Fall Dinner Meeting
6:45 p.m. Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Camarillo Library Community Room
4101 Las Posas Road, Camarillo
with ACS Tour Speaker
Dr. Thomas C. Werner
Professor Emeritus
Union College, Schenectady, NY
Speaking on
Doping in Sports: How chemists catch the “cheaters” (sometimes)
“Doping is to sport what criminality is to society, and there will always be criminality in society.”
–Jacques Rogge, President,International Olympic Committee
The alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs is increasingly tainting athletic accomplishment. Examples of this sports “doping” problem appear almost daily in the news: pro cycling is brought to its knees by doping allegations, resulting in the loss of sponsorship, the BALCO case and the Mitchell Report pummel Major League Baseball with evidence of steroid use and drug testing concerns become a higher profile issue at the Olympics. The talk will focus on the methods that chemists use to detect sports doping with substances such as amphetamine, steroids, human growth hormone and EPO.
Limitations of these methods will be discussed, along with a listing of some of the enormous challenges facing chemists as newer doping substances and methods become available. The talk is based on a course entitled Chemistry and Athletic Performance, which was developed by the speaker with the aid of Dr. Don Catlin and staff at the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory and Anti-Doping Research,Inc.
Biographical Sketch:
Tom Werner received a B.S. in chemistry from Juniata College and a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from MIT. After postdocs at Harvard and Tufts Medical Schools, he taught for 36 years at Union College (Schenectady, NY), retiring as Florence B. Sherwood Professor of Physical Sciences Emeritus in December, 2007. Werner has served as Principal Investigator on several external grants awarded for the support of undergraduate research including funding from Petroleum Research Fund, Research Corporation, NSF-ILI, NSF-AIRE and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. Werner served as Chair of the Board of Governors of the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), as Director of the NCUR/LANCY Initiative and as a NCUR Board Member. In 2002, he received the American Chemical Society Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution. Over the past three years, he has developed a course entitled Chemistry and Athletic Performance that combines his expertise in analytical chemistry, his interest in sports and his goal to teach chemistry with more social relevance. The course syllabus was developed with input from Dr. Don Catlin and his staff at the UCLA Olympic Analytical Lab and Anti-Doping Research.
The cost for the event will be $20 per person, $10 for students.
A Mexican Buffet Dinner will be served.
Send in this Form by Friday, Sept. 11, 2009