Donald Hardt Catlin (June 4, 1938 – January 16, 2024) was an American anti-doping scientist. He is one of the founders modern drug-testing in professional sports.[1][2][3][4][5]
In 1982, Catlin founded the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, the first anti-doping lab in the United States. It is now the world's largest testing facility of performance-enhancing drugs. He remained the lab's director for 25 years.[9][10][11]
In the 1990s, Catlin began to offer the carbon isotope ratio test, a urine test that determines whether anabolic steroids are made naturally by the body or come from a prohibited performance-enhancing drug.[12][13]
In 2002 at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Catlin reported darbepoetin alfa, a form of the blood booster EPO (erythropoietin), for the first time in sports.[14] Also in 2002, he identified norbolethone, the first reported designer anabolic steroid used by an athlete.[15][16]
In 2003, as part of the investigation of BALCO, he identified and developed a test for tetrahydrogestrinone or "The Clear," the second reported designer anabolic steroid. In November 2009, Newsweek named Trevor Graham's decision to send a syringe containing the substance to the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which then passed it on to Catlin for analysis, as one of the decade's Top-10 History-Altering Decisions.[17]
In 2004, Catlin identified madol, the third reported designer anabolic steroid, also known as DMT, and from 2004 he and his team identified several more designer steroids.[18]
Catlin served as president and CEO of the Los Angeles-based NGOAnti-Doping Research, Inc. (ADR). It was founded in 2005 to bolster efforts to uncover new drugs that are being used illegally by competitors, and to develop accurate tests in order to easily detect them in athletes. Anti-Doping Research Inc advocates for and establishes programs to encourage all levels of athletes to refrain from the use of performance-enhancing drugs.[19][20]
In addition, Catlin led both of the companies Anti-Doping Sciences Institute (ADSI) and Banned Substances Control Group (BSCG).[21][22]
In 2006, Catlin received a request from The Washington Post to analyze a dietary supplement created by Patrick Arnold, which he identified the active ingredient as methylhexaneamine. The substance was added to the WADA banned list in 2009.[23]
In a peer-reviewed article published in the August 2009 issue of the science journal Comparative Exercise Physiology, Catlin, along with colleagues at ADR, reported to have developed an equine test for the powerful blood-boosting drug CERA.[25] ADR is currently developing an effective urine test that will detect human growth hormone (hGH) – one of the most sought-after tests by sports leagues worldwide.[26][27]
Catlin was professor of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.[28] He served as chairman of the Equine Drug Research Institute's Scientific Advisory Committee and as a member of the Federation Equestre Internationale Commission on Equine Anti-Doping & Medication. Since 1988, he was a member of the International Olympic Committee Medical Commission.[29][30]
Catlin's wife, Bernadette, a French-Belgian nurse he met at UCLA, died of melanoma in 1989. He has two sons: Bryce Catlin, a software engineer who is married and living in the Bay Area in California, and Oliver Catlin, vice president and CFO of Anti-Doping Research in Los Angeles.[33] He was featured in the documentary film Icarus, where he introduced the American producer Bryan Fogel to the Russian scientist Grigory Rodchenkov; the subsequent events helped expose the Russian doping scandal.
Catlin died after a stroke in Los Angeles on January 16, 2024, at the age of 85.[6][34]
^Wilson, Duff (September 18, 2007). "Doctors Are Years Away From H.G.H. Urine Test". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 July 2015. Some call Dr. Don Catlin... the father of drug testing in sports.
