Don Catlin was a researcher of sports doping and steroids who pioneered methods to identify new and previously undetected steroid use in athletes.
- Died: January 16, 2024 (Who else died on January 16?)
- Details of death: Died at the age of 85.
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Don Catlin’s legacy
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Catlin was encouraged to go to medical school by family friend Gustaf Lindskog, a Yale professor and elite surgeon. He received degrees from Yale and the University of Rochester, then joined the United States Army, where he specialized in internal medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. At the center, he also worked with patients living with addiction, experience he took to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1972, where he was assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology.
In 1982, Catlin founded the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, which was the first anti-doping lab in the U.S. Two years later, he was recruited by the International Olympics Committee (IOC) to head the drug-testing lab for the 1984 Summer Olympics. It became the first of several Olympics he worked with to help combat the use of performance-enhancing drugs (POD), aka “doping.” At various times, he has since overseen testing for the National Football League (NFL), National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), Major League Baseball’s (MLB) minor league organizations, and others.
During his career, Catlin pioneered new methods to identify previously unknown or undetectable types of PODs. For example, he played a central role in uncovering the compounds used in the so-called BALCO scandal, and he helped reveal doping by banned sprinter Justin Gatlin. Catlin was Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and he was Chief Science Officer of the Banned Substances Control Group, Inc.
On getting drugs out of sports:
“You’ll never get all the drugs out of it. The rewards are too huge. [M]y hope is, and I think it’s not unrealistic, that you should be able to watch a track and field final and be satisfied that nobody is doping.”—from a 2007 interview for All Things Considered on NPR
Tributes to Don Catlin
Full obituary: The Washington Post
