I looked at her 2006 paper again. It mentions 160 ng/mL, but I didn't see that in the pair of studies from 2000 that she referenced. I've wondered if she just makes honest mistakes sometimes.
Good catch! I think that 160ng/ml could be a mistake or could refer to testing by the author that the public does not have access to (which is most of the WADA testing).
I'm convinced that Dr. Ayotte and WADA witnesses were willing to say whatever was needed to win their case no matter what the consequences to potential innocent athletes. I do not feel that in most cases there were innocent mistakes for the following reasons (my personal opinion, of course):
Maybe 160 ng/ml is a mistake, but this figure was also reported in:
C. AYOTTE, C. GUAY, M. CLEROUX, D. GOUDREAULT, A. FAKIRIAN: The Origin of Elevated Levels of Norandrosterone in Human Urine: Half-truths vs Facts In: W. Schänzer, H. Geyer, A. Gotzmann, U. Mareck (eds.) Recent advances ni doping analysis (10). Sport und Buch Strauß, Köln, (2002) 13-21
Page 18: "c) Ingestion of norsteroids from un-castrated pork offal: ... (maximum values were measured at 160 ng/mL of norandrosterone glucuronide in one volunteer)."
The 2009 paper appears to be a publication of the 2003 Masters Thesis of Claudiane Guay. While the table says 130 ng/mL, we can see later in the text: "Six specimens from three different volunteers were sent to Koln for the determination of their 13C content. The amount of norandrosterone contained in these samples was ranging from 20 to 140 ng/mL."
You cannot follow legal arguments. CAS didn't presume what it didn't know; it required her to show legitimate cause for testing positive. She couldn't, therefore she committed a confirmed violation. Her failure to discharge an onus of proof is what confirmed that violation. You have no idea how legal processes work.
There is no way her violation could have fallen within the category of "no case to answer"; she tested positive - this was confirmed - and like any athlete she was held responsible for what was found in her body. There is the case to answer. She was required to produce an acceptable excuse or the violation was confirmed. She failed to do so. Contrary to your confused thinking, it wasn't the burden of CAS to prove an ADRV but for her to show it wasn't a violation once it was established she had a banned drug in her system.
You can't follow how the system actually works but construct arguments based in your own misunderstandings of the process, your distortions and misstatements of the facts and your delusional fantasies.
Of course I can follow legal arguments -- they are not so complicated as you like to pretend -- and I can tell when findings are not based on facts, especially when the CAS tells us their findings are direct consequences of presumptions.
You keep saying "positive test", and "confirmed positive test", yet the CAS told us that this was the first presumption.
I don't say the burden to establish that an ADRV occurred is on the CAS, but the AIU.
One way to conclude "no case to answer" is to determine that the WADA Lab deviated from the WADA standards, and that the AIU failed to meet their burden that an ADRV occurred. On this point, this CAS Panel was split 2:1. With a different CAS Panel, who might have consulted a neutral expert witness to help interpret WADA's intent, rather than asking the lab if they could have made a mistake, a 1:2 split or a 0:3 finding would result in "no case to answer".
A positive test is not a presumption. It is a positive test, which is a fact. If the finding wasn't factually sound it would not have been accepted by CAS and if it was accepted - as it was - and was not conclusive or was flawed in some way it could have and would have been appealed. It wasn't - it couldn't. No grounds. Her failure to produce an adequate explanation sewed it up for her.
The AIU and the CAS presumed she doped, and doped intentionally. The CAS told us so.
Yet, the AIU doesn't know, and the CAS doesn't know. They made presumptions and then made allegations and findings based on these presumptions, because there is NOTHING to support it.
A presumption is a conclusion based on facts, in this case, many overwhelming facts vs wildly creative fairytales
???
presumption: an idea that is taken to be true on the basis of probability.
conclusion: a judgement or decision reached by reasoning.
Equating a presumption to a conclusion is a circular fallacy.
Would you also consider a presumption of innocence to be a conclusion based on facts?
Contrary to "overwhelming facts", there are very few specific facts in Houlihan's case.
LOL that wasn't trolling, that was asking Detective P whether he had a source for his still unsubstantiated claim that Houlihan did not use testo and HGH.
You completely ignored above that a) Houlihan and her team never argued against considering only stomach as the potential nandro source and b) that the 130 ng/ml - according to Houlihan - were actually discussed.
Yet for 1 - 2 years you have trolled us here with your baseless imagination that the Mexicans were unable - although they did their best, according to you - to provide the PI with a complete list of pork ingredients. And used that unsubstantiated claim to accuse the experts of obfuscation.
All your trolling missed the point that Team Houlihan tried to make (which is already in the CAS report), namely the stomach (outer stomach muscle) may contain a lot more nandro than regular boar meat/muscle. Twoggle to his credit has that realized long time ago.
They never made the point that it could have been kidney or liver or testicles or lard, because they knew better. However, since you have been trolling us since several months now with that, you will keep running with it. And if all fails, you will start your ridiculous chorizo distraction. Trolls be trolls.
A positive test is not a presumption. It is a positive test, which is a fact. If the finding wasn't factually sound it would not have been accepted by CAS and if it was accepted - as it was - and was not conclusive or was flawed in some way it could have and would have been appealed. It wasn't - it couldn't. No grounds. Her failure to produce an adequate explanation sewed it up for her.
The test results are facts, but their intepretation is not. The CAS wasn't unanimous as to whether Houlihan's test results were a "positive test". This highlights that it is not an unambiguous fact, but an intepreted opinion.
You have too much faith in what the CAS would accept, and fail to understand Houlihan had no further appeals on the merits left.
Since such proofs are difficult to provide, innocent athletes can fail to "produce an adequate explanation", railroading them to 4-year bans.
LOL that wasn't trolling, that was asking Detective P whether he had a source for his still unsubstantiated claim that Houlihan did not use testo and HGH.
You completely ignored above that a) Houlihan and her team never argued against considering only stomach as the potential nandro source and b) that the 130 ng/ml - according to Houlihan - were actually discussed.
Yet for 1 - 2 years you have trolled us here with your baseless imagination that the Mexicans were unable - although they did their best, according to you - to provide the PI with a complete list of pork ingredients. And used that unsubstantiated claim to accuse the experts of obfuscation.
All your trolling missed the point that Team Houlihan tried to make (which is already in the CAS report), namely the stomach (outer stomach muscle) may contain a lot more nandro than regular boar meat/muscle. Twoggle to his credit has that realized long time ago.
They never made the point that it could have been kidney or liver or testicles or lard, because they knew better. However, since you have been trolling us since several months now with that, you will keep running with it. And if all fails, you will start your ridiculous chorizo distraction. Trolls be trolls.
You seem to place a great deal of weight on what Team Houlihan argued, or failed to argue, or what the PI found, or didn't find, or what the food truck owners provided, or failed to provide.
I don't pretend that Team Houlihan's defense, prepared in a matter of weeks if not days, was complete and exhaustive, or that Houlihan herself understands the "science", or the "law", behind what (allegedly) happened to her. In fact, the basis for the CAS findings is that Houlihan's defenses weren't complete enough to meet a legal burden to overcome presumptions not argued or supported with facts.
You seem to want to blame the food truck owners, but again, I don't know what Team Houlihan "briefly explained what we were hoping to get" includes, and given the short timeline (2 weeks into their investigation) whether their hopes were complete. Any relevant omissions could be the fault, inadvertent or otherwise, of the food truck owners, but also from Team Houlihan through its PI, failing to ask the right questions, due to lack of experience, or a lack of time.
You tell me to go with the facts for a change, as if I ever did otherwise. The day after being informed of her test result, Houlihan wrote "we think the burrito consumed the night before the test is the potential source". This is a reasonable thought backed by extensive WADA science.
It is a fact that Team Houlihan claimed "a burrito containing pork offal" to the AIU from the very beginning -- a fact confirmed by the CAS. Regardless of what Team Houlihan argued, or failed to argue, I have seen no facts nor concessions that ever reduced that original claim at any point in time, or eliminated any of the organs, that both Profs. McGlone and Ayotte told the CAS about, from being in that original claim of a "burrito containing pork offal". All I have seen to date is an incomplete rebuttal from the AIU "expert witnesses" about pork meat and stomach.
Regarding what Team Houlihan said about nandrolone in stomach, the CAS told us "Prof McGlone concedes that there is lack of data concerning androgen concentrations in the pig’s stomach. In Prof McGlone’s opinion ...". I agree with that -- there is no data from which to make any claim. This did not prevent Prof. McGlone from telling the CAS his opinion. These incomplete rebuttals about meat or stomach only obfuscate the broader discussion and the real claim of nandrolone from "pork offal".
Are you seriously trying to redefine what a positive test means??
Redefine? Whatever a "positive test" means, I'm questioning whether her ambiguous test results were correctly considered "positive".
The WADA TD says the sample test results can be reported as: an "Adverse Analytical Finding (AAF)", an "Atypical Finding (ATF)", or a "Negative Finding".
The first question before the CAS was, in multiple parts, whether the WADA Lab correctly reported the result as an AAF, or whether they deviated from the applicable WADA standards, and whether that departure from the standard reasonably caused the AAF, and consequently whether the AIU met its burden of establishing any ADRV occurred.
There was a disagreement among the CAS Panel on the answer to this question. If 33% of the Panel agreed with Houlihan, after seeing all the evidence, it should come as no surprise that some of the public also agrees with Houlihan, after seeing all the evidence.
Given 1) the minority dissent in the CAS Panel, 2) the CAS Panel omission explaining how WADA standards permit that the GC/C/IRMS may be used to establish the origin after the athlete invokes pork offal consumption, 3) the failure of the CAS panel to settle the question whether the AIU met its burden to establish that an ADRV occurred -- I find there is room for substantial doubt that the test results were correctly interpreted as an AAF by the WADA Lab, and that the AIU met its burden that an ADRV occurred before charging Houlihan.
And now you are really getting confused. It was you, and you alone, who accused the Mexicans of not being able to get the full list of pork ingredients despite trying their best (how generous and not xenophobic at all from you!) - from the last Houlihan thread I have seen:
I don't blame the food truck owners, who seem to have responded to the best of their ability with answers to the questions and the receipts they could find.
You are also wrong about the 7, 10, or 14 days time limit for the list. As you would have noticed, if you had read the actual CAS report, they could still make amendments during the hearing. So, they had over 4 months to retrieve the full list of pork ingredients.
Mind you, that is of course all irrelevant theory, as all of that exists only in your imagination. They obtained the list already in February, and forwarded it promptly to the AIU, and never ever pretended otherwise. That's only you who keeps trolling with that.
I think it's because Ayotte used the newer procedures before they became effective and I think before they were even approved. There's the TD2019-NA document that was effective in Dec 2020 and 2 versions of the TD2021-NA document with version 2 being effective right before the trial in June 2021. It looks a bit shady.
Not quite. Prof. Ayotte said the opposite: that they applied the TD2019NA, while the principle of "Lex Mitior" says that the TD2021NA applies once published, even before it officially takes effect, when it is more favorable to the athlete.
Yet both the TD2019NA and the TD2021NA explicitly state that ingestion of nandrolone from pork is considered by WADA as "endogenous" -- i.e. not doping. The TD2021NA makes it more clear, that the GC/C/IRMS cannot determine the (endogenous/exogenous) origin if it is potentially confounded by pork ingestion.
Not quite sure I understand what protocol Houlihan is describing. Any finding of an ATF, rather than an AAF, is only possible when the athlete invokes pork consumption, which would only be possible by notifying the athlete. Any failure of the WADA Lab to follow WADA's protocol would be in their reporting of the B-sample results, after Houlihan invoked pork consumption. In this case, "The origin of the urinary 19-NA may not be established by GC/IRMS analysis ..."
In Houlihan's case, we ended up with a kind of circular argument, where the ends were used to justify the means. The athlete burden to establish the source only begins when the athlete is properly charged with an ADRV. But the ADRV cannot be properly charged without the GC/C/IRMS result determining exogenous origin. But the exogenous origin cannot be determined by GC/C/IRMS analysis, if it is confounded by pork consumption. The athlete burden at this early B-sample testing stage, before the ADRV, before the AAF, is "athlete invocation". The WADA Lab is not authorized to consider the likelihood of pork consumption, and the AIU is burdened with establishing the ADRV to the higher standard of "comfortable satisfaction" based on the WADA Lab reporting, subject to WADA's standards.
The 2019 document says a signature in the range of -20 to -24 is inconclusive, and her samples were -23. An adverse finding has to be beyond -24. Ayotte was supposed to compare ratio of 19NA to 19NE. If greater than 3 it would be an atypical finding. If less than 3 she would have been declared clean. It looks like they changed the rules in 2021 to cover for Ayotte and go after Houlihan.
Are you seriously trying to redefine what a positive test means??
It looks like somebody at WADA did. I found version 1 of TD2021NA. It was written on Dec 21, 2020. Houlihan's "positive" sample was taken on Dec 15, just 6 days prior.
This might explain some of the trolls on this message board.
And now you are really getting confused. It was you, and you alone, who accused the Mexicans of not being able to get the full list of pork ingredients despite trying their best (how generous and not xenophobic at all from you!) - from the last Houlihan thread I have seen:
I don't blame the food truck owners, who seem to have responded to the best of their ability with answers to the questions and the receipts they could find.
You are also wrong about the 7, 10, or 14 days time limit for the list. As you would have noticed, if you had read the actual CAS report, they could still make amendments during the hearing. So, they had over 4 months to retrieve the full list of pork ingredients.
Mind you, that is of course all irrelevant theory, as all of that exists only in your imagination. They obtained the list already in February, and forwarded it promptly to the AIU, and never ever pretended otherwise. That's only you who keeps trolling with that.
Since the 130 and 20-140ng/mL values are in the literature, then Professor Ayotte was untruthful in page 22 of the CAS document:
CAS report / Ayotte wrote:
• The concentration of 19-NA measured at 7.8 ng/mL in the B-Sample (and estimated at 6.9 ng/mL from the initial testing procedure of the A-Sample) is not consistent with the ingestion of uncastrated pig meat, more than twice exceeding the highest amount reported in literature following the ingestion of much larger amounts of meat.
No. As one of the key authors on that topic, she differentiates between "meat" and specific organs, see for example Table 2 of the 2009 Guay paper. Therein, "meat" results in 0.6 - 2.4 ng/mL (for a 300 g sample), and "kidney, liver, heart mix" in 21.4 - 130 ng/mL (also for a 300 g sample). Note that the "meat" maximum was reached in less than 4 hours, and much lower after 10 hours (Houlihan's claim).
You also keep misunderstanding 3.2 of the TD2019NA, although that is actually quite clear: they had to report Houlihan's positive test as an AAF according to that.
And you should realize that no one at WADA can come up with a new TD within 6 days of a positive test. That process takes months.
"The CAS wasn't unanimous as to whether Houlihan's test results were a "positive test"."
Of course, that was a complete lie.
Now of course you try to deflect and start a new discussion.
It's the same discussion both times. "positive test" isn't my term, therefore it is in quotes. While "positive test" isn't a term used by WADA, only an AAF can lead to a charge of an ADRV (i.e. Doping as defined by WADA).
Of course I told the truth, to the extent that the CAS reported it. See Paragraph #75. From that, we can conclude that the CAS Panel was split, and a minority of the Panel was persuaded that the WADA Lab departed from the standard when reporting the AAF, and/or that Houlihan rebutted the presumption that the AAF was properly reported and notified.
In other words, the lie would be to say that a "positive test" is a fact -- it is the opinion of the majority, as well as the default presumption in the WADA Code.
No. As one of the key authors on that topic, she differentiates between "meat" and specific organs, see for example Table 2 of the 2009 Guay paper. Therein, "meat" results in 0.6 - 2.4 ng/mL (for a 300 g sample), and "kidney, liver, heart mix" in 21.4 - 130 ng/mL (also for a 300 g sample). Note that the "meat" maximum was reached in less than 4 hours, and much lower after 10 hours (Houlihan's claim).
You also keep misunderstanding 3.2 of the TD2019NA, although that is actually quite clear: they had to report Houlihan's positive test as an AAF according to that.
And you should realize that no one at WADA can come up with a new TD within 6 days of a positive test. That process takes months.
Ayotte differentiated between meat and specific organs. The discussion was partly about a different *organ* that had not been tested as admitted to by all parties. So, we’re left to speculating whether a test of the same individuals with pork stomach would have yielded results closer to 130ng/ml or 2.4ng/ml. I wouldn’t bet on McGlone’s speculation since his 1 in 10,000 speculation is looking bad.
To me the guidance from the TD2021NA at the end of section 3.2.1 is quite clear that they would have determined Houlihan obtained 19-NA from “natural sources.” They wrote the note and their description of the note as guidance to choose between 1 of 2 choices: 1) natural sources; or 2) injection. There was no 3rd choice. Now I fully admit the this guidance is nonsensical gibberish, but I didn’t write it or keep it this way for 4 years.
The reasoning for their guidance is spelled out in section 3.2.1 here:
For those who might say that would get Houlihan off on a technicality, I would say that they should have mentioned other routes of administration and other non-natural sources in their note as well as the 40% false positive rate (known at the time) for the GC-IRMS test as it relates to boar.
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
No. As one of the key authors on that topic, she differentiates between "meat" and specific organs, see for example Table 2 of the 2009 Guay paper. Therein, "meat" results in 0.6 - 2.4 ng/mL (for a 300 g sample), and "kidney, liver, heart mix" in 21.4 - 130 ng/mL (also for a 300 g sample). Note that the "meat" maximum was reached in less than 4 hours, and much lower after 10 hours (Houlihan's claim).
You also keep misunderstanding 3.2 of the TD2019NA, although that is actually quite clear: they had to report Houlihan's positive test as an AAF according to that.
And you should realize that no one at WADA can come up with a new TD within 6 days of a positive test. That process takes months.
Ayotte differentiated between meat and specific organs. The discussion was partly about a different *organ* that had not been tested as admitted to by all parties. So, we’re left to speculating whether a test of the same individuals with pork stomach would have yielded results closer to 130ng/ml or 2.4ng/ml. I wouldn’t bet on McGlone’s speculation since his 1 in 10,000 speculation is looking bad.
To me the guidance from the TD2021NA at the end of section 3.2.1 is quite clear that they would have determined Houlihan obtained 19-NA from “natural sources.” They wrote the note and their description of the note as guidance to choose between 1 of 2 choices: 1) natural sources; or 2) injection. There was no 3rd choice. Now I fully admit the this guidance is nonsensical gibberish, but I didn’t write it or keep it this way for 4 years.
The reasoning for their guidance is spelled out in section 3.2.1 here:
For those who might say that would get Houlihan off on a technicality, I would say that they should have mentioned other routes of administration and other non-natural sources in their note as well as the 40% false positive rate (known at the time) for the GC-IRMS test as it relates to boar.
I'm trying to picture you guys as you keyboard bicker back and forth.
No. As one of the key authors on that topic, she differentiates between "meat" and specific organs, see for example Table 2 of the 2009 Guay paper. Therein, "meat" results in 0.6 - 2.4 ng/mL (for a 300 g sample), and "kidney, liver, heart mix" in 21.4 - 130 ng/mL (also for a 300 g sample). Note that the "meat" maximum was reached in less than 4 hours, and much lower after 10 hours (Houlihan's claim).
You also keep misunderstanding 3.2 of the TD2019NA, although that is actually quite clear: they had to report Houlihan's positive test as an AAF according to that.
And you should realize that no one at WADA can come up with a new TD within 6 days of a positive test. That process takes months.
Okay, you're right about meat v offal. However, offal was on the menu, so there's a reasonable possibility that part of a kidney ended up in that burrito.
I meant the 2019 document is clear that it would be an atypical finding, not an adverse finding. And that document was effective unless Ayotte deliberately waited a few days to run the test?
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