The 2000 Summer Olympics may be remembered as much for its drug scandals as for its gold medals. Raducan, who has since been stripped of her gold medal, is the sixth athlete at this year's Olympics to test positive for a banned substance. She is the second to have a gold medal taken away. In her case, the presence of banned substances in her body was deemed unintentional, but this has not been the verdict in several other instances.
Athletes use hGH to increase lean body mass and strength.
Because the hormone occurs naturally in the body, it's usually not clear when an athlete has taken hGh. The grant was awarded through Detection Limit, a company that uses Raman spectrometers to measure the levels of thousands of chemical substances. The new technique is expected to be a significant improvement over current methods for testing athletes. The test will also be used detect hGH deficiencies in children. Some of the methods now used to measure hGH levels are problematic.