I'll be watching the Olympics again this year whenever I can. I'll watch for the explosive performances and tight finishes on the track and field. I'll look for the photo-finish touch in the pool. I'll be tuning in for gymnastics' superhuman-like shows of power and balance.

And, I'll be watching a new Olympic pastime: seeing who gets caught using performance-enhancing drugs, or PEDs. "Citius, Altius, Fortius"--the Olympic motto--translates to: Faster, Higher, Stronger. Does that sentiment drive some athletes to seek enhanced results?

This post marks the beginning of a blog series covering PEDs and how they have affected Olympic games and athletes. PEDs have profoundly changed modern sporting contests and media coverage of them for decades. In addition to the Major League Baseball steroid scandals and July's renewed accusations of Lance Armstrong's blood doping, there have been instances and investigations of doped Olympians dating back to East German and Soviet-era athletes more than 40 years ago.

Only more recently have governing bodies--namely the World Anti-Doping Agency, "WADA," which tests international contests such as London's 2012 Olympics--attempted to test for and regulate their use and abuse. Along with competitive advantages, PEDs carry severe health risks. They can even kill.

Dr. William Mitchell is an orthopedic surgeon and an expert on this subject, having worked with professional and amateur athletes in greater Boston for more than 25 years and having served as contributing editor to The Encyclopedia of Sports Medicine. Of the many drugs on the black market, Mitchell spotlights "the big three": erythropoietin, or EPO; human growth hormone, also known as hGH; and synthetic testosterone. All are prominently featured on WADA's nine-page list of prohibited substances, which went into effect on January 1 this year. It provides the standard for prohibited chemicals among international athletes and will guide official Olympic testing in coming weeks.

Dr. Mitchell walked me through the first section of WADA on anabolic agents, or synthetic versions of testosterone. At the top of the long list are the lab-made hormones androstenediol and androstenedione. Along with many similar anabolics, these are laboratory-made versions of the body's main strength inducing hormone, testosterone.

Both men and women produce testosterone naturally. It imparts primary sex characteristics in males, like a deep voice, facial hair and sexual organs. In both genders, it metabolizes amino acids from the diet into the proteins that make up muscle fibers. Therefore, the more testosterone in the body, the more muscle building potential.

Athletes take these synthetic forms of testosterone hoping to gain strength and muscle density, decrease recovery time after training, and reduce the incidence of injury during intense workouts.

But side effects of these drugs go beyond the simple risk of being caught using. Rage, depression, severe acne and baldness, in both genders, may be the best-known side effects. Less widely circulated are the more severe repercussions of chronic use, like liver abnormalities and tumors, heart and circulatory impairment, cholesterol risks, and the added danger of contracting infectious diseases, like HIV or hepatitis, from shared needles. Every one of these can be life threatening. Because of these dangers, and the use of anabolic agents across so many athletes in multiple sports, the WADA ranked them at the top of their prohibited list, said Mitchell.

Scrolling down the document, you don't have to go far to find the second and third of Mitchell's "big three," hGH and EPO.

Like the "andro-" drugs, hGH is an anabolic hormone very similar to testosterone. Naturally secreted by the pituitary gland in both sexes, it too increases muscle mass. Mitchell relates it very closely to testosterone in that hGH builds proteins from the food we eat so that bone and muscle can grow in density. Olympians in strength and speed events--sprinting, power lifting, swimming, boxing--may be competing against athletes who have used hGH.

Technically, hGH is available only by doctor's prescription, and it is typically used to help young children with deficiencies leading to inhibited growth. Though it hasn't been studied as a performance-enhancer--the ethical implications of such a study are troubling--baseball fans allegedly saw it in action in Barry Bonds. HGH increased Bonds' muscle mass along with his shoe size and even his skull size, said Mitchell.

"That's human growth hormone," he said. "That's what it does."

HGH brings its own set of risks. Topping the list is cardiomyopathy, an enlarging and thickening of muscles in the heart, that weakens heart function over time. HGH can also impair glucose regulation, leading to type-two diabetes. Over prolonged use, joints, tendons, ligaments and muscles can deteriorate, causing an ironic lack of strength in the aging hGH athlete.

This brings us to the last of the "big three," EPO. The drug, epoietin alpha, is a laboratory version of erythropoietin, a naturally-occurring hormone produced by the kidneys and liver that stimulates red blood cell production by the bone marrow. By helping to increase the number of red blood cells, which contain hemoglobin molecules that transport oxygen from the blood to the muscle, EPO boosts the amount of fuel muscles have to burn for energy. In medical applications, it has been used to treat lack of blood iron, or anemia, in patients with greatly impaired kidney function from diseases like AIDS. It can also be used before surgery, like open-heart procedures, to counter the effects of anticipated blood loss.

But, it has been implicated in the death of at least 18 cyclists during alleged heavy use in the 1990s. These cyclists were victims of bleeding events: stroke, heart attack, and blood clots in the lungs called pulmonary edemas.

With so many grave risks, are the perceived benefits worth it? In fact, none of PEDs' touted performance benefits--taken at high doses acquired on the unregulated black market, and with prolonged use or abuse--have been proven. After all, giving athletes high doses of dangerous drugs for research purposes would be highly unethical.

Mitchell agrees: "Doping increases health risks when doses and amounts of hormonal use is not regulated and can lead to overdosing and catastrophic health risks including death."

I had only been working for NOVA for a short time when I got the assignment to interview Sally Ride. I was working on a film called "Space Women" about the first three female astronauts, Ride, Judy Resnick, and Kathryn Sullivan. Sally Ride had become the first American woman in space as a crew member on Space Shuttle Challenger for STS-7 on June 18, 1983 and there was an outpouring of national pride and excitement surrounding her success.

Watch footage from Melanie Wallace's 1984 interview with Sally Ride.

When I contacted NASA to set up my interview, Sally Ride was deep in training for her second mission, which took off October 5, 1984 and landed seven days later on October 13. But a mere two weeks after Sally touched down at Kennedy Space Center, there she was to meet me.

Meeting Sally Ride was a lifetime thrill. Though I was a nervous wreck, she was relaxed and immediately put me and the crew at ease. She was articulate, funny, honest, and eager to share her enthusiasm for her job. Her passion for her profession and the camaraderie of her crewmates was contagious.

Yet what has stayed with me all these years is how she continually described working in space as fun--lots of fun. She said it was fun to be weightless and fun to go through reentry. Ride was an outrageously accomplished woman--in addition to being the first American woman in space, she was youngest astronaut to go into space, earned a PhD in physics, and was a tennis champion--yet she embraced her career as an astronaut with sheer, playful delight.

When I asked Ride about her long term goals--where did she see herself in five years?--I was surprised by her answer. She said she was not a very goal-oriented person and did not plan five years out. She was happy being an astronaut and planned on staying one for as long as NASA would have her. And I think she would have had a much longer career if not for the Challenger accident in 1986. She served on the Presidential Commission investigating the tragedy and resigned from NASA in 1987.

But NASA's loss was a gain for education, particularly science and math education, or STEM. In 2001 she founded her own company, Sally Ride Science, dedicated to her long-time passion for motivating young girls and boys to follow their love for science and consider careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. The company creates innovative classroom materials, classroom programs, and professional development training for teachers. Sally also initiated and directed NASA-funded education projects designed to fuel middle school students' fascination with science, including EarthKAM and GRAIL MoonKAM. She has also co-written seven science books for children.

The critical importance of science education resonates deeply with all of us at NOVA. Over our forty years on the air, we have had the privilege to witness pivotal moments in the history of science and exploration and to share those moments with our audience. It is part of our mission to preserve these stories for the future.

The inspirational legacy Sally Ride leaves behind is vast and multifaceted. Without seeking it out, she embraced her public persona as a role model for young girls and women who have a passion to succeed in science. When I heard last night that she had passed away after a battle with pancreatic cancer, my heart skipped a beat. Although I had only met her once, I felt as if I had lost a friend. Yet I know her legacy will continue through her organization and through all those who have been inspired by her.

This is the final post in a series on evolutionary medicine, the application of the principles of evolution to the understanding of health and disease. Read the previous entries here and here.

Pain, fever, diarrhea, coughing, vomiting--these are all conditions most of us wish did not exist. We go to the doctor to get relief. So why does evolution keep them around? These miseries may actually help us survive by protecting our bodies from the damage of infection, injury, and toxins.

No one wants to feel pain, yet pain helps keep us alive. Individuals with a rare condition called congenital insensitivity to pain often injure themselves unintentionally, sometimes with devastating consequences, such as bone infections or destruction of tissues and joints.

Fever is similar to pain in that it makes us feel terrible, but can be beneficial. It provides us with a defense against infection by boosting the immune system and fighting off heat-sensitive pathogens. Given all the good that seems to come from fever, Dr. Matthew Kluger of the College of Health and Human Services at George Mason University suggests fever is most likely an adaptive response.

Kluger's studies show that animals that experience lower or no fever with infection fare worse than those whose temperatures shoot up. When he infected lizards with heavy doses of live bacteria, all those that experienced fever survived, while those that couldn't raise their body temperature died. The results of other studies, compiled by Dr. Sally Eyers and colleagues at the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, found that the risk of death was higher in animals given fever lowering medication.

While we have a fever, our bodies strategically employ a lot of other tools too to fight infection and get us healthy. "An infected animal loses food appetite, does not want to interact with anyone else, increases his body temperature, and fights infection," notes Kluger. "Then when infection is fought off, you see a change in behavior." In his fever studies, "before even looking at the temperature recorder," he explains, "we could see when fever broke."

Even the least glamorous symptoms can have a silver lining. Studies have shown, for instance, that individuals infected with bacteria that cause diarrhea actually stay sick longer when they take anti-diarrhea medications than when they let nature take its course without meds. The same can be true for coughing: In one study, elderly patients with a less-sensitive cough reflex were more likely to get pneumonia than their coughing cohorts.

The argument extends to vomiting, too, particularly during pregnancy. Some researchers argue that morning sickness is an evolutionarily acquired defense to protect a pregnant woman and her fetus from dangerous food-borne toxins. Across the world, nearly 70% of women experience nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. Many foods, especially meats, may contain viruses, bacteria, or fungi that could be dangerous to humans in general, but some are more vulnerable than others. Dr. Paul Sherman of Cornell University argues that the developing embryo and carrying mother are especially susceptible to the negative effects of these pathogens because of their weakened immune systems.

A pregnant woman's immune system is suppressed during pregnancy to prevent the body from rejecting the fetus. The fetus is especially vulnerable during the early stages of pregnancy because that is when it is growing and developing most rapidly. If a woman became ill from food borne toxins, especially in her first trimester, it could result in birth defects or miscarriage. Compiling nine different studies, Sherman found that women who experienced nausea and vomiting during pregnancy were less likely to miscarry compared to those without those symptoms. Though much more research needs to be done, it seems that morning sickness may be a defense evolved to protect the pregnant mother and her growing fetus.

Does this mean that we should all rid our medicine cabinets of anti-nausea pills, painkillers, fever lowing medications, and cough suppressors? Dr. Randolph Nesse of the University of Michigan, one of the founders of the field of Evolutionary Medicine, suggests that in many cases it could still be safe to turn off (or tone down) the body's more disagreeble defenses. What we have to do is better understand the system so that we know when it is not safe to do so.

For Nesse, the body's defenses are akin to a smoke detector. "The system is set to go off like a smoke detector very often when there's no fire," Nesse explains. A smoke detector will alarm when it senses fire or smoke just as the body's defenses kick in when they sense a danger to the body. Sometimes the detector will get it right, but often times it will go off when there's no real threat. As the saying goes, nothing in life comes free. There is a cost to the defenses your body elicits against a sensed threat. This cost is relatively small compared to the cost of not defending the body if something actually is wrong. Pain is uncomfortable and costs energy, but if you did not feel pain when you broke your leg, you would be in even bigger trouble.

Nevertheless, most of the time, defenses kick in when they are not needed. "Many communities prohibit parking adjacent to a fire hydrants," Nesse points out, "although the chance that a fire truck will use that hydrant on a given day is less than one in 100,000." Similarly, "Birds flee from backyard feeders when any shadow passes overhead," even though most of these shadows do not present a real threat to the bird. The frequency of false alarms is why you can block pain or fever most of the time and not see really bad things happen. "If [medical professionals] have an understanding of the smoke detector principle," Nesse explains, "they can begin to decide when it's safe to block defenses and when it's not."

Another version of this post appears on Cosmic Variance, where night owls will also be able to follow Sean Carroll's liveblogging of the 3 am ET July 4 announcement from CERN.

Greetings from Geneva, where I'm visiting CERN to attend the much-anticipated Higgs update seminars on Wednesday, July 4. We're all wondering whether the physicists from the Large Hadron Collider will say the magic words "We've discovered the Higgs," but there's more detailed information to watch out for. I've been hard at work on a book on the subject, entitled The Particle at the End of the Universe, so I'm hoping for some big and exciting news, but not so big that I have to rewrite the whole thing. (Note that I'm a theoretical physicist, so I personally am not hunting for Higgses, any more than someone who orders catfish at a seafood restaurant has "gone fishing." The real hunters are the experimenters, and this is their moment to shine.)

Source

If at all possible, I'll try to live-blog here at CV during the seminars. They will start at 9am Geneva time, a slot chosen to enable a simulcast in Melbourne for people attending the ICHEP Conference. For folks in the U.S., not so convenient: it's 3 am Eastern time, Midnight (July 3/4) Pacific time. Here is the seminar announcement, and of course CERN will have a live webcast. Or try to, anyway; last time something like this was arranged, back in December, the live feed collapsed pretty quickly under the load. I'm sure I won't be the only one live-blogging: here's Aidan Randle-Conde and Tommaso Dorigo.

So what are we looking for?