Weldon's Misguided Doping Effort

wejo wrote:

...plenty of money out there to combat the problem if it is seen as a problem.

More and more that is the conclusion I have been coming to. Is this really a problem. With the American public it seems not to be. Just look at the NFL, there are a lot of guys doped to the gills in some form or another, and if you don't think so you are just kidding yourself. People still eat up football, just look at all of the media coverage it gets. For sports like T&F and cycling I think people like to say shame on them for doping when it gets splashed on the headlines, but they really don't care about the sport and it is forgotten the next day. Would they care if they found out NASCAR guys take stuff to stay alert when driving? (I don't know if they do or not). I doubt it.

Old Runner Guy wrote:

why do we want to award this flawed process with more money? Why not fix the process, make it fair and credible. This would not take more money.

They didn't make it to be fair.

They made it to make money, and to discredit athletes who are clean.

its a mystery! wrote:

If this country can afford to build a multi-million dollar bridge to an island of 50 people in Alaska, then we can spend some federal dollars on anti-doping provisions.

The question of where the money is going to come from is not particularly relevant. President Bush took time in his STATE OF THE NATION address a few years back to lambast professional athletes who take drugs. The problem of funding could be easily solved, with the flick of Mr. Bush's wrist.

This is the kind of naivete that allows people in high places to do nothing and get away with. President Bush could not solve this problem by himself. In any event, I think we need a broad consortium of government, academic, and industrial laboratories to defeat the problem. While money alone is not the answer it is certainly rate-limiting the process of catching dopers.

Old Runner Guy makes one or two good points about WADA and following protocol. How many "A" results have been released before they are supposed to? One is too many. Dick Pound looks anything but unbiased. I have to say personally that I don't trust anything coming out of a French lab these days without additional confirmation.

However, putting those petty concerns aside, I agree with wejo. What are we supposed to do, give up entirely because there are problems with the system?

I think its criminal that Nike and all of the other shoe companies make tons of money but do little to combat drug use. If they put even a small portion of the profits into testing and prevention, it would send a strong message. To me, its disgusting that they do not do this on their own. They should demand clean athletes.

The problem is one of incentives. There is far too much incentive to cheat these days. Ther is comparatively little interest in the general public to clean up sports because the average person does not understand the corrosive influence that PED's have. That's why its important to have strong advocacy these days and I applaud the efforts of anyone who is trying to clean up sport, except for a buffoon like Dick Pound.

I'm a scientist, but this is not my area of research, so I really don't know the relevant details of how to start an effective research program in drug testing. I do know however, that it must have something to do with larger problems - ie there must be a way to tie it into other pharma studies. It would be interesting to see how Catlin out of UCLA got started and how he packaged his research in the beginning.

Doping is criminal act let the police come up with the money.

of course, because they have nothing better to do.

apples wrote:

Doping is criminal act let the police come up with the money.

hey it is part of their jobs. And no they do not do enuf.

The reason the public does not care about doping, and will never care is it does not affect them. Nobody really cares about the integrity of the game/sport. They want to see records or watch their team win. This is the way it always has been and will always be. To think you can gin up moral outrage over doping is naive.

So, to change the culture you have to identify those that are affected by dopers. That is the clean athlete.

Drug testing and sanctions should be geared toward to the clean athlete. In other words, make the process open and give them all the due process they want. The when an athlete is found guilty of doping, publish all available information on his case. Sanction whatever you want but this should not be the most important part.

Basically the drug testers should hand be handing clean athlete all the info they need to sue dopers for loss of prize money, reputation and endorsement opportunity.

* If Lands were found guilty, he should be sue by Oscar Perriero, who finished second for many millions.

* Eki should sue Hamilton for taking his gold medal in the 2004 Olympics (might be a little weak as Hamilton did not technically fail his b-sample here, it was two weeks later in the Vuelta).

* Frank Thomas should have sued Jason Giambi for doping and winning the 2000 MVP thereby getting a $120 million contract from the Yankees (Thomas finished second in the MVP race).

* Tyson Gay should be suing Gatlin for denying him a proper championship and all the money that flows from it.

If this were to happen, any athlete that cheats could have his life financially ruined. A positive dope test could wipe him out as everyone digs in to get what they were denied. This would be an effective deterrent. Remember this is what sports are about to the professional – making money.

If you did this, you would not need more money, just a change in goals in the current system.

Question, why don't more clean athletes sue dopers? Has any clean athlete sued a doper? They are the losers, not the public. To be blunt, until they care, why should I?

Final thought - Doping is criminal in Europe and the authorities are deeply involved in it. Does anyone think they have a better system? So why would getting the FBI involved make it better?

yes!! wrote:

Doping is criminal act let the police come up with the money.

[/quote]

We have plenty to do, like zapping people with our tazers and beating them on the head with our nightsticks.

The point of my post was to address the rather minor point that Old Runner made regarding the source of funding. I do not think the problem is as simple as my post may indicate. I agree that a number of organizations and enforcement agencies need to be involved, as the scope of the problem demands. That said, I think your post is spot on, and obviously the executive branch cannot solve this problem alone. However, I do think that the President could make this a national priority if he so choose.

its a mystery! wrote:

However, I do think that the President could make this a national priority if he so choose.

He mentioned it in the state of the union address a few years ago (the problem of steriods in sports) and was roundly criticzed for taking the important platform of that speech and wasting it on a trival issue like steriods.

What could possibly get him to make it a national prioity? Short of a juiced NFL player literally dying live during the superbowl, I cannot inagine what else could do it. So, it will never happen.

It already did happen. The fact that doping was mentioned in the state of the union address indicates that it is an important topic that the government is paying attention to.

Also see the Congressional hearings on steroids in baseball, etc.

Clearly people are becoming interested, but the money has not come through.

My point is that in order to bring ourselves remotely up to the standards of assumed police procedures we need to spend multi millions.We are only finding out about lab problems as proper lawyers and scientists are checking such out.

In the Landis case it is not just a case of an inked alteration, they mucked up the free testo so according to WADA's own published rules "there is no adverse finding".

To do things properly and fairly we are multi millions out in the money needed.If we can't provide this,and we can;t,then we have to accept that zero tolerance is dead.

So, based on your post I guess this means that you feel the tests are pretty reliable at this time, right? I mean, I know you wouldn't be in favor of a bunch of lawsuits based on false positives so I assume that means you are pretty confident in today's testing.Also, that is great for drugs that they are currently able to detect. But as we all know the abusers are a step ahead of the testers and are always finding new drugs or ways to mask current drugs. Since your approach won't cost any money how do you suppose we keep up with this research?Unless you can answer the questions above your opinion of not needing more money is meaningless

Old Runner Guy wrote:

So, to change the culture you have to identify those that are affected by dopers. That is the clean athlete.

rrrrrr wrote:

So, based on your post I guess this means that you feel the tests are pretty reliable at this time, right? I mean, I know you wouldn't be in favor of a bunch of lawsuits based on false positives so I assume that means you are pretty confident in today's testing.

The biggest problem with drug tests today is the very low level they set for a positive test. It is NOT the level where a drug can give you performance. It is the absolute minumum level where the testers believe they can accuse you have taking a PED. So, you can test positive for tiny amounts of a PED in your system.

They test for these small amounts under the idea they can catch someone at the end of a cycle. This is the "zero tolerance" concept they operate under.

The problem is they are probably busting a lot of athletes that were merely containmentaed, not dopers. For instances, eat a big mac, and if the ranch that McD got the beef from injected their Steer with steriods (which is common in the beef industry), you might test positive for low levels of 'riods. Their is no possible way to know if you meat is tainted.

Supplement companies that make both multi-vitamins and 'riods have already lost court cases where their multi-vitmanins were containmeted in the manufacturing process.

The fix is to dial up the levels for a postive test. Then keep reords of one's test over time (a longitudinal study) to show use of PEDs at levels where they make a difference, not the random containimation issues that many, like me fear, are cuasing so many positive tests.

This will not cost a lot of money. What it requires is a mindset of setting about a fair process. Right now the testers do not want fair processes. They want a crisis atomsphere so they can demand more money and power.

So, yes the tests can be fair, but they are not being applied in that way now.

Your grammar skills are a bit lacking.

what about new drugs? How do we address those without much money?

So, if a person fails 'A' but passes 'B', everytime this happens it is due to contaminated sample and nothing else right? The test will only fail because it works too well, right (detects very small amounts)?

So Bernard had a contaminated sample, you are 100% sure of that result?

You are the first person I have heard that is very confident in the results of today's tests. Sounds great!

There were 40-50 cyclists originally implicated in the Operacion Puerto affair, I assume that's where Kennedy got his figures from.

birmingham wrote:

the landis case shows that the testing labs are either incompetant ot lie.

The free testo is above that which the lab is allowed to declare an adverse finding.

Thus we cant believe trust or fund the labs.

Sol?

Weldon is right on the money as regards drug testing, pun or no pun.