Father blames steroids for murder
02 December 2004
The father of Pc killer David Bieber has blamed steroids for his son's descent into violence and crime.
Increased aggression and violent episodes among anabolic steroid users have been documented across the world since the 1970s by researchers examining what is sometimes labelled "roid rage".
Experts have also highlighted how a disturbing number of bodybuilders have been involved in murders compared with other sportsmen.
Anabolic steroids were first developed in the 1930s and are used by bodybuilders and other athletes to promote muscle development by flooding the body with the male hormone testosterone.
Physical side-effects
These range from
acne and baldness through to breast development in men, shrunken testicles and even heart attacks and liver damage.
OP had acne when younger and is going bald.
Psychological effects
But the psychological effects, particularly with respect to aggression, are less well understood. In the 1970s anecdotal evidence began to suggest high doses of steroids could provoke
"manic symptoms", including aggression, reckless behaviour and euphoria in some users.
Most researchers agree that
some users are prone to sudden and sporadic outburst of violent "roid rage" but there is little agreement on why this happens and the extent of the problem.
In 1998 a much quoted article in the American magazine Sports Illustrated pinpointed the
large number of bodybuilders jailed for killings compared with other athletes.
The case which has received the most attention is that of former Mr Universe, Bertil Fox, who was convicted of the murders of his girlfriend and her mother on the Caribbean island of St Kitts in 1998.
But, as with so many others,
the link between steroid abuse and violence in the Fox case has always been implied rather than proved.
The leading researcher in the field, Dr Harrison Pope junior, said he is convinced some users with no previous history of violence are
prone to aggressive, sometimes fatal, outbursts.
Violence
He said:
"There have been many cases in the US which I have been involved with which involve individuals with no prior history of violence, no prior history of psychiatric disease and no prior criminal history who start taking anabolic steroids and then become a Jekyll and Hyde character.
"I think there is a consensus that steroids can do this to people. But it can vary so much from person to person.
"If you give steroids to a group of hamsters, many will become extremely aggressive and start beating up the other hamsters while others will remain perfectly calm.
"Some people seem to have this reaction and some people don't."
Aggression
Dr Pope, who is professor of psychiatry at McLean Hospital at the Harvard Medical School, recounted one case of a
16-year-old boy in Massachusetts who was described as "quiet and shy" until he took up bodybuilding and started taking steroids aged 14.
He began to be more aggressive and after finding out his 14-year-old girlfriend had spent a night with another girl and two boys, he lured her to woods, stabbed her in the back and cut her throat.
The teenager's defence team pointed to his steroid abuse at his trial but he was convicted of first degree murder and jailed for life.
Prompted by this, Dr Pope's team set out to study 133 convicted prisoners and found
steroids were an "uncommon, though occasionally significant factor in criminal behaviour".
Other work has pointed to violence against women as a common manifestation of "roid rage".
But Dr Pope stressed the truth about the relationship between steroid use and violence will probably always remain anecdotal because of the difficulty of exposing large groups of people to high levels of steroids in laboratory conditions.
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