astro
April 6, 2013, 5:35am
1
Per this wiki article
The steroids use=greater muscle mass if working out relationship seems (in hindsight) fairly obvious and easy to ascertain, why did they not pick up on it and keep insisting it was not effective at building muscle mass?
Testosterone, the most active anabolic-androgenic steroid produced by Leydig cells in the testes, was first isolated in 1935 and chemically synthesized later in the same year. Synthetic derivatives of testosterone quickly followed. By the end of the following decade, both testosterone and its derivatives were applied with varying degrees of success for a number of medical conditions. It was not until the 1950s, however, that athletes began to discover that anabolic steroids could increase their muscle mass. According to sports physician John Ziegler, the first confirmed use of an anabolic steroid in an international athletic competition was at the weightlifting championships in Vienna in 1954, when the Russians weightlifters used testosterone.[5]
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the use of anabolic steroids was confined largely to the professional levels of sport. In the Eastern bloc, programs of training went as far as forcing some athletes to take anabolic steroids.[6]** In the United States, sports physicians, including Ziegler, and medical texts were still widely proclaiming that anabolic steroids were ineffective in helping athletes gain muscle. **These doctors did acknowledge the usefulness of anabolic steroids for debilitated patients. The package insert for Dianabol, a common anabolic steroid used at the time, stated, “Anabolic steroids do not enhance athletic ability.”[5] Despite these warnings, use of anabolic steroids began in competition bodybuilding, in track and field events, such as the shot put, and in other sports where performance depended on muscle strength or speed of recovery during training.[7]
At the end of the 1960s, Science published a study on the effects of Dianabol on athletes. This open label study, conducted by J.P. O’Shea and colleagues at Oregon State University, confirmed the muscle building effects of anabolic steroids on athletes that followed a high protein diet.[8] Two years later, O’Shea replicated the results in a double blind design.[5][9]
At the beginning of the 1970s, sporting organizations, including the IOC and NCAA, declared the use of anabolic steroids unethical, but with no effective means of testing athletes, the issue remained academic.[5]