Dr.
Gary I. Wadler, M.D., USA, Advocate
Dr.
Wadler is a vice president and trustee and a President’s Prize winner
of the Women’s Sports Foundation and is a former trustee of the American
College of Sports Medicine, where he currently serves as chairman of its
Health and Science Committee and as a member of its Public Information
Committee. He currently is
chairman and president of the Nassau County Sports Commission (New York). In 1993, he was the recipient of the International Olympic
Committee’s President’s Prize (the Samaranch Award) for his work in the
field of drugs and sports. Dr.
Wadler is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at NYU School of
Medicine and a Senior Attending Physician at North Shore University in
Manhasset, New York. Apart
from his interest in the field of drugs and sports, Dr. Wadler has focused
much of his attention on the sport of tennis, where, amongst other things,
he was the official tournament physician for the United States Open Tennis
Championships for eleven years and was a member of the U.S. Open Championships
Tournament Committee. Aside
from being a founding member of the USTA’s Sports Science Committee, Dr.
Wadler was the founding chairperson of the Health and Medical Committee
of Women’s Tennis Association. Dr.
Wadler’s interest in the field of drugs dates back to 1970 when he led
efforts to address the issue of drug abuse utilizing the medical model,
publishing such articles as Drug Abuse and Addiction and the Health
Care Systems and A Health-Hospital Approach to Drug Abuse Education and
Prevention. In the 1980s, Dr. Wadler’s
interest in the field of drug abuse shifted to the field of sports and
since that time he has lectured and published widely about the subject. In 1989, he was the lead author of the definitive and international
acclaimed text in the field, Drugs and the Athlete.
The topics of his lectures and articles have included, Safe
and Fair Play in Elite Sport: Drugs, Gender and Sports; Illegal Substances
and Drug Testing; Scope of Doping Substances in Athletics-Risk and Consequences;
Drug Testing in Women’s Sports; “Sports Organization”
in The Handbook on Drug
Abuse Prevention, The Coach and Athlete Drug Abuse; Scope of Doping Substances
in Athletics – Risk and Consequences; Recreational Drugs.
He has written chapters about the subject in The Medical
Clinics of North America, the
ACSM Handbook for the Team Physician, the Manual of Sports Medicine.
He has served in various editorial capacities including for
the Clinical journal of Sport Medicine, the Journal of Strength and
Conditioning Research and Your Patient and Fitness.
Dr. Wadler was a member of AMGEN’s Athlete Education Advisory
Board, is a member of the Performance Enhancing Substance Abuse Committee
for the National Strength and Conditioning Association, was a participant
in NIDA Technical Review Panel on Anabolic Steroids, in the Department
of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General’s report
on Adolescent Steroid Abuse and in the Department of Justice’s Conference
on the Impact of National Steroid Control Legislation in the United States.
Dr. Wadler represents the United States in two WHO international
meetings addressing the subjects of research initiatives and education
and prevention strategies in drugs and sports.
Dr. Wadler has served as an expert on anabolic steroids for the
Department of Justice in various successful federal steroid prosecutions.
His opinions about the subject of drugs and sports and more recently
about nutritional supplements, are widely sought out by the media.
Dr. Wadler, a graduate of Brooklyn College in 1960 and Cornell
University Medical College in 1964.
He is in the private practice of sports medicine and internal medicine
in Manhasset, New York.
