Dr. Galaea & A.Rod

Last year Dr. Galaea, a Canadian doctor, had treated Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez for simple inflammation after receiving hip surgery in which he prescribed Alex anti-inflammatories but not HGH or steroids. Since Galaea first received attention from authorities last year when his assitant was caught at the Canadian-American border with vials of HGH, an amount Galaea says authorities grossly exaggerated, several athletes that he has treated have been under questioning with regard to his practice and prescribed treatments including Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes. None have admitted to receiving any steroids or other banned treatments, but Galaea is still being pressed with several counts of attempting to import and sell illegal ergogenic aids in the U.S. Galaea claims the drugs found on his assitant were for personal use, as he is a 51 year old male and can improve the quality of his life substantially with HGH supplementation but prosecutors seem intent on destroying Galaea's reputation. It seems likely that the highly politicized and elitist medical system of the U.S. may have a hand in Galaea's fierce prosecution, as Galaea claims his practice has been heavily targeted since it would look bad on American sports medicine practitioners to have such elite American athletes crossing borders for better doctors. Galaea is known to have practiced on Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, and Dara Torres among other elites. Some of the charges pressed against Galaea are for drugs that are not illegal Canada, and if the evidence from the U.S. Border Patrol is not fabricated the amount of HGH found on his assistant would still not be nearly enough to promote any performance enhancing changes in an elite athlete for any amount of time. I find how the media blows drug issues in athletics entirely out of proportion completely damaging to the intelligence of the sporting community, as it also blows the effects of these potentially therapeutic substances completely out of proportion making it extremely difficult to bring them in for debate based on logic and facts. Rather they choose to dumb down the public with fear mongering creating a collective mob mentality that holds negative views on things which they know nothing about. Even if Galaea is lying, what he did does not deserve the prosecution and slander that is being dished out. And if athletes want to go to a country to receive special treatments that aren't allowed in their home territory, it should be their right to do so.

Andrew Serrano KIN332I S.2