Wow, more typical lawyer (normally prosecution attorneys) tactics. Attempting for the second time to implicate Ankiel "through association" when he can not currently be implicated through the use of evidence.
First, all agree the medication was prescribed by Ankiel's doctor, Dr Gogan, a respected and published orthopedic surgeon (https://www.healthgrades.com/directory_ ... 7642ED.cfm). Whether Dr. Gogan or the pharmacy, Signature, did anything illegal is not a question that affects Rick Ankiel. As an example, if you were to see your Doctor and s/he prescribed a medication for your condition that was not FDA approved for that condition, how would you know and what would tip you off? In that case, the Doctor might face some disciplinary action but you, the patient, would be in the clear.
Second, it is unlikely that the Doctor would face discipline as we have a very strange system for prescription drug regulation in the U.S. When a drug company submits an NDA to the FDA, the FDA will approve the drug (assuming it does) for a specific use or uses. Those are the only uses which the drug company can mention. Under the current Federal law, the federal government censors the drug company from talking about or advertising any other use for the approved drug. However, generally speaking, Doctors are not limited in that respect; they can prescribe an approved drug for any legitimate medical purpose, even if the FDA never approved it for such use. This practice is referred to as "off-label," and it's perfectly legal. If a Doctor wants to prescribe a cholesterol drug to treat depression, /she can do it; the check on such behavior is malpractice liability - which varies in practice from state to state and is not federally regulated.
Third, the illegality allegedly associated with Signature Pharmacy is a State of New York legal issue (and probably some other states prescription laws) that require a Doctor to actually see a patient before a prescription can be written.
Finally, as Ankiel did personally see Dr. Gogan I don't see any patient misbehavior here, much less illegality. What is relevant however, is that a licensed Doctor decided that a specific patient could benefit from a specific drug. Given those facts it will be darn near impossible to find any of Ankiel's actions illegal based only on another doctor or group of doctors expressing the opinion that the patient shouldn't have needed the drug.
BTW, Dr. Gogan has settled or his insurance company has settled at least seven (7) malpractice suits. This does not implicate Ankiel so don't bother going there.
This will be my last post on this subject. I am presuming Ankiel is innocent until proven guilty. At most we know, because he has acknowledged it, Ankiel legally used HGH in 2004. That is not, in any reasonable person's mind, the same as saying - much less proving - that his performance in 2007 is chemically enhanced.
Ankiel
Jim, you're no fun. The whole point of this message board is to drag these arguments out for way too long. I will say this (anticipating the reaction it will get): I'm glad that you are so trusting of Rick Ankiel's word on this matter since he's a good interview, but suppose instead of Rick Ankiel it was Barry Bonds in the same situation, would you have written such an impassioned defense of him? Ankiel is going to get the benefit of the doubt because he seems like a nice guy and has a great media friendly story, but let's remember that he was rehabbing from a BASEBALL injury and was employed by a professional baseball team, who was responsible for his rehab. Rodney Harrison has been suspended for 4 NFL games (the rough equivalent of 40 MLB games) for doing exactly the same thing as Ankiel, granted the NFL has rules about HGH where the MLB does not (which has more to do with the power of the Players Union than the value of having the rules). Serious injury rehabs, especially with players as important to a team as Ankiel was, are carefully handled by the team, if HGH was legitimately called for in Ankiel's rehab it would have been the team that provided it, as there were no rules against it at the time. Legal and moral are two different things, whether or not the prescriptions were legal doesn't really impact this situation, like I said it was legal for Dr. Nick to provide Elvis with all those pills, and more recently it appears that at least some of the prescriptions that doctor in Atlanta gave Chris Benoit were legal. The question is was it cheating then? And I don't think it's fair to say "oh Ankiel is a nice feel good story so I'm going to ignore the circumstances and just assume he did nothing wrong when if it was Barry Bonds (and actual hard evidence of a delivery of performance enhancing drugs is stronger than any piece of the circumstantial evidence established against Bonds, who almost certainly cheated) I'd use this same set of facts to condemn him."
