. “They have no medals to lose, they are retired, they are not as wacky as bodybuilders, and their medical history has been meticulously charted by trainers,” he said.

But Huizenga, too, is frustrated. In 1990 he drafted such a plan for a study that eventually won the unanimous support of the NFL Physicians Society, a group made up of team doctors. Huizenga said he first submitted his proposal in the spring of 1990 to the NFL Players Assn. and the NFL, an organization where estimates of steroid use among its players range from 30% to 75%.

He then resubmitted the proposal to both groups in January of 1991. Despite repeated attempts, Huizenga said neither group has responded to him.

“The day Lyle died I fired off a letter to Gene Upshaw (executive director of the NFLPA) and Dr. John Lombardo (the NFL’s drug adviser), asking them to do what is best for the country and specifically for former football players,” said Huizenga, who left the Raiders in 1990 and is in private practice in Beverly Hills.

“The NFL has been a leader in drug testing; they have done way more than any other professional sport in this area. Others have buried their heads in the sand. But doesn’t the league have any more responsibility to the last 30 years of players? Isn’t there a moral responsibility to them?”

Upshaw said this week that he had never received a proposal from Huizenga, but did receive his latest letter. He said he hasn’t formulated a response, but that the NFLPA usually cooperates and supports any study worthwhile for its players.

“It’s a problem, and what happened to Lyle people are still talking about, but we can’t let the talking die,” Upshaw said. “I know the message he was trying to get out. We are not going to be opposed to any type of study to find out more about steroids.”

But the NFL said last week it is not interested in supporting Huizenga’s study, financially or otherwise. Greg Aiello, the league’s director of communications, said it never received a formal proposal from Huizenga, but said there was discussion of the study. He said the NFL does not believe steroid research would further its aims of stopping the use of steroids, which it believes is best accomplished through its education and testing programs.

“Nobody wants to put forth any effort; instead, they curse the darkness and light a candle,” said Steve Courson, former player for the Pittsburgh Steelers who was an avid steroid user.

“How deadly these drugs are and the long-term effects, we don’t know. We know some of the short-term effects, stunting growth, high blood pressure, oily skin. We do know, however, that mortality is extremely rare. In a study done for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, only five deaths were found to be associated with these drugs.”

Courson, 36, has dilated cardiomyopathy, an enlarged heart in which muscle fibers are lost over time. He is on a list to receive a heart transplant. But he does not believe that steroids caused his problem--he attributes that to his heavy use of alcohol. What he does believe is that steroids allowed him to train harder and longer, recuperate faster and therefore could have contributed to his heart problem by masking the condition.

“But just because we do not know the long-term side effects doesn’t mean there aren’t any,” Courson said. “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

“I commend Lyle for trying to get people to understand this, but my fear is that it was just a voice in a windstorm. The real thing that we are ignoring is how we are rewarding athletes. The biggest side effect is hypocrisy of the federation.”

When he was the Raider team doctor, Huizenga used to argue with Alzado about steroids. Those debates began in 1982, nine years before the possession of steroids for non-medical purposes would be ruled illegal and seven years before the league initiated drug testing.

“Then it was like talking to a patient about not smoking tobacco; there was little more you could do about it than appeal to them,” Huizenga said.

In 1990, when Alzado tried to make a comeback with the Raiders, Huizenga gave him a somber speech about how the league had tests now that could detect such drugs. When he finished speaking, Alzado winked. Then Alzado passed his test.

“I think he had hired an East German coach to make sure he passed,” Huizenga said.

But even before Huizenga diagnosed Alzado’s condition as primary brain lymphoma, his passion for steroid research for football players was strong.

“When I gave the NFL a formal proposal, they said they would have their guy, Lombardo, review it,” Huizenga said. “And ostensively, that is where the proposal has been sitting, on the drug adviser’s desk. I know the U.S. government will fund it; the study would only cost $300,000. All I want is a letter of support from the NFL and the Players Assn. saying they will cooperate. Without that, there is a high chance the study would not get funded.”

The NFL would not allow Lombardo to talk to The Times. But speaking on Lombardo’s behalf, Aiello said the league is not a funding agent for medical research. He also said that Lombardo would respond directly to Huizenga regarding his recent letter.

“He (Lombardo) did not think the study would help,” Aiello said “ . . . We have accepted the fact that it (steroids) is bad for a person’s health. Huizenga discussed that subject (a study) with us, but a formal proposal was not made. His research is designed to look backward on a long-term basis. We have accepted the fact that steroids have negative side effects. Our goal is to eliminate the use of steroids, so our research is aimed toward improving testing.”

“We are working to educate players and with our year-round testing program are fighting the use of steroids. We use videos, brochures, have team meetings. We tell them why we have the testing program, why they shouldn’t be using steroids. We do more than 6,000 tests a year. We believe it is a strong deterrent.”

Upshaw also believes that the NFL’s testing program has been successful in curtailing steroid use, and praises the educational efforts made by the league. But others question how effective education can be without knowledge of what the consequences can or cannot be. Some criticize the league’s steroid testing program, claiming it is easy is beat.

In 1989 the NFL began testing for steroids. A year later, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue began random year-round testing for steroids. Between 1989, when testing began, and 1991, the league reports the positive tests have been reduced to one case.

“It is so simple to beat their drug test I can tell you in a couple of seconds how to do it,” said Dr. Mouro DiPasquale, a leading expert in drug testing.

“I’m not high on the NFL or the International Olympic Committee’s list because I always criticize how simple it is to beat their tests. They test the ratio of testosterone to another hormone called epitestosterone. If the ratio is above six parts testosterone to one part epitestosterone or more, the test is positive. So all the athlete has to do is inject epitestosterone to narrow the ratio. They can even put epitestosterone on their tongue.”

In Courson’s book, “False Glory,” which chronicles his days on steroids and with the Pittsburgh Steelers, he writes that there are even masking agents such as the mail-order product “Defend” that “you can take three hours before an announced test.

” . . . The announced test is, of course, one of the real flaws in the system,” Courson writes. “Since athletes and their coaches have become so sophisticated in manipulating or masking their drug use, you have to be really stupid or really, really unlucky to get caught.”

Said Courson: “Nobody is dumb enough to get caught. It’s kind of like when you go to the supermarket and there is a sign that says, ‘No shoplifting, but we are not checking aisles four and five.’ ”

Upshaw disagrees. “It was the players who created the groundswell to get testing started in the first place, because it creates an unfair advantage,” Upshaw said. “And the testing program is helping that. Since the league started testing, names come up in the computer maybe seven or eight times. No one knows. The player is notified when he comes into the locker room and the testing is done before he leaves. How can he beat it?”

Steroid education can also backfire, Courson and Huizenga say. In Oregon, a study showed that students who learned about the dangers of steroids were more likely to use them than those who didn’t.

Short-term effects most frequently associated with steroids are, in men, reduced sperm count, enlarged prostate and development of female-type breasts. In women, deepening of voice, increased facial and body hair, pectoral (not breast) enlargement. In children, growth can be stunted.

“With some of the short-term effects, when steroid use is stopped, the condition reverses itself,” Yesalis said.

But some doctors are suspicious that steroid use also causes problems with joints and increases the likelihood of some severe medical problems, such as liver disease, cancer and some reproductive and endocrine functions, as well as deep psychological trauma.

“The heart of the problem is, does it lop years off your life? Does it take years off your athlete career?” Huizenga said. “There is such a strong case for knowledge in this area; if we can just show that it hurts players orthopedically, that they have more muscles and joint problems, we can slow this thing done. It is crying out to be done. I don’t have to do the study, I just want it to be done.

“Some studies show that education increases use because you are telling people about it and opening them up to it and basically emphasizing the positive effects--bigger and stronger. Then we say, ‘We are not sure what steroids do, but we are worried.’ Is that education?”

Huizenga’s proposed study would take a player who used steroids for two or three years in the 1960s and study the effect 30 years later, measuring it against players who didn’t use them and who played in the same number of games at the same position and were exposed to the same amount of trauma. Of benefit to the study is how efficiently players’ medical histories are recorded.

Upshaw believes former players would cooperate with a study if they received a letter from the Players Assn. on his letterhead.

“We have about 400 to 500 players from the 1960s in our NFL Retired Players Assn. (NFLRPA) and about 2,200 players total,” said Frank Woschitz, director of public relations for the NFLPA and NFLRPA.

“We are the vehicle to do this type of study and I am sure that it (a study on steroids) would be something we would cooperate on once it is checked out.”

Ron Mix, who played for the San Diego Chargers and was elected to the Hall of Fame, said football players are candid and he thinks would cooperate if granted confidentiality. But not all the time, said Woschitz. “Sometimes, the players you want to cooperate the most, don’t,” Woschitz said. “In the life and stress study, I know real horrible examples that did not answer our questionnaire. The ones that are the most downtrodden don’t answer because they don’t want you to know where they are.”

Yesalis said the NFLPA agreed it would work with him several years ago, but he questions the credibility of the NFL.

“Their (NFL) behavior has encouraged (steroid) use--bigger, faster, stronger players,” Yesalis said. “Coaches have turned their heads the other way or, at least initially, have provided the drugs. It all started in the NFL with the San Diego Chargers in 1963. You took them or got fined.

“So here’s the message the NFL sends: Brian Bosworth got caught for steroid use by the NCAA and the Seattle Seahawks give him an $11-million contract. Randy Barnes, world record-holder in the shotput, is caught by the IAAF (International Amateur Athletic Federation) for steroid use, is suspended and then given a contract by (the San Francisco) 49ers. And the league still doesn’t test for amphetamines, which have been used since World War II. If you randomly test, a player can’t get around the amphetamine test.”

When Congress passed the Steroid Trafficking Act in 1990, making it illegal for doctors to dispense anabolic steroids for non-medicinal purposes, Dr. Linda Erinoff of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) thought maybe funds would be appropriated specifically for steroid research.

“That hasn’t happened yet, there’s never been any dollars earmarked in research or prevention efforts,” Erinoff said. “But when Yesalis submitted his last grant proposal, it was a couple years ago and an area new to NIDA. In fairness to the committee, they thought it might be difficult for athletes to remember what drugs they took, and in what dosage, 10 years prior.

“We are not used to dealing with elite athletes. We are used to dealing with street drugs. Elite athletes are much more aware of what they have taken. Dr. Yesalis is well respected and I believe he could pull (a long-term study) off. I hope he applies again,” she said.

NIDA has recently issued a grant for $1.3 million to study various aspects of steroids used by bodybuilders, but Erinoff said it is a different type of study, not ascertaining long-term effects.

In 1990, Courson and Yesalis conducted an anonymous survey on steroid use of 1,600 active NFL players. Only 120 players returned the survey, a low response. But of those that did, at least 80% said they would stop using steroids if it was proven beyond doubt that they would lead to sterility, impotence, or increased risk of liver cancer or a heart attack.

For now, Kathy Alzado is dedicated to raising funds for steroid research and carrying on her husband’s message of the danger of steroid use, even if she doesn’t have scientifically proven facts. She is targeting fifth and sixth graders, because she thinks they are on the cusp, not too young, clearly old enough, and they want to know.

“All I can tell them is, ‘Look, there is minimal proof of what steroids do, but here is my personal testimony,’ ” she said.

“Doctors keep telling me things off the record that strengthen my belief about the danger of steroids, and I’m not just talking about anabolic steroids but also cortisone steroids, those that are prescribed medically.

“One doctor told me recently that a 4-year-old boy had a kidney transplant and he put him on a cortisone steroid and the child developed brain lymphoma, just like Lyle’s. He thinks it’s linked but doesn’t want me to use his name in case he gets sued.

“I’ve also received letters from guys I went to high school with. These guys were athletes and they are telling me now that their high school coaches told them they could be bigger and stronger if they did steroids.”

During Alzado’s burial, while a small group of his friends and relatives stared in ceremonial silence, a dove flew down and landed atop the casket.

It chirped three times, then flew away.

“The lady who runs the cemetery told me that had never happened before,” Kathy said. “And I didn’t doubt that. I know it was Lyle sending me a message.”