Franke, Werner

Doping in competitive sports isn't just unfair: it's criminal bodily harm inflicted by "helpful" physicians. Cell biologist/cancerologist Werner Franke has been explaining that to athletes, the parents of young talents and the general public for some 20 years. Now he's been voted "University Teacher of the Year 2007".

The situation was rather unusual for everyone in attendance bar one: Werner Franke, Professor of Cellular Biology at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg. At the presentation of the award for "University Teacher of the Year" in November 2007, he brought his lawyer along to listen in closely to his acceptance speech. For Germany's leading anti-doping crusader, awaited at a court hearing in a libel suit that very morning, has to be very careful – even if he is telling nothing but the truth – about how he tells it. Anyone who names sports celebrity names in this connection can't expect them to take it "lying down".

Against this backdrop, the Deutsche Hochschulverband, the German professional association of university professors and young academics, boldly chose to meddle in matters seemingly remote from their ivory tower: it paid to tribute to Franke for "standing up for his convictions in his long struggle against cynical and criminal doping practices in competitive sports". In fact, however, as association president Bernhard Kempen pointed out, Franke's research demonstrates "in an exemplary manner the vital importance of independent research to society".

The strong woman by his side

As he is in the habit of saying himself, a strong man needs a strong woman by his side. Brigitte Berendonk was a member of the West German Olympic teams in 1968 and 1972, coming in 8th and 11th in her track and field disciplines. Back in 1958, before defecting to the free part of the country, she was the East German champion in the four-part competition known as Vierkampf.

Right after Germany's unification in 1990 the Berendonk and Franke came out with a book entitled Doping. Von der Forschung zum Betrug with meticulous evidence of the State-sponsored administration of anabolic steroids in East German sports. Their findings were based on research in East German archives and doctoral dissertations from the Academy of Military Medicine (MMA) on "performance-enhancing substances". As president of the European Cell Biology Organisation from 1982–1990, Franke had the requisite authority to gain access to classified documents. They reveal the deliberate masculinization of young women, for example, with devastating foreseeable long-term effects on body and mind. "Withholding what they knew clearly about that from the young athletes concerned was and is the greatest cruelty inflicted by their coaches," deplores Franke.

Science gone wrong

But State-sponsored doping in the German Democratic Republic and throughout the then Communist world is only one side of the story. Franke's latest book (co-authored by journalist Udo Ludwig) on the "betrayal of sports" (Der verratene Sport) shows how illicit drugs permeate the whole gamut of competitive sports in our day. The excuse of having to keep pace with the allegedly world-conquering "Eastern bloc diplomats in sweatsuits" hasn't held water in 15 years or more since the collapse of the Communist bloc. Marion Jones (USA), world champion sprinter in 1997 and winner of four Olympic medals in the year 2000, recently admitted having taken steroids for years. Many clamoured for the Tour de France 2007 to be called off on account of all those bogus heroes on bikes and on drugs. Of the German cyclists, Patrik Sinkewitz fessed up, naming doctors Lothar Heinrich and Andreas Schmid of the Department of Sports Medicine at the Freiburg University Hospital as blood dopers. The treatment served solely to boost performance and not to fulfil the Hippocratic healing mandate. Franke quotes another professional cyclist who said: "I think the sports doctors were mainly interested in staying close to the athletes and sharing in their success. A pathological attachment." The Freiburg University rector set up an outside committee to investigate the whole practice of treatment of top athletes since the 1970s.

Besides the medico-scientific temptation, observes Franke, doping also has an economic dimension. Sports stars are idols of advertising who personify youth, competition and success. Probing the seamy sides of their careers would seem undesirable. When Germany's leading news magazine Der Spiegel made the first serious accusations of doping in German sports, that incurred not only lawsuits, but also a drop in advertising revenue, reports Franke's co-author Ludwig. Naturally enough, the sports media are also more interested in painting a pretty picture of their subject than tarnishing its image.

Franke concludes by stressing the general "sociocultural" ramifications of doping. "There has been a trend toward getting fit from drugs ever since the 1960s," often, moreover, accompanying the widespread recreational pursuit of working out at the fitness studio. As a patent expression of the dangerous body cult, biologist Franke cites actress Raquel Welch: "My body is the shape I live in, and it shapes the way I live." Some bodybuilders have paid for that philosophy with their lives.

Franke's message concerns us all: the whole moral fibre of our society will be reflected in our ability to get "performance-enhancing" drugs, and hence the misuse of medical research, under control.

Book tip: Werner Franke, Udo Ludwig: Der verratene Sport. ZS Verlag Zabert Sandmann, 2007. 261 pages (ISBN: 978-3-89883-185-7)