Dr. Joseph W. Eschbach, possibly responsible for probably more world records than anyone in our sport, has died.
Dr. Joseph W. Eschbach, possibly responsible for probably more world records than anyone in our sport, has died.
I don't know if that is a good idea. Haven't you ever heard the saying "once you go black you never go back"?
No. It would look like a sick joke rather than a tribute to someone who helped to save or improve a lot of lives.
As an aside, whose world records do you believe he was responsible for? Geb's? Bekele's? El G's? Tergat's? Paula's?
It's easy to talk generally about dirty Chinese, or Russians, or Moroccans, or some other vague group of people we don't know and have never even met, and quite another matter to point to specific individuals who seem like good guys and gals and label them as suspected dopers. I'm not convinced that our sport is quite the cesspool that others suggest it is.
Why?
Why not. LetsRun.com needs to continue not taking doping and sports lightly.
Avocados Number wrote:
No. It would look like a sick joke rather than a tribute to someone who helped to save or improve a lot of lives.
Easy tiger. You just got trolled by the founding father.
wejo wrote:
Dr. Joseph W. Eschbach, possibly responsible for probably more world records (..."and gold medals"...[from the front page quote] ) than anyone in our sport, has died.
Avocados Number wrote:
As an aside, whose world records do you believe he was responsible for? Geb's? Bekele's? El G's? Tergat's? Paula's?
.
Ok, wejo, it's time for you and your brother to stop beating around the bush (maybe there is an unintentional pun in there, I don't know).
DO YOU THINK BEKELE, TERGAT, GEB, SHAHEEN AND THE MOST OF THE OTHER TOP EAST AFRICANS FROM THE LAST 15 YEARS ARE DOPERS OR NOT ??
Because you and your brother (and of course you two are not alone) have been implying as much for years (see your brother's piece here, from several years ago-
http://www.letsrun.com/rojospeaksmay23.html).
You say that EPO is respsonsible for so many distance world records and distance medals, and your brother asserts that EPO is definitely a huge part of our sport because there is no other way to explain the huge drop in wr's that occured in the 90's. Ok, fair enough. But if you are gonna make those assertions, realize and admit who you are accusing. WHO smashed all the WR's to pieces by huge %'s that made rojo call foul ? WHO set most of the world records and won most of the distance medals since EPO came on the scene ?? Why, 90% of such distance WR's and medals were won by East Africans, and the lionshare of medals and astonishing distance WR's belong to Bekele, Geb, Tergat, Shaheen, and Komen.
Now yes, I left out the women, but if you only meant the women, you and rojo would have said so, but you didn't. And yes I left out the North Africans, and sure, there has been a lot of suspicion around them at times. But they mainly do great at one event (1500), and don't touch the overall dominace of the east africans in the overall distance events (3k, 3k steeple, 5k, 10k, 1/2 marathon, marathon).
So it's time to put up or shut up:
Are you and your brother saying that you think that Geb, Bekele, Tergat, Shaheen and other top East Africans are dopers, or not ???
If not, then you probably need to retract some of your previous statements, because THOSE are the athletes winning the medals, setting the WR's, and running the performances that you guys seem to think are only possible with EPO. Well??
I realize that Weldon's proposal probably wasn't serious. But I do think that talk about doping has become a little too casual here. I think that it is dispiriting and breeds cynicism that, in my view, is probably unjustified.
I really don't know how widespread doping is in our sport. Maybe everyone but me has injected himself with EPO, HgH, and anabolic steroids, and that's why I never won a major marathon or set a world record. But I doubt it.
I don't think that I have my head in the sand. I'm confident that professional cycling, for example, is a filthy sport. That has simply been the culture of that sport for many years. I really don't think that the same is true of distance running.
I want to see cheaters get caught, penalized, and rejected by the running community. But I don't think that vague suggestions about widespread doping are helpful or healthy.
Sir Lance, as usual you are right. There is NO evidence to suggest that the likes of Gebrselassie were taking EPO to set their incredible world records. Ron Clarke took huge chunks of time off both the 5,000 and 10,000 m records and nobody questioned him (nor should they). East Africans are far more naturally gifted then Australians.
Why aren't there a number of Kenyans and Ethiopians getting caught? Oh that's right, the IAAF is protecting them, just so that they can keep dominating and keep the interest in the sport low in America. That makes a lot of sense.
wejo wrote:
Dr. Joseph W. Eschbach, possibly responsible for probably more world records than anyone in our sport, has died.
Oh, I'd say the honors should go to whoever developed Dianabol. EPO isn't in the hunt for that distinction.
Avocados Number wrote:
But I don't think that vague suggestions about widespread doping are helpful or healthy.
So do you think that blithely putting heads in the sand is helpful or healthy?
Paul Hornung Tergat wrote:
So do you think that blithely putting heads in the sand is helpful or healthy?
Perhaps you should go back and read what I wrote.
Maybe we should just pick out one or two of the most obvious candidates for doping accusations, based on the margin by which they smashed world records. Among the men, Geb seems like the clear choice. Among the women, it's got to be Paula Radcliffe.
Or maybe we can assume that, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, they're just great athletes.
There are, I'll admit, certain countries and regions whose histories of doping give rise to suspicions. Eastern european runners will probably be under a cloud of suspicion for a long time, because of the systematic doping that took place within the Soviet bloc. Chinese women and Moroccan men may have a similar cloud of suspicion. But East Africans (and, I would add, the Japanese, who don't set a lot of world records but have an exceptional history in the marathon) seem to be remarkably free of the taint of doping, and they're the ones who have been setting most of the world records.
I did read what you wrote, there is no need to re-read no matter what you may infer. Do you not understand that I was asking a follow-up question to what you wrote? Also, what exactly would you consider a reasonable threshold for "evidence to the contrary"? Do you not realize that it would be a completely subjective assessment?
Paul Hornung Tergat wrote:
Do you not understand that I was asking a follow-up question to what you wrote?
Oh, so you're actually looking for an answer to your "follow-up question," which was "So do you think that blithely putting heads in the sand is helpful or healthy?"
O.K., here's an answer: Yes, I think that blithely putting heads in the sand is helpful and healthy. There you go. Thanks for your contribution to the discussion.
No, no, thank YOU, Mr. Self-righteous Hypocrite.
Surely he was only referring to world record sprinters.
All I can do is honor the man who has kept most of us with renal failure (as a result of cancer, diabetes, hypertension, etc) going strong as we would have all died of anemia or requuired numerous blood transfusions over the years. I find no place in my heart to joke about his (none-existent) role in track and field. Just as anthing else, athletes abused an otherwise useful drug.
Kudos to a great scientist. I say thank you for making our lives better.
I agree, Wejo's comment is very cold and insulting to the Dr.'s family. The man definitely did not set out to discover what drives the bodies RBC production for athletic gain. EPO has saved or improved millions of lives and the wording of your statement devalues his great contribution to mankind.
Paul Hornung Tergat wrote:
No, no, thank YOU, Mr. Self-righteous Hypocrite.
Shut up.
A great doctor and man has died and you're pathetically babbling about doping records.
I'd rather have the doping problem we have in T&F, rather than the absence of people we would have lost had EPO not been available.
I think letsrun and wejo should publish an apology to the man's family. His work has saved countless thousands of lives around the world. His life is a credit to humanity, and his dedication to his profession, and care of his patients emblematic of all that is good in our world. Although there have been unintended/abusive uses his work, his intentions were more than honorable. Shame on you wejo.
Joseph Eschbach, doctor who helped develop kidney drug, dies at 74
By Craig Welch
Seattle Times environment reporter
Before Joseph W. Eschbach and his research partner first strolled into the lab to work with anemic sheep, humans with kidney disease, weakened by anemia, could barely descend a flight of stairs.
But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dr. Eschbach and Dr. John Adamson, working at the University of Washington, made a breathtaking discovery: They could correct anemia in their test subjects by infusing them with the hormone that instructs bone marrow to make more red blood cells.
Dr. Eschbach's research led to the development of hormone treatments that have helped ease the suffering of more than a million human kidney patients worldwide over the past 20 years.
"It was a remarkable achievement," said Joyce F. Jackson, president and CEO of Northwest Kidney Centers. "And what's really remarkable was that he wasn't just a researcher; he was still taking care of patients every day."
Dr. Eschbach, 74, a devoted physician, husband and father, a prolific writer and a passionate advocate for research and his patients, died Sept. 7 at home in Bellevue, after a battle with lung cancer. He did not smoke.
Dr. Eschbach was born in Detroit in 1933, and graduated from Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio, where he met his future wife, MaryAnn. After his medical school and a residency in Seattle, the couple settled in the Northwest.
From the beginning, he was a physician who put patients first, friends and colleagues say. In 1964, Dr. Eschbach directed a dialysis center — the first to train patients to operate kidney machines at home.
"His entire career was really based on one thing: what's best for people," said Dr. John Stivelman, chief medical officer of Northwest Kidney Centers.
When his mentor, Dr. Belding Scribner, challenged Dr. Eschbach to find a way to correct the anemia, Dr. Eschbach accepted the challenge.
Convinced that perhaps a hormone stimulated by the kidney kept healthy people from being anemic, he and his partner went to work.
"He was very creative," said his wife. "He knew there were people who thought he was foolish and barking up the wrong tree. But he was open-minded and a very determined hard worker."
After experiments that Stivelman called "elegant," the then-fledgling biotechnology company Amgen cloned the gene for the human hormone erythropoietin. Dr. Eschbach helped lead clinical trials that treated kidney patients with the resulting drug, Epogen, which eventually proved 97 percent successful in treating renal anemia.
"Joe got to see, during his lifetime, the enormous and profound benefit of his contribution to hundreds of thousands of people," Stivelman said. "How many people ever get that kind of gratification?"
Yet even after he changed the face of kidney care, Dr. Eschbach — ever gracious and humble, and a man of deep faith who was an elder at Newport Presbyterian Church in Bellevue — remained focused on relieving suffering. He worked at the Minor and James Medical clinic, led the Northwest Kidney Centers as a trustee and senior research adviser, and continued to see patients, often on his own time. Earlier this summer, the centers helped endow a professorship in kidney research at the UW in his name.
Dr. Eschbach is survived by his wife of 51 years, MaryAnn; his children, Cheryl Eschbach and her husband, John Duffield, of Atlanta, Annbeth Eschbach and her husband, Patrick Parcells, of New York City, Joseph Charles Eschbach and his wife, Deanne, of Bellevue; his sister, MargaBeth Cibulka, of East Lansing, Mich.; and five grandchildren.
A celebration of his life will be at 2 p.m. Sept. 30 at First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue, 1717 Bellevue Way N.E.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to: the Northwest Kidney Foundation, P.O. Box 3035, Seattle, WA 98122, for the Kidney Research Institute; Newport Presbyterian Church, P.O. Box 53385, Bellevue, WA 98105-3385; or Otterbein College, Development Office, One Otterbein College, Westerville, Ohio, 43081, for the science-building fund.