ASADA doctor opens up on dealings with Stephen Dank
ONE of Australia’s most respected sports physicians may hold the key to whether 34 current and former Essendon footballers are found guilty of taking a banned peptide during the club’s ill-fated season 2012 supplements regime.
Doctor Peter Fricker, a former director of the Australian Institute of Sport and one of three witnesses ASADA will call to support its case that Essendon footballers were given the banned peptide Thymosin Beta-4, has provided a sworn statement about his dealings with sports scientist Stephen Dank in 2012.
Although the statement relates to discussions the pair had about establishing a clinical trial involving AOD-9604 — a contentious, though not banned peptide at the time it was administered to Essendon players — Dank’s use of a thymosin peptide at Essendon was also canvassed during their first of two meetings in Qatar.
Dank told
The Australian that during a meeting in April 2012, Fricker expressed interest in the work Dank was doing at Essendon with Thymomodulin, an immunity-boosting thymosin peptide permitted for use by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
According to Dank, Fricker told him: “It is good to see someone is starting to understand immunology and exercise.’’
Dank’s assertion is supported by David Kenley, the chief executive of Metabolic Pharmaceuticals, an Australian company that has spent 10 years and more that $50 million in developing AOD-9604.
Kenley was not present for Dank’s first meeting with Fricker but accompanied him in November 2012 on a second trip to Qatar, where Fricker was working for ASPETAR, an orthopedic and sports medicine hospital.
Kenley said that prior to their meeting with Fricker, Dank briefed him on what had been discussed in the first meeting. “He talked about a meeting he had with Fricker earlier in the year and he was talking about Thymomodulin,’’ Kenley said.
“Fricker felt that Stephen was really on to something using Thymomodulin as an immune response booster.
“I am absolutely sure it was Thymomodulin. That is something that stuck in my head. I had never heard of Thymosin Beta-4 until this whole thing blew up.’’
The proposed clinical trial involving AOD-9604 was not related to Essendon, Kenley said.
Fricker declined to comment when contacted by
The Australian. ASADA has given no indication it intends to lead evidence about the thymosin discussion. Lawyers for the players are aware of Dank’s claims and are considering whether to pursue them in cross examination.
Fricker will provide testimony to an AFL tribunal specially convened to hear the case against the 34 players and Dank, who is accused of more than 30 doping code violations during his work at Essendon and a second AFL club, the Gold Coast Suns.
Fricker was this year appointed by Sports Minister Peter Dutton to the Anti-Doping Rule Violation Panel, which reviews evidence gathered by ASADA before any anti-doping proceedings are formally initiated. Due to his previous dealings with Dank, Fricker did not review the Essendon case.
ASADA is expected to open its high-stakes case today in a closed hearing in Melbourne. An AFL tribunal chaired by retired County Court judge David Jones will sit for three days this week and then adjourn until mid-January.
The ASADA case is that Dank injected Essendon players with Thymosin Beta-4 inside his office at Windy Hill, the club’s old training ground. The injections were administered into the stomachs of players.
The 34 players gave written consent to be administered thymosin. Some of them subsequently recalled to ASADA investigators being injected with thymosin by Dank. The key point of contention in the two-year saga is whether the thymosin peptide administered by Dank was Thymosin Beta-4, as alleged by ASADA, or Thymomodulin, as claimed by Dank. The timing of Dank’s first meeting with Fricker is significant; ASADA alleges that in late May, Dank discovered that Thymosin Beta-4 was banned and began covering up its use at Essendon.
ASADA has excluded from its brief of evidence witness testimony and documents supporting the use of Thymomodulin at Essendon.
Despite conducting more than 300 interviews and inspecting more than 150,000 documents, ASADA has not secured any direct evidence that Essendon players were injected with Thymosin Beta-4. Dank has refused to co-operate with ASADA investigators and will take no part in the AFL hearing.
ASADA’s two most important witnesses throughout the Essendon investigation, drug importer Shane Charter and pharmacist Nima Alavi, have refused to sign sworn statements or testify. ASADA and the AFL last week failed in an application to the Victorian Supreme Court to issue subpoenas to compel the reluctant witnesses to testify.
In addition to Fricker, ASADA will call Sergio Del Vecchio, a former business associate of Charter understood to have been present during a meeting between Charter and Dank when certain peptides were discussed, and University of Sydney endocrinologist David Handelsman.