Wrong drug, wrong patient, or just wrong?: Roger Clemens' claims of Vitamin B12 and Lidocaine use

The only people who legitimately might need vitamin B12 injections would be those with diagnoses of pernicious anemia, according to Dr. George Blackburn, Director of the Center for the Study of Nutrition Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. It’s "virtually impossible" to get pernicious anemia in America nowadays, because of our ready access to fish, eggs, and dairy products

The New York Yankees baseball pitcher Roger Clemens has claimed that the injections that he received in his buttocks contained B12, and Lidocaine. "I don't why you would inject Lidocaine deep into this muscle," said Dr. Gary Wadler, a spokesman for the American College of Sports Medicine and a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency. In general, pain-killers like Lidocaine are used specifically to block nerves, and therefore pain, in a specific part of the body, such as teeth during dental procedures, or around aching joints, and are not properly used as Clemens claims.

It's more likely that Clemens is using these claims as a sneaky way of masking his illicit steroid use. If he used B12 and Lidocaine in these ways, they were the wrong drugs, for the wrong patient.

Advice: Think of yourself as a role model when you choose drugs.


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Thanks to Judy Foreman for the source article in today's Boston Globe.