The doctor at the centre of the Nike Oregon Project (NOP) drugs investigation altered athletes’ medical records before handing them to anti-doping authorities, according to new disclosures.
Dr Jeffrey Brown, along with controversial NOP coach Alberto Salazar, has been under investigation by the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada), since the BBC’s Panorama programme and ProPublica alleged doping and unethical practice at NOP in 2015.
The elite endurance camp is funded by Nike and led by Salazar, who has coached Britain’s double Olympic champion Mo Farah since 2011.
Both Salazar and Dr Brown strongly deny any wrongdoing.
In February this year, an interim report by Usada investigators into the NOP claims was leaked by the Russian hacking group Fancy Bears. Details of various alleged anti-doping rule breaches outlined in the report were published by the Sunday Times, the BBC and the New York Times.
Usada has yet to formally charge anyone in relation to its investigation.
Now, new disclosures seen by the BBC and ProPublica further implicate Dr Brown, a Texas-based endocrinologist who has treated many of Salazar’s athletes and has been previously accused of prescribing thyroid medication (which is not banned under World Anti-Doping Agency rules) to athletes to boost performance. Dr Brown denies this.
Dr Brown, who is Salazar’s personal physician, handed to Usada the medical records of certain athletes, including Steve Magness, then also Salazar’s assistant coach.
But Magness, a central contributor to the BBC/ProPublica investigation in 2015, says his medical notes have been altered by Dr Brown.
He says he asked for a copy of his notes to be provided to him in August 2015, before he signed a release form to allow Usada to recover them from his former physician.
One note shows details of an infusion of a controversial but legal supplement L-carnitine carried out by Dr Brown in his office in Texas, on the instructions of Salazar, in 2011.
The note on the left is, according to Magness, his copy of the note of the infusion, a medical procedure that involved Dr Brown putting him on a drip for more than four hours. In the same note later provided by Dr Brown’s office to Usada, on the right, and seen in the Usada report, various additions appear to have been made.
A number of ticks seem to have been added under ‘EXAM’ options, including ‘General,’ ‘Lungs,’ ‘Thyroid,’ ‘CV’ (cardio vascular), and ‘Neuro,’ suggesting a full health check has been carried out by Dr Brown on Magness.
Magness, who left NOP in 2012 and is now a coach at the University of Houston, says those checks were never done.
He says: “I do not recall these being done. I wasn’t even in a patient room, but instead in his office during this visit. I do not recall him going through his normal checks of my thyroid or [anything else].
“My only speculation is that [those boxes were ticked] to make it look like care for the patient had been given. He might have realised after the fact that when you have a patient, your doctoral duty is to the health of that individual.
“And that without the proper checks, it might look like he was prioritising a company, Nike, Salazar, that was paying him over the health of his patient. “Dr Brown had been my physician since the age of 16.” BBC
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