Word: bechler
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Dates: during 2003-2003
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...Steven Bechler wasn't a great pitcher, but he may change baseball forever. Bechler, 23, fell ill Feb. 16 during a workout at Fort Lauderdale Stadium in Florida, where he was hoping to be picked up for a second season by the Baltimore Orioles. The next morning he died of complications from heatstroke. The story may have ended there--a private tragedy for Bechler's family, including his pregnant wife. But Dr. Joshua Perper, the medical examiner who autopsied Bechler, used the righthander's death to call for a crusade. After finding a weight-loss supplement in Bechler's stomach...
...conventional wisdom that hardens so quickly often needs to be reviewed in slo-mo. No one is sure whether ephedra killed Bechler. Toxicology studies that will show how the various chemicals in the herb behaved in his system won't be completed for two weeks. "The impact of ephedra on temperature is minimal and therefore could not have been a primary factor, in my view," says Richard Kreider, president of the American Society of Exercise Physiologists...
More broadly, ephedra science is a fledgling, uncertain field: doctors can't say definitively that the plant is dangerous, especially when taken appropriately (Bechler took three pills, not the recommended two). Last summer the Bush Administration commissioned a major Rand study of ephedra, which should provide more answers when it is published this spring...