Both by Nick McKenzie who interviewed Dank.(the second is the interview)
And it is the text in bold which I think suggests that he put Dank under the pump and indicates that Dank was truthful about using Thymodulin.(adds credence to his Danks tale)
McKenzie puts it to Dank that Tb4 was used. Dank starts off thinking he is referring to the stuff thats good for the immune system.
(which is Thymodulin: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2657249) and he continues down that track. He does not mention the benefits of TB4(healing bones, muscle regeneration which make it performance enhancing)
This dissects it: http://thecheapseats.com.au/smoking-gun ... phen-dank/
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/d ... zs7ea.html
Australia’s most infamous sports scientist paused for a moment before erupting. ''That’s just mind-blowing.''
Stephen Dank was giving a rare on-the-record interview in April 2013, and his reaction was justified. He’d just had a startling realisation.
I’d told him that the peptide he had, moments before, freely admitted giving Essendon players in 2012 had been added to the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority's list of banned doping agents.
Previously, the peptide Thymosin Beta 4 (TB4) had only been captured under a catch-all World Anti-Doping Agency clause. Dank had previously claimed to be supremely confident of evading this clause by using his self-professed superior scientific wisdom about what could be deemed a performance-enhancing peptide.
But TB4’s arrival on a specific list of prohibited WADA substances made it clear that the anti-doping officials who Dank referred to as ''idiots'' weren’t convinced about Dank’s particular school of science.
ASADA’s probe into him was still in its infancy, but Dank knew why the listing of TB4 was bad news. It signalled that ASADA would be gunning for any players he had treated with the drug.
While still interviewing Dank, I rechecked the ASADA website and told Dank that it listed TB4 as ''prohibited in all routes and out of competition''.
Dank’s usual ebullience was quickly replaced by an unusual hesitation. ''Well, that must have just only come in this year,'' he said. ''I will get someone to speak to ASADA about that.''
But Dank never spoke to the agency’s investigators. In the end, they built their case without him in an inquiry that led them from a Chinese pharmaceutical company to a South Yarra chemist and, finally, to the issuing of show-cause notices to Bombers players this week.
ASADA’s retrospectively pieced-together version of events begins in 2011, with an alleged series of discussions between Dank, the now former Essendon high-performance coach Dean Robinson and the convicted drug trafficker-turned peptide supplier Shane Charter.
In August that year, ASADA alleges that Dank told Robinson via a text message that TB4 would be the ''cornerstone'' of his work at the Bombers because it could accelerate player recovery.
Charter has alleged to ASADA that Dank then asked him to source the peptide. On November 26, 2011, Charter flew to China – home to dozens of pharmaceutical companies willing to deal with anyone with a cheque book.
In Shanghai, Charter alleges a company called Gio Biochem Ltd sold him the raw ingredients to make TB4. Charter has given ASADA the texts he alleges he sent to Dank several weeks after his return to Melbourne, including a message that inquired ''which peptides do you need next?''
The reply listed ''Thymosin Beta 4'' and one other banned peptide. A short time later, Charter sent a text to South Yarra compounding chemist Nima Alavi, stating, ''Hi Mate. Thymosin – 20 x 5ml vials. Steve's request.''
On January 12, 2012, as Essendon ramped up its pre-season training, Charter emailed a longer missive to Dank and Alavi about the use and storage of TB4 for ''research purposes''. Included in this email was the suggestion that TB4 was most effective when administered at the rate of one subcutaneous injection ''per week for 6 consecutive weeks, then 1 vial per month''.
This advice would later form a key piece of the puzzle later assembled by ASADA. This was because it matched the frequency of injections of a drug described only as ''thymosin'' on the consent forms given to Bombers players treated by Dank.
Another piece of the puzzle is an email that allegedly reveals that Dank was told in writing – presumably by ASADA or WADA –- in May 2012, that TB4 may be captured by the catch-all WADA clause prohibiting the use of certain peptides.
It is at this time that Dank allegedly conjured up the proposition that the ''Thymosin'' that some Bombers were given was actually a drug in the Thymosin family called ''Thymomodulin''.
ASADA alleges that Dank later emailed Alavi a document, which the compounding chemist signed and which stated that Thymomodulin had been prepared by Alavi ''in accordance with the WADA code''.
In was seven months later, in February, 2013, that the federal government called a press conference to release the explosive Australian Crime Commission report exposing the use of banned peptides in professional sport.
By now, ASADA’s hastily assembled team of ex-cops and lawyers were, in tandem with the AFL’s integrity unit (in an unprecedented partnership the Bombers believe may have tainted the evidence-gathering process) working overtime to piece together precisely what the man at the centre of the ACC report had done at Windy Hill.
Dank, though, was an elusive target. He refused ASADA and the AFL’s advances, instead choosing to drop tidbits in interviews with journalists.
In early April 2013, Dank not only told me he used TB4 on Essendon players but said he did so because there was ''very good data that supports Thymosin Beta 4''.
When I told him that according to the ASADA website, WADA had specifically banned the drug, he said the move was ''just mind-blowing''.
''I think they’ve only just put that in to back up their case'' against the Bombers, he said.
A day later, when I told Dank that The Age was set to publish his comments about TB4, he asked to clarify his interview. He never meant to refer to Thymosin Beta 4, he told me. The drug he had given the Bombers players was in fact Thymomodulin.
Dank and the Bombers have hung onto this claim ever since.
In contrast, ASADA believes the information supplied to it by Charter, Alavi and others is enough to convince an anti-doping tribunal that a case has been made out.
Still, circumstantial cases can always falter. And if Dank was prepared to testify to ASADA that he sourced TB4 for his private customers only rather than the Bombers, it could potentially bolster the players’ defence. Yet the evidence, circumstantial as it may be, suggests Dank has his own good reasons to stay in the shadows.
Reference interview:
To Danks defence he apparently rang fairfax back saying that he had been mistaken that it was thymodulin. But if he is on record specifically asking for Tb4....
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/t ... 2shhd.html
In April, reporter Nick McKenzie conducted an on-the-record interview with controversial sports scientist Stephen Dank. Much of what Dank was asked about is central to the AFL's case against Essendon and its coach James Hird. Fairfax Media has decided to publish long excerpts from this interview, which revealed Dank's response to many of the key issues, including his dealings and defence with James Hird and the alleged use of Thymosin Beta 4 (TB-4) and anti-obesity drug AOD-9604.
In April, the World Anti-Doping Agency confirmed that TB-4 was banned for use in 2012 under the catch-all section two rule of the WADA code. It also specifically listed TB-4 as banned. Shortly after this interview was conducted, Dank said he had been mistaken when he told Fairfax Media that he had given the players TB-4, a claim he has since made repeatedly. WADA has said that AOD-9604 is banned under section 0 of its code that prohibits athletes using drugs that are not approved for human therapeutic use. Dank has refused to be interviewed by the AFL and the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority.
Nick McKenzie: I have had a doctor tell me that bovine colostrum [which is produced by a cow immediately after giving birth and is not banned by WADA] would not have done anything when given to Essendon players. So why did you use it?
Stephen Dank: It is very high in [proteins]. I think your doctor source could possibly be right but there is some very, very good data supporting it. There is some data not so supportive, to be honest. But at the end of the day, right, if we have to wait for an absolute blueprint piece of scientific literature on everything that is used in exercise we would end up using nothing.
NM: Thymosin Beta 4 – why was that used in Essendon players given there is an opinion from a doctor or researcher and other scientists that its effects are uncertain? (note: The AFL believes it has a strong circumstantial case that TB-4 was used on players.)
SD: That's not totally true Nick because, with all due respect, right, there is good data – very good data – that supports Thymosin Beta 4 in the immune system.
NM: OK, why give it to all Essendon players if only some of them had colds and flu?
SD: Well, the point is that there is a degree of immunosuppression after a game or a hard training week, right. Often times the ability to back up next week is decreased by the hit on the immune system.
NM: Did you see any indications in Essendon players that it actually helped them?
SD: Well apart from the fact they won 11 out of their first 14, right, and we did regular bloods [blood tests] . . . at the end of the day I was very happy with the science, I was very happy after working a long time in football, right, that there are periods of malaise which are possibly related to sub-clinical flus and sub-clinical colds, right, which can affect performance. When we want to be honest, Nick, how much performance data is there out there on Actovegin [calf's blood extract)]
NM: There's a lot, isn't there?
SD: No there's not! So, you know, you've got to extrapolate from the science.
NM: How often were Essendon players taking Thymosin Beta 4?
SD: [Explains the dosage level but asks that this be not published].
NM: ASADA has just released on its website that Thymosin Beta 4 is prohibited in all routes and out of competition.
SD: Well, that must have just only come in this year and I will get someone to speak to ASADA about that. That's just mind-blowing.
NM: Thymosin Beta 4, they must have just banned that.
SD: I think they've only just put that in to back up their case.
NM: On AOD-9604, let me ask you a specific question. It was not until this year, February, that researchers released the first positive data about its cartilage injury repair possibilities. But you were using it to treat injuries [at Essendon] before that. So how could you be sure?
SD: Well, first of all I had a very, very long discussion with the investor/founder of AOD, Professor Frank Ng, who was very excited about the possibility of AOD in injuries, coupled with the fact that we had seen definitive changes in bone density among the obese patients in the previous clinical trials. It comes back to things being used off label.
NM: Why are you sure supplements were not captured by WADA section S0 [which bans the use of supplements not approved for human therapeutic use]?
SD: Because they were compounded. (note: people can legally access and use drugs not approved for human therapeutic use, including AOD-9604, if they are sourced from a compounding chemist. In some cases, a prescription is needed.)
NM: Did James Hird know the names and properties of what his players were using?
SD: Yes.
NM: Did James Hird know he was taking [WADA-banned drug] Hexarelin or is it possible that he was just told that he was taking amino acids?
SD: He was told it was Hexarelin. It was discussed with him at length. He asked me if players could use it and I said no. Mind you, he wasn't the only coach who was a regular user of it. [The AFL has alleged that James Hird was injected with "amino acids" by Dank. "Amino acids" is a generic term for proteins. The AFL has said Hird “made no inquiries" about what the amino acids he was injected with were or whether “the substance he was to be injected with” were banned by WADA or the AFL.]
NM: Who else was using it?
SD: [Coaching staff] Simon Goodwin and James Byrne.
NM: Why were Hird, Goodwin and Byrne using Hexarelin in the first place?
SD: Because at the end of the day, they are in very, very stressful jobs, they are getting a little bit older in life, so like a good many thousands of other people around the country . . . they were using something to give them a little bit of a lift, to confront the stresses of their job, and something that they were well entitled to use. Whatever I think of James Hird as a bloke, and you can appreciate it is at an all-time low at the moment, in no circumstances did James Hird do or take anything he wasn't entitled to do.
NM: Wasn't that setting a bad example, that you were giving the coach of a footy club a peptide the rest of the footy club couldn't use?
SD: Not at all. In no way, shape or form does it set a bad example. How many coaches in their 40s in any country in any code of sport are using testosterone? So how is it a bad example?
NM: Everything you used at Essendon and Cronulla, did you get permission, when they were in the grey area, from ASADA or WADA to use them?
SD: Yes. (Note: Dank also explained he had witnesses who could corroborate his dealings with ASADA. ASADA has denied it gave Dank formal advice to use AOD-9604, TB-4 or other banned drugs).
NM: I have interviewed someone familiar with ASADA. They said that if you got assurances from ASADA, then that is a get-out-of-jail card, but you need to prove you got those assurances and one of the ways to prove it is if you got an ASADA receipt [which is usually given when a person makes an inquiry with ASADA and is given advice].
SD: You only get a receipt number when you ring up or online. I was straight inside the bowels of ASADA.
NM: Why don't you think some of the drugs you used breached section S2 of the WADA code [which bans certain drugs that stimulate the body's production of human growth hormones].
SD: Because there is no biological relationship either in terms of mode or structure [between the drugs used and the banned drugs] . . . The only similarity is the end point. And if you are going to question the end point, then you need to ban the squat [a gym exercise] and any other modality that stimulates growth hormone.
NM: Did Essendon football boss Danny Corcoran or [former] CEO Ian Robson know about your program and to what extent did they know the details? (Note: Hird and Corcoran have both been charged by the AFL with bringing the game into disrepute, while Robson resigned earlier this year).
SD: Of course they did. Danny certainly knew everything as he needed to. He promoted it. Each week he would check in with me, particularly in the early days. To be quite honest, we went to training for a week at the Gold Coast and I remember a discussion before we left that we were to make sure that the supplements went up there.
NM: Is it right that [convicted drug trafficker] Shane Charter stuck his head in during that training week at the gold coast? (Note: The AFL has alleged that Charter supplied peptides to Dank that were used on players. Dank denies this).
SD: He happened to be staying there exactly the same week we were staying there. He said hello to me because he saw some of the players and realised I was staying there. I think he went and said hello to James for about five minutes.
NM: Your critics say you think are the smartest guy in the room and you have a bit of a god complex.
SD: No. Quite the opposite.
