jacksprat wrote:
Rekrunner; why are these people taking EPO to the extent that they get caught, when it doesn't really increase performance?
Reasons to believe that EPO works :
1/ Basic biology that an increase in red blood cells will benefit performance.
2/ Countless studies and observations that have confirmed EPO causes biological changes that would be consistent with what we know about the biology of performance.
3/ Multiple studies directly confirming that EPO use improves performance.
4/ Anecdotal evidence of thousands of athletes (and often their coaches, doctors) who have used EPO and found that it improved their performance (and so continued using it, despite risks).
Reasons to believe that EPO does not work :
1/ Some obsessive rando on a running forum claims that he has observed that East African runners have slender legs, and that this, combined with the fact that Eskimos did not improve their times during the EPO era, and that neither did Russians run significantly faster than the Soviet Union state sponsored blood doping era, that this proves that EPO does not work. Nobody, ever, has agreed with him, and even the doping apologist wackos and Jama Aden $2 an hour shills cannot bring themselves to agree with him and say that EPO does not work. However, he is convinced that the onus is on us to prove that EPO works, and goes to bed every night with a smug expression on his face.