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Some of that evidence has been provided by Cardiologist Jeffrey Isner of the New England Medical Center in Boston, who suspects that heart damage from cocaine occurs more often than most specialists believe, partly because doctors seldom ask heart patients if they have used drugs. "There are still superb cardiologists," says Isner, "who are surprised to find out that cocaine can cause a lethal cardiac event." In a paper published last October in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association, Isner reported on seven people, ages 20 to 37, who used cocaine shortly before suffering apparent heart attacks. Six of the subjects, including one of two who died, had no evidence of heart disease before taking cocaine.
The drug can act in a number of ways to cause death. It can interfere with the electrical system of the heart or brain, causing the heart to go into ventricular fibrillation, a purposeless twitching that quickly results in death. In addition, cocaine may bring on a cardiac event by temporarily constricting arteries.
While doctors pondered how cocaine killed Bias, Maryland authorities were investigating how he obtained the drug. At week's end they were interested in questioning Brian Tribble, an acquaintance who lives well and drives a Mercedes. Reports circulated that Tribble was seen with Bias in various places around Washington in the early morning before the athlete's death and accompanied him back to his dormitory at 5 a.m., about an hour before he was stricken. Arthur Marshall, state's attorney for Prince Georges County, vowed to develop a manslaughter case if the dealer who sold the fatal cocaine can be identified. Said he: "Just remember the Belushi case."
Bias' death turned the spotlight on the status of athletes at the University of Maryland. Bias had compiled a dismal academic record at the school, particularly in the past year, and was still 21 credits short of graduating, instead of nine, as he recently claimed. The university and Basketball Coach "Lefty" Driesell quickly found themselves the targets of charges that athletes, particularly black athletes, are routinely exploited at big-time sports schools. Wendy Whittemore, academic counselor to the basketball team, took the occasion to resign, saying that she thought education was not a top priority for Coach Driesell. Marshall claimed that the coach had urged members of the team to be careful in talking to authorities about drugs and Bias' death. Driesell denied the charge and asked his longtime attorney, Edward Bennett Williams, to represent him during grand-jury hearings this week.
Although beleaguered, Coach Driesell managed at a press conference to deliver the week's most important message about substances like cocaine. "These are not recreational drugs," he said. "They're killers."