The Daily News gets Dr. Lewis Maharam on the horn to talk about PRP therapy. “It’s not a controversial technique,” he says on page 54. But according to Teri Thompson, Michael O’Keeffe and Adam Rubin on page 53: “The treatment, which is a controversial but legal procedure…”
Rob Neyer makes an interesting point about Minor Leaguers, per diems and healthy eating.
This absolutely nails it. I am terrified of the Google.
Here’s video of Ike Davis’ double, in case you missed it.
Tedquarters 
I was thinking about this whole blood spinning thing last night, in regards to how it could be perceived as controversila in any way. The only place it seems to be at all controversial is witing the World anti doping agency who is looking into it.
But after thinking about it I had to ask how can there be anything wrong with this? If it is as described, only separating the patients own platelettes and putting them back into the body. Some will say that its an advantage over natural healing, but lets face it, ‘natural healing’ went bye bye in not just pro sport, but every day life many years ago.
I mean these days a player can tear an elbow ligament and get a surgery done to harvest part of his leg muscle and use it to rebuild an arm tendon or Players who tear ACL’s often have the ligament rebuilt with that of a cadaver, some dead guys tendon, these are natural healing? Same goes for screws in broken bones, and any type of surgery for that matter.
You are absolutely right, Chris, so long as the doctor is not injecting the patient with any other “additives” so to speak. My concern for Jose and Beltran is why go to Canada for this procedure when so many doctors do it in America, unless they (or the person referring them) knew that the Canadian doctor was willing to inject them with a special brew which a US doctor would not.
But they have been very candid (unlike “no comment” A-Rod) about their associations with this doctor, so I am neither overly concerned about their legal exposure nor suspect of their motives, at this time.
I would think it might have to do with reputation. Like why do so many players go to James Andrews for thier elbow? At this point surguries like TJ surgery are run of the mill and 100’s of doctors can do it just as well, but he’s known as the best, even though he didnt create it himself.
This guy seems to have been one of the ‘pioneers’ of this treatment and had the repuation of treating many athletes with success, so this guy in Canada had a reputation for success with athletes. Plus these doctors are a good old boy network. The guys Arod and Beltran used out in Colorado seem to have some ties to the Toronto practice, so Beltran and Arod end up there at thier docs recomendation. Then as Reyes said, Beltran recomended the Canadtian guy etc.
Seems these guy sort of trust what they know, or go by reputation, as we all do with alot of things we do in our every day lives from the doctors we chose to the repair men we call to the store we shop at.
Actually, we don’t know why A-Rod saw Galea. We only know why he saw the chiropractor associated with him. A-Rod’s association with Galea remains unexplained. A-Rod, and not Beltran and Reyes, should be getting a hard time from the press because he has refused to explain his association and/or treatment with Galea, which he apparently concealed from the Yankees as well.
I also don’t think HGH on its own is that big of a deal if prescribed by a physician for legitimate, healing purposes. If legal for the general public, why not an athlete. But the problem is I can’t help but think that with no off-season steroid testing, players can do a cycle of steroids in the offseason and then mainatin with a cycle of HGH and never get caught, unless they screw up their timing like Manny Ramirez did last year. And in light of Arod’s history as a steroid user, the media should be asking these questions of him. If MLB would do year-round steroid testing, a lot of this crap would go away. Why do they refuse?
Well inthe case of Reyes and Beltran I wouldnt say its a big deal at all for the simple reason that it didnt work. Beltran saw the guy last year for his knee, and Reyes for his hamstring, and both, not to long after needed surgery anyway. So I would have to conclude that even if they were to have been given HGH, neither guy saw any benefit.
Is it possible that the Daily News is using the fact that this Galea guy who did the procedures on Reyes and Beltran and Woods is controversial (because of the HGH investigation) to impute some controversiality to the PRP procedure where (according to the doctors we’ve seen quoted) none exists?
ChrisM, I agree 100% about Beltran Reyes — no big deal. They went to get healed to avoid undergoing surgery, and not to obtain an unfair advantage through the use of illegal drugs. And with Reyes, he never even took the field again until this season.