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Phlebotomy process: research chemical in the bloodstream – exercise

On the 16th day of the trial, the observers were presented with an unusual picture in the Munich II district court, room A101, criminal case against the Erfurt sports doctor Mark Schmidt. The defendant, who during the previous days of the trial had seldom left any doubts about who the doctor in this room is; who had demonstrated his machines, talked about blood profiles and doping evidence, in a soft, determined voice: He suddenly fails to speak. He starts, “it’s not that easy, this topic,” he says, “but how should I say that …” He breaks off, pauses, stutters, starts again. “I had”, says Mark Schmidt finally, “a few dark hours”.

In his first admission, the 42-year-old had asserted that he always had the best in mind when he put high-performance athletes on the needle for years, drawn blood and returned it to increase their performance. He was aware of some “adventurous practices of self-doping” when athletes administered drugs from the Internet themselves. He wanted to contrast this with an “offer of high quality”. A little helper syndrome on the backstage of top sport. Only: In one case, Schmidt had to admit on Friday, the high quality was about as far-fetched as five-star fare in a currywurst stand. Instead of a substance intended to boost oxygen transport in the blood and thus performance, he had instilled a research chemical into an athlete that is not even approved for humans.

In the morning, an expert from the Sigma-Aldrich company, which sells the controversial preparation, testified. Schmidt had dissolved the remedy in a few hundred milliliters of liquid in the fall of 2017 and injected it into the Austrian Christina Kollmann-Forstner, who was runner-up in the 2018 mountain bike marathon. Anyone who has informed who and how exactly about the content and side effects will go over it Information apart. Kollmann-Forstner had said in court that Schmidt had assured her that the product was safe. It is undisputed that she suddenly suffered from chills after the intake, and later her urine turned red. The public prosecutor’s office accuses Schmidt of personal injury in the case.

The manufacturer’s expert explains in the court that the preparation was methemoglobin, which is obtained from donated blood, including from cats, mice, horses or cattle. The product is intended for research, large laboratories would source it in order to better understand diseases. “It must not be used on people,” says the expert. That is also stated on every commercially available bottle. And what if you instill it in a person? Asks judge Marion Tischler. “Then you have a great risk”. The supply chain for the product is by no means as regulated as for substances that are used in human research. All dealers are therefore encouraged to examine their customers carefully. But she does not know whether this is happening everywhere. Schmidt had obtained the product from Croatia through Dario Nemec, his co-captain over the years.

The statements of the experts, who then give their assessments, are then also supported by a bass of amazement. Methemoglobin cannot even properly transport oxygen in the blood, says toxicologist Dr. Thieme, as a doping product, the substance is “for the bin”. For a doctor – also a doping doctor – it is an “astonishing misunderstanding”. The amount that Schmidt apparently administered to the athlete was “harmless” from a toxicological point of view. Prof. Wolfgang Jelkmann, the medical expert, first describes what happened to Schmidt’s test subject at the time: The large amount of hemoglobin in the blood reacted with nitric oxide, which led to circulatory disorders. Multiple applications could even have damaged the kidney. Although Schmidt never touched the preparation again after the failed attempt measured the test subject’s blood pressure, but: “Before I inject someone, I find out what it is,” said the expert. The doctor had already failed to deliver the intended preparation to his client. Jelkmann sums up the conclusion of this grossly negligent undertaking as follows: “Has joot again anytime, right?”

And Schmidt? He actually wanted to order a completely different preparation, he explains afterwards, audibly contrite. An artificial, hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier. He had commissioned his Croatian middleman to do this. But somebody got confused with the exact names and abbreviations, in any case Nemec supplied methemoglobin, the research chemical. “Of course” he read the package, says Schmidt, but: “I didn’t check it properly.” He simply trusted Nemec, who otherwise always reliably brought everything to us. “That gnaws inside, too,” Schmidt now says to the judge, “you saw my equipment, otherwise you saw how I worked.” The blood values ​​of the athletes, he had always manipulated them so neatly that the doping investigators did not notice them – which is indeed true. His conclusion? “Shoemaker, stick to your last. That would have been better.”

The astonishment in the dish is clearly noticeable. “We have to let everything sink in now,” says the judge. Whatever that means for the caring Doctor Schmidt.

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