Add Larry Bowers’ name to long list of scientists with York County, Pa., links
Larry Bowers, a 1968 York Suburban High School graduate, served as important expert witness in the recent trial of former Major League Baseball slugger Barry Bonds. He is seen in the Associated Press photograph on the day of the trial. Also of interest: Add another achiever to the list of York countians with impressive resumes and York County high school grads teach lessons in achievement on national stage and Local grads make good on screen, stage.
“York Suburban grad Larry Bowers a key witness in Barry Bonds’ case,” the main headline on the newspaper story stated.
It was followed by the subhead: “The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s chief scientist broke down performance-enhancing drugs for the jury.”
Larry Bowers, now a Colorado resident, is another in a long line of scientists and researchers from York County. (See list below of other luminaries.)
York Daily Record/Sunday News reporter Jim Seip’s story about Bowers follows:
From the day of the raid on Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative until a federal jury convicted Barry Bonds of a single charge of obstruction of justice Wednesday, Larry Bowers had been involved with helping federal prosecutors understand the complex steroids ring.
BALCO helped distribute performance-enhancing drugs undetectable in traditional drug testing.
Perhaps no athlete involved in the case drew more attention than Major League Baseball’s home run king, and federal prosecutors called Bowers — a 1968 York Suburban graduate — to explain the evolution of anabolic steroids. One of 25 witnesses called by the prosecution, Bowers presented textbook-like testimony in March about performance-enhancing drugs including “the clear,” “the cream” and HGH. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s chief scientist explained that his agency anonymously received a syringe with trace amounts of a liquid known as ‘the clear’ — or THG — in the summer of 2003.
Scientists eventually developed a recipe for the drug and later developed a urine test to detect the steroid in 2003.
Bowers also testified in the case against track coach Trevor Graham, who also was linked to BALCO and sentenced to one year of home confinement for lying to investigators.
“This is kind of the end of the line for the BALCO thing,” Bowers said when reached by phone.
“I really don’t have a lot of feelings about it. Personally I feel like I did my job, and the jury did their job.”
Now working in Colorado Springs, Bowers received his received his A.B. in chemistry from Franklin & Marshall College in 1972 and his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Georgia.
The onetime head of Indiana University’s Athletic Drug Testing and Toxicology Laboratory, the International Olympic Committee selected Bowers and his staff to organize and implement the substance-screening process for the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Involved as an expert witness in court cases since his days at Indiana in the 1990s, he brushed aside numerous attempts by Bonds’ attorneys to discredit the scientific proof of side effects related to steroids.
“Bowers is an immovable scientific object on the stand,” reporter Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury News wrote on March 30.
Other researchers with York County roots:
– Add Penn State researcher Herschel Leibowitz to long list of York countians who excelled in research.
– Two women with York County, Pa., roots excelled in the medical laboratory
– York, Pa.-born Edwin Shneidman, suicide prevention pioneer, dies in Los Angeles
– Pennsylvanian Daniel Drawbaugh: ‘The Edison of the Cumberland Valley’
– Area native shares Nobel for Medicine.
– Few know it, but digital computing’s first pioneer George Stibitz was born in York, Pa.
– Author with York County ties: Learned the brain inside and out in writing ‘How We Decide’
– Who was Phineas Davis of York City school fame?.
– Who was Edgar Fahs Smith of York City middle school fame?
Also:
York, Pa.’s link to the use of steroids in sports: ‘Pecs, pink pills and power’
Archives
– You can always search for York Town Square posts on Google. For example, when you search for yorktownsquare and York Suburban, you get this.
