The GDR and the doping of young Girls

We have been talking a lot about trans-gendered people and how technologies, especially advances in medicine can help them in defining and creating their gendered image. Some trans-gendered men start taking testosterone to develop more masculine bodies and help them “pass”, whatever that means for them. But what would happen is these hormones were taken not in carefully regulated and accepted doses and where given instead to young people, especially young girls, with out their knowing? This happened in our recent history, in East Germany in the seventies and eighties. In and effort to promote state pride the East German government started sponsoring sport programs for promising young athletes. They wanted to bolster state pride and show the rest of the capitalist world that they were the best. They wanted to achieve this goal at any cost so the government started sponsoring the doping of its athletes, their young athletes. The athletes who showed promise, who hadn’t even really reached puberty yet, were sent off to school for athletic training with full time coaches and doctors. The athletes were excited to go. They got to travel all over the world, got better food than most of the country, and were the face of East Germany (German Democratic Republic, GDR) to the rest of the world.
Why didn’t any one question what was going on? The Stasi. They were the oppressive Ministry of State Security created to watch over its citizens. Operatives were everywhere reporting on their colleagues every move. The Stasi was put directly in charge of overseeing and partially running the doping program. They were watching the coaches, doctors and athletes every move. Anyone with dissenting opinions or probing questions was harshly punished. The coaches and doctors were made to sign confidentiality agreements about what they were doing that prevented them from talking to anyone about the program who had not also signed an agreement. The whole system was run in a bureaucratic way, with the government deciding what and how much was given to its young athletes, and keep records of everything (unless they didn’t want records of something like the death of a boy from complications and side effects of the steroids), while at the same time keeping it a secrete from almost everyone else like the athletes and the parents. The coaches were then instructed to give out the hormones, but the athletes didn’t know what they were getting. They were told that they were getting vitamins and other things to help them recuperate from their hard training.
What exactly were they getting? In the beginning they were being given anabolic steroids, specifically Oral Turinabol (O-T). O-T is derived from testosterone and works by increasing muscle mass and shortens the recovery time after hard training by decreasing the breakdown of tissue. The East Germans found that they had “better” results in women because women do not have much natural testosterone and so the program was focused on women in sports like swimming, volleyball, shot-put, and javelin. The whole program was closely regulated and specifically the East Germans were very careful not to get caught doping their athletes. Coaches were not allowed to give their athletes steroids for the two weeks before a competition. Instead they injected the women with artificial testosterone that could not be distinguished from real testosterone.
With all of these hormones and steroids, there were many side effects. The young women who had just barely hit puberty were now getting quite a bit bigger, their voices where dropping, and they were growing hair where they would not normally. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. There are many long lasting effects from the heavy doping including; liver tumors, heart disease, cancer, eating disorders, depression, and infertility. In one case one athlete had been given such high levels of drugs and potentially one drug that had not been approved for humans, he has actually had surgery to complete the transition to male. Others have also been left deeply confused about their gender identity and sexuality. Andreas (formerly Heidi) Krieger said in an interview for a documentary done by the PBS program Secrets of the Dead called “Doping for Gold” that he felt he had “no choice” but to become a man after all the drugs he had been given. He is now happily married to another former athlete of the seventies for the GDR swim team that went to the 1976 Olympics in Montreal where they won 11 of 13 gold medals in swimming.
The government knew the whole time that there were side effects. They recorded what was happening to the women and decided that they shouldn’t give interviews if they had deep voices and if their bodies started to break down, they would unceremoniously cut them from the program. They also put the young girls as soon as they got their period on the pill, they said it was to help the girls get used to their periods because they would regulate them. They had ulterior motives however. By controlling when the girls got their periods they would miss less training and there would be no chance of them getting pregnant. They were worried because they knew at the time that the steroids could cause severe birth defects. These girls were around 12.
Technology was forced on these young girls, and now they have severe health problems. Their bodies were used to show how strong and powerful the communist state was, and now the communist state is gone and the athletes are left with permanent scars. These women and men have severe problems that came not just from the steroids, but the grueling training regiment that their bodies normally wouldn’t have been able to support. Beyond the physical side-affects, many of them are depressed and confused for so many reasons that they may never get resolved.

Bibliography
Pleitgen, Frederik “Athlete says sports steroids changed him from woman to man” CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/11/sexchange.athlete/index.html#cnnSTCText

“The Dangers of Doping”, Secrets of the Dead, Thirteen/WNET New York http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/doping-for-gold/the-dangers-of-doping, visited 2/12/09

“Doping for Gold” Secrets of the Dead, A Firefly Production for Thirteen/WNET New York and ITVS International in association with Five, Channel Four International and History Channel (UK), http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/episode-home/doping-for-gold-2