One Scientist’s Marathon Quest for the Exercise Pill

Ronald Evans realized the word was out when scores of strangers, some fit and some fat, started showing up at his biology lectures around the country. Soon, via email and voicemail, they were hounding him at all hours. Was it true, some wanted to know, that he had pills that could vaporize fat? Could the pills really, others asked, increase athletic endurance by 70 percent? Would he be interested in coming over and doping a racehorse?

During a lecture for a crowd of 200 in Montreal, a pair of college athletes took the mic and peppered Evans with questions about the pills’ potential impact on the effectiveness of human growth hormone and erythropoietin. They ignored his interjections that those two performance-enhancing drugs were banned by most athletic rule-making bodies.