SUNDAY, JUNE 6, 2010
KLMNO SPORTS MEDICINE Road trips to visit pro athletes were lucrative for Galea galea from D1
HGH treatments. Though Canadian court documents state that “it is quite possible that some of the Professional athletes are totally unaware of the fact that they were receiving unapproved drugs,” skeptical anti-doping officials say ignorance would be no excuse. They say the athletes that entrusted their livelihoods to Galea were at best reckless and perhaps complicit in wrongdoing. And, if they received per- formance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) from Galea, whether for healing injuries or bulking up, they should be considered cheaters. “You go up to see somebody doing ex- perimental treatment, you better be damn sure you know exactly what your doctor is doing,” said Steven Ungerleid- er, an anti-doping expert who has writ- ten numerous books on drugs in sport. “Clearly, everybody who went to see him knew this guy was on the edge of the fringe, doing illegal things . . . At the end of the day, it’s doping.” Chris Rudge, who led the Canadian Olympic team at the Winter Games in Vancouver as the chief executive officer of the Canadian Olympic Committee, ex- pressed dismay at the “hysterical per- spective” contained in some commen- tary about the case. Rudge, whose half- pipe snowboarding daughter Diane and other family members received treat- ment from Galea for many years, de- scribed Galea as “exceptionally profes- sional” and a “leader” among Canada’s top sports medicine specialists. “I hope at some point this gets into an
environment in which the facts are es- tablished,” said Rudge, who left the COC in April after a seven-year term. Added Rudge: “From a generic per-
spective, if we were to deprive innova- tion in life, society wouldn’t advance very quickly, would it? . . . If there is a doctor who has established a reputation for understanding the needs of athletes, and being sensitive to those needs, and recognizing an athlete’s injury as some- thing very unique to an athlete, then ath- letes are going to gravitate to that type of environment.”
Multiple connections
Galea has been publicly associated in the past decade with dozens of profes- sional athletes, including NHL players Tie Domi, Adam Foote, Jason Spezzi, Gary Roberts and Steve Moore; Canadi- an track and field stars Donovan Bailey, Bruny Surin, Perdita Felicien, Mark McKoy, Desai Williams and Mark Bos- well; NFL players Javon Walker, Ricky Williams, Takeo Spikes and Chris Simms; Major League Baseball players Huston Street, John Patterson, Carlos Beltrán, José Reyes and Carlos Delgado; and Olympic swimmer Dara Torres. Few, however, have been willing to dis-
cuss their treatment publicly since charges were filed against Galea in the United States. The prominent athlete mentioned previously claimed that Ga- lea did not have a reputation of being a rogue doctor, at least before last fall, and that “hundreds of athletes” and “some of the top athletes in the world” had seen him.
“Figure skaters,” the athlete said. “Fa- mous tennis players. NBA players. They’ve all seen him. It’s a last-ditch ef- fort to go to someone who is a little in- novative in his technique, and I don’t mean PEDs . . . What people want to do is see someone innovative, doing stuff out- side the box, so they don’t have to go un- der the knife.” Galea first garnered international at- tention for his work with Canadian Olympic gold medal winner Donovan Bailey as he made a comeback from a torn Achilles’ tendon. After Bailey un- derwent surgery in 1999, Galea put Bai- ley’s foot in a special shoe rather than a cast while having him undergo daily oxy- gen treatments in a hyperbaric chamber and workouts in a pool. Despite the se- vere nature of his injury, Bailey showed world-class speed in the summer of 2000, though he did not perform well at the Olympics because of the flu. Around that time, Galea also began administering “shock-wave therapy,” a rehabilitation technique that involves sending electrical charges through an in- jured area. He used the treatment on the injured leg of Jamaican sprinter and Olympic bronze medal winner Michelle Freeman — and many others — before it was approved for use in the United States. Galea and a colleague had attend- ed a clinic on shock-wave therapy around the time it was undergoing trials by the U.S. Food and Drug Administra- tion, and then brought the therapy back to Toronto, luring many clients from the United States.
Galea, who declined an interview re- quest through his attorneys for this story, told the Montreal Gazette in 1999 that though some innovative techniques had been “boo-hooed as quackery or witchcraft, now we know that if it works and does no harm to the patients, then let’s do it. The bottom line is, the results are better and the patients are getting better.”
Galea, who served as team doctor for
the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts from 2004 until this past Jan- uary, in 2006 sent former Argonauts run- ning back Ricky Williams — now with the Miami Dolphins — into a hyperbaric chamber for four hours a day for several days after Williams suffered a partial Achilles’ tear, though at least one fellow Toronto physician publicly dismissed the treatments as nonsense.
By then, Galea was regularly perform- ing plasma-rich platelet injections, the
SAMI SIVA VIA REDUX PICTURES Anthony Galea is shown in his clinic in Toronto. Galea has been associated in the past decade with dozens of pro athletes, including Tiger Woods and Alex Rodriguez. Tracing Galea’s steps
A timeline of Anthony Galea’s visits to the United States in the summer of 2009, according to a search warrant filed in the central east region of Ontario:
July 22: Galea traveled to New York City and provided treatment to Professional Athlete B. July 30: Galea traveled to New York City to provide second treatment to Athlete B and Tampa Bay to treat Professional Athlete C. Aug. 3: Galea provided plasma-rich platelet therapy to Professional Athlete D in Orlando and Professional Athlete E in Boston. Aug. 6: Galea provided a third treatment, an HGH cocktail, to Athlete B in New York City. Aug. 8: Galea traveled to Tampa to give an injection of Actovegin to Professional Athlete F.
JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST
Redskins wide receiver Santana Moss has told teammates he did not receive human growth hormone from Galea. HGH.
blood-spinning technique used on Woods and, according to the indictment, many of Galea’s current athlete clients. Known as PRP, the technique involves taking a blood sample from an injured player, spinning it in a centrifuge to con- centrate the platelets and growth fac- tors, and re-injecting it into the site of an injury. Though the jury is out on its effec- tiveness, the procedure has entered the medical mainstream in the past couple of years.
PRP is allowed by the World Anti- Doping Agency (WADA) under certain conditions, though an athlete needs to obtain a “therapeutic use exemption” be- fore utilizing it. Galea requested one on Chan’s behalf last October, and got it. Chan, who had an injured calf, finished fifth in the men’s singles event at the Vancouver Winter Games. “People are discovering [PRP], and [Galea] discovered it long before every- body,” said Naama Constantini, an ortho- pedic surgeon in Jerusalem who is also the medical commission chair for the Olympic Committee of Israel and has worked with Galea during his frequent trips to Israel. “He’s done it for years . . . There is jealousy everywhere. He’s defi- nitely a pioneer, and pioneers, they’re al- ways looked at differently by people who are very conservative and follow the same route. I told [a colleague], ‘If you want to be a better doctor, you had better go to Tony in Canada.’ ” Added Constantini: “He never, ever
suggested anything that could be against the law of WADA.”
Assistant stopped at border Last September, Galea’s assistant, Cat-
alano, was detained at the U.S.-Canadian border near Buffalo. In her car, agents found 111 syringes, one centrifuge ma- chine, one ultrasound machine, and a bag with 20 vials and 76 ampules of vari- ous substances, including 250 milliliters of the unapproved drug Actovegin, which is not banned by sports leagues, and 2 mililiters of Nutropin, a type of
Galea’s Canadian-based attorney, Bri- an Greenspan, said the HGH was in- tended only for Galea’s personal use (in Canada, HGH is legal for anti-aging pur- poses; in the United States, it is legal only for a narrow range of medical con- ditions), and represented just two daily doses. Catalano, however, told Canadian in-
vestigators she watched Galea adminis- ter a “cocktail” of drugs including HGH to seven professional athletes during the visits to the United States. She also said, according to a Canadian search warrant, that she “believed” one of those HGH cocktails was administered last Aug. 12 to the same Washington-area athlete she was on her way to meet when arrested. A U.S. source identified that athlete as Moss. Moss told his teammates he did not re- ceive HGH from Galea. (Catalano said a different Washington-area athlete re- ceived only an injection of the un- approved drug Actovegin and vitamins, neither of which are banned by sports leagues, during a meeting Sept. 3.) Don Catlin, a prominent anti-doping
expert and head of Anti-Doping Re- search in Los Angeles, speculated that Galea enjoyed the ego boost of having a high-profile clientele and felt pressure to keep such a lineup of heavy hitters hap- py.
“All doctors like to have a practice full of superstars,” Catlin said. “Some are very straightforward and legitimate, and would never dream of doing anything off-color, but Galea sounds a little slip- pery to me.” Supporters of Galea, however, said he did not have to dispense performance- enhancing drugs to satisfy his big-name clients. Surgeon Marc Philippon, a man- aging partner of the prestigious Stead- man Clinic in Vail, Colo., wrote to the De- partment of Homeland Security last Oc- tober, petitioning that Galea be permitted to work in the United States on an 0-1 visa and calling him “one of the
world’s leaders and most sought-after ex- perts by both physicians, athletes and patients around the globe.” “Dr. Galea possesses and demon-
strates a command of tissue regener- ation that is unparalleled in the medical field,” Philippon wrote, according to a copy of the letter. May Jacobson, research associate in
orthopedics at Children’s Hospital in Boston, last year traveled to Toronto to begin research with Galea that has since been tabled. Said Jacobson: “He is cred- ible. If I didn’t think so, I would not have initiated anything with him.” Still, other noted athlete doctors such
as Frank Jobe, Richard Steadman and James Andrews bolstered their credibil- ity by publishing in medical journals; those three, in fact, have authored or co- authored more than 120 articles. Galea has written a book but has never had a single article published in a peer-re- viewed journal. “I asked him, ‘Why aren’t you publish-
ing?’ ” said Adi Fridman, an orthopedic surgeon in Jerusalem who observed Ga- lea’s work during a two-month stay in To- ronto in 2008. “He said, ‘It’s not interest- ing to me. I’m interested in treating peo- ple, not publishing.’ ”
Galea, of course, was also interested in making a living. His road trips across the United States proved very lucrative, ac- cording to the charging documents. He typically received $3,500 for a treatment session, as well as travel expenses for himself and Catalano.
Bills to three unnamed witnesses cited in a U.S. affidavit totaled about $200,000. “It’s hard to believe someone can claim to be legitimate when they are meeting in hotel rooms and sending someone over the border one way while they’re going another way to treat ath- letes,” said Travis Tygart, the chief exec- utive officer for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. “That raises the antennae of even the most liberal thinkers.”
shipleya@washpost.com
Aug. 9: Galea traveled to San Francisco to provide treatment, possibly an HGH cocktail, to Professional Athlete G. Aug. 10: Galea traveled to San Diego to provide treatment, possibly an HGH cocktail, to Professional Athlete H. Galea’s medical assistant, Mary Anne Catalano, traveled to New York and supplied Professional Athlete I with Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) and ginseng. Aug. 11: Galea traveled to Boston and provided treatment, believed to be an intravenous vitamin drip, to Professional Athlete J. Aug. 12: Galea and Catalano traveled to Washington and provided medical treatment, believed to be intravenous vitamin drip and an HGH cocktail, to Professional Athlete A. Aug. 13: Galea and Catalano traveled to Cleveland and provided HGH cocktail injections into the knees of Professional Athletes K, L, and M. Aug. 18-24: Athletes A, J, N and P contacted Catalano about their medical conditions while Galea was on a family vacation in Paris. Aug. 26: Galea and Catalano treated Professional Athlete I with an intravenous vitamin drip in New York City. Galea then treated Professional Athlete E for the second time in Boston. Aug. 27: Galea made a second visit to Cleveland to provide HGH cocktail injections to Athletes M and L and Athlete Q received an intravenous vitamin drip. Athlete P received unspecified treatment. Sept. 1: Galea traveled to New York for a third meeting with Athlete B carrying HGH to administer to the athlete. He then traveled to Cleveland for the third time, to provide an HGH cocktail injection to Athlete L; intravenous vitamin drips to Athletes K and S; and unspecified treatment to Athlete R. Sept. 3: Galea administered an Actovegin injection and intravenous vitamin drip to Professional Athlete T. Sept. 10: Galea traveled to New York to provide an HGH cocktail injection to Athlete B and an examination of Athlete U. Sept. 11: Galea traveled to Cleveland and provided an HGH cocktail injection to Athlete L and intravenous vitamin drips to Athletes K, V, W, X and Y. Sept. 14: Galea and Catalano were heading to Washington for a meeting with Professional Athlete A when Catalano was detained at the U.S.-Canada border. She was carrying HGH and other substances. A U.S. source has said the athlete Catalano was planning to meet was Redskins wide receiver Santana Moss, who has denied receiving HGH from Galea.
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