Times Topics: Human Growth Hormone
Dara Torres said Dr. Galea drained fluid from her knee and helped diagnose a tear in her quad tendon.
A Canadian doctor who has treated many N.F.L. players as well as Olympic medalists like Donovan Bailey and the world’s top golfer, Tiger Woods, is under criminal investigation in the United States. He is suspected of providing athletes with performance-enhancing drugs, according to several people who have been briefed on the investigation.
The F.B.I. investigation of Dr. Anthony Galea, a sports medicine specialist who has treated hundreds of professional athletes across many sports, follows his arrest on Oct. 15 in Toronto by the Canadian police. Human growth hormone and Actovegin, a drug extracted from calf’s blood, were found in his medical bag at the United States-Canada border in late September. Using, selling or importing Actovegin is illegal in the United States.
Dr. Galea is also being investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for smuggling, advertising and selling unapproved drugs as well as criminal conspiracy. He is tentatively scheduled to appear in a Canadian courtroom on Friday.
Dr. Galea and his lawyer say his innovative treatments do not break any laws or violate antidoping rules in sport. “We’re confident that an investigation of Dr. Galea will lead to his total vindication,” said Brian H. Greenspan, Dr. Galea’s criminal-defense lawyer. “Dr. Galea was never engaged in any wrongdoing or any impropriety. Not only does he have a reputation that is impeccable, he is a person at the very top of his profession.”
Dr. Galea has developed a reputation among elite athletes for accelerating recovery after surgery or for helping them avoid surgery altogether by using a blood-spinning technique known as platelet-rich plasma therapy, as well as other pioneering procedures, on knees, elbows and Achilles’ tendons.
Although he said he prescribed human growth hormone to some patients in his general practice and had used it himself for 10 years, Dr. Galea, 50, said in an interview that he had never treated professional athletes with H.G.H.
Dr. Galea said Mr. Woods was referred to him by the golfer’s agents at Cleveland-based International Management Group, who were alarmed at the slow pace of Mr. Woods’s rehabilitation after knee surgery in June 2008. The doctor said he flew to Orlando, Fla., at least four times to give Mr. Woods the platelet therapy at his home in Windermere, Fla., in February and March of this year. When asked for comment about Mr. Woods’s involvement with Dr. Galea, Mark Steinberg, of I.M.G., responded in an e-mail message: “I would really ask that you guys don’t write this? If Tiger is NOT implicated, and won’t be, let’s please give the kid a break.”
Dr. Galea’s legal problems began in late September when his assistant was stopped entering the United States from Canada. Her car was searched by border-crossing guards and authorities found Dr. Galea’s medical bag, which contained four drugs, including human growth hormone, Dr. Galea said. “It was for my own use,” he said.
The authorities also seized his laptop computer and a sonogram machine, he said. His assistant, he said, often drove him around and that was why his belongings were in her car. The assistant, whom Dr. Galea declined to identify, has stopped working at his clinic and, he said, is now cooperating with the authorities.
Federal investigators in the United States are basing their investigation, in part, on medical information found on Dr. Galea’s computer relating to several professional athletes he treated, according to the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.
They did not identify any of the athletes whose names appeared on the computer.
Dr. Galea said “it would be impossible” for the authorities to have found information linking any of his athletes to performance-enhancing drugs.
On Oct. 15, the Canadian police raided Dr. Galea’s clinic, the ISM Health & Wellness Centre in Toronto. Sgt. Marc LaPorte, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said Dr. Galea was arrested and released the same day after questioning. Mr. Greenspan said court documents, which are not public under Canadian law, show that his client faces three charges, one under Canada’s food and drugs act, one under its customs act and a conspiracy charge under the criminal code. The customs and the drug charges relate to the misrepresentation of goods and drugs.
As part of his practice, Dr. Galea said he prescribed human growth hormone to patients 40 and over to improve their stamina when working out and to combat fatigue, among other health benefits.
“The authorities here and elsewhere have it wrong,” Mr. Greenspan said. “They don’t understand the medical aspects.”
Prescribing human growth hormone is legal in Canada but approved in the United States only for a few specific uses that do not include hastening recovery from surgery or injury. In the world of sports, under World Anti-Doping Association guidelines, H.G.H. is banned though not widely tested for because it requires a blood test. The N.F.L., the N.H.L., the N.B.A. and Major League Baseball do not test for H.G.H.