Meldonium Amnesty

I'm surprised that Letsrun doesn't think it should be illegal to use performance-enhancing with the intent to gain an advantage unless the drugs are specifically listed by name. Seems that love of Paula may have clouded their judgment more broadly now.

The WADA Prohibited List endeavours to capture as many known substances and methods that satisfy any two of the following three criteria:

Potential to enhance or enhances sports performance

An actual or potential health risk to the athlete

Use violates the spirit of sport (outlined in the Code)

Every clause in the code has a list of prohibited substances preceded by the words "including, but no limited to," specifically to address the issue that athletes would otherwise easily skirt the law by finding unlisted substances that have similar effects.

Why shouldn't drugs intended to confer unfair advantages similar to those of EPO or other illegal drugs be considered violations of the spirit of sport?

Wejo, do you agree with rojo on this?

here is a list of people with bad PR stories associated with Nike:

1) Joe Paterno

2) Justin Gatlin

3) Marion Jones

4) Mary Decker Slaney-who was also coached by Alberto Salazar at the time.

5) Lance Armstrong

6) Paula Radcliffe

7) Lord Sebastian Coe

8) CEO of Kenyan Athletics

9) USATF

10) Alberto Salazar

11) Maria Sharapova

the Nike Hall of PR Fame

webby wrote:

I'm surprised that Letsrun doesn't think it should be illegal to use performance-enhancing with the intent to gain an advantage unless the drugs are specifically listed by name. Seems that love of Paula may have clouded their judgment more broadly now.

Every clause in the code has a list of prohibited substances preceded by the words "including, but no limited to," specifically to address the issue that athletes would otherwise easily skirt the law by finding unlisted substances that have similar effects.

Why shouldn't drugs intended to confer unfair advantages similar to those of EPO or other illegal drugs be considered violations of the spirit of sport?

Wejo, do you agree with rojo on this?

What you are saying about the Prohibited List is wrong. Whether the list prohibits drugs by category or only drugs specifically named depends on the rule.

For example, S1 on "Anabolic Agents" prohibits an entire category. The rule is "Anabolic agents are prohibited." S1 then gives a list of example that are banned (the language is "including" or "including but not limited to"). S2 works the same way and bans a whole category of "Peptide hormones, hormones, growth factors, related substances and mimetics." S3 bans all Beta-2 Agonists EXCEPT certain named substances.

Meldonium falls under S4 for "Hormone and Metabolic Modulators." The language in S4 is "The following hormone and metabolic modulators are prohibited: ... 5. Metabolic Modulators ... Meldonium." The rule only bans "the following" specifically named metabolic modulators. Because Meldonium falls under a rule where only specifically named drugs are banned, it was not a violation of the WADA code to use Meldonium before it was specifically added to S4.

If you think the rules should be changed to ban all hormones and metabolic modulators, that's one thing. But as I said before, it is unfair to penalize people who follow the actual rules that are in place. The actual rule in place was that Meldonium was allowed until 1/1/16.

This is total bullsh!t !! WADA are a joke...Dopers should be banned for life.

This is the last time I'm saying this:

No where on this thread is anyone saying meldonium should be legal. What is being said is the WADA did not follow their own rigor in banning it. In doing so, the left themselves and the sport open to exploitation later.

Nor did I suggest that it did. This thread is about whether athletes should be banned for using unethical PEDs that mimic the benefits of banned drugs. Many of us think they can and should be banned under the current rules, before the PEDs are added to the list by name.

The farce of drug rules in this sport is such a joke. This just makes it more ridiculous.

Frustrated Observer wrote:

100's of runners who have been intentionally doping for years were notified months before the drug would trigger a positive test now get off the hook? What about the athletes that have lost prize money, team births, and contracts to these cheaters? This is exactly what's wrong with our sport. People intentionally dope with a drug off the radar and their given no penalty. They should have been banned before the drug was even put on the list because they were only taking it for a performance advantage.

What is wrong with WADA. They should have been able to ban these athletes before 2016 with the fact that the athletes, coaches, and doctors were all breaking the ethics of sport by taking it in.

Here's my solution to this issue. Athletes must declare to WADA all medications, supplements, any non natural recovery aid. If WADA finds an athlete is taking something for performance enhancement they aren't declaring then they would be punished even if it wasn't a banned substance. If Wada could have seen the trend of Melodonium use years ago they would have banned it then.

You can't just ban athletes for taking something that wasn't banned. But I agree that they were cheating. Making athletes declare is the most fair solution. And WADA could notify athletes a drug is going to banned if they athlete is currently taking it while it is legal. So we don't see this ridiculous trainwreck again.

I have no sympathy for anyone who tested positive and think they should all be punished. It was made clear this drug would be illegal months before 2016 started and the athletes had plenty of time to stop taking it before then.

rjm33 wrote:

here is a list of people with bad PR stories associated with Nike:

1) Joe Paterno

2) Justin Gatlin

3) Marion Jones

4) Mary Decker Slaney-who was also coached by Alberto Salazar at the time.

5) Lance Armstrong

6) Paula Radcliffe

7) Lord Sebastian Coe

8) CEO of Kenyan Athletics

9) USATF

10) Alberto Salazar

11) Maria Sharapova

the Nike Hall of PR Fame

12) Tiger Woods

13) the NFL

Wada up cheaters? wrote:

Sharapova letting her money talk?

Her test was March 2nd.

What A Difference A Day Makes, 24 little hours. . .

If the B sample analysis is done at the Lausanne lab of Dr. Martial Saugy, it will be very, very unlikely that any meldonium will be found.

No worries for Maria or Abeba Aregawi.

I think I read on another thread that Aregawi's manager is Jos Hermens.

Evidence for "potential to enhance" or "potential to have health risk" should not be very hard to establish; as we already talked about both on the other thread. This is like letting people off on a technicality with the people taking meldonium as the victims of an incompetent WADA; who should of at least determined clearance rates.

Can you think of any other time that WADA just changed the rules?

I think it is because the PR story keeps getting worse and many of the positives are Russian, which makes it even more of a PR disaster.

Why can't it be the athlete's responsibility or the Russian federation's responsibility to determine clearance rates? That is their problem.

If someone has meldonium in their blood or urine after Jan. 1 2016, then they have a positive test for meldonium. Too bad for them.

The athlete is responsible for what substances are in their blood or urine when tested. Period.

This one is exceptionally easy.

Legally and morally anyone testing positive for meldonium after its 2016 date of addition to the banned substances list should be banned. If the drug is in your system after the date it has been added, you could be benefittiing from its performance enhancing effects and you are cheating and therefore you should be banned. There is absolutely no other way to interpret this one. If you were taking the drug bfore 2016 then tough - you should not have been going to see the doctor to get yourself pumped up full of drugs to run faster in the first place.

Frankly, any lawyer trying to argue otherwise should have their license to practice law taken away permanently.

Thanks for pointing out that metabolic modulators seem to be the one category that requires specific naming, nvnvnvnvnv.

Talk about baffling. Does anyone have any insights into why WADA leaves "but not limited to" out of the metabolic modulator category? Did someone lobby to give athletes free reign with unlisted metabolic modulators?

Is there a reason that unlisted metabolic modulators should be legal while unlisted substances in all other categories can be treated as violations if they violate the spirit of sport? Or was "not limited to" left off the last section accidentally?

Not to beat a dead horse (well maybe a little), why bother banning a "substance" when its not really been shown in the studies done, to enhance performance? I won't call it a drug as the consensus in the medical community is that its not really even of benefit for heart patients. Otherwise it would be widely studied here in the US. As we discussed previously, a theoretical mechanism in the absence of empirical data, in my opinion does not warrant a ban, or sanctions. "Intent" is a slippery slope, when the substance the athlete "intends" to use, is of no benefit.

Clerk wrote:

USA USA USA wrote:

Actual performance enhancement is not required. If it violates the spirit or sport--trying to cheat--, and is detrimental to the health of an athlete--you cannot hurt yourself if you want to--then it can be banned.

There is no data showing it is harmful. WADA says a substance or method must violate two of those criteria. Hard data showed it violated one, and while an understanding of the drug showed it theoretically could violate a second, there was no data. Really there was little discussion at all on this mechanism by WADA.

Russia has very good doctors and scientist; I doubt a wealthy tennis player and an entire hockey team would take a drug if it had not been proven effective. Meldonium is a very good PED, it does not do any one thing as effective as a steriod or EPO, but overall it has several good PED properities. Besides, even if it was a placebo, why are atheletes taking a perscribed medication for which there is no ailment?

I agree with you. Like I said, I don't think there is any debate that athletes taking meldonium were doing it for any other reason than performance enhancement. But the thing worth discussing is the way WADA bungled this whole thing:

The Mildronate in Professional Sports article, which highlighted the intended use of Meldonium (used for performance enhancement) and studied about detection methods was published April 5th last year. WADA announced in October that it would be added to the banned list.

Here is the Prohibited list expert panel, and links to a database of their publications and contributions:

Audrey KINAHAN (Chair)

Ireland

Vibeke BACKER

Denmark

Martin BIDLINGMAIER

Germany

Xavier BIGARD

France

Richard BUDGETT

United Kingdom / Switzerland

Michael CULLER

USA

Bryan FINKLE

USA

Thomas J. HUDZIK

USA

Marilyn HUESTIS

USA

Mark STUART-

United Kingdom

Justice TETTEY-

Ghana/UK

Mario THEVIS-

Germany

Detlef THIEME-

Germany

These aren't WADA employees per se. As in, they don't show up to work in Lausanne or Montreal to put on a lab coat and clock in. Some of these individuals have other significant positions, such as United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

From a brief glance, the publications since the beginning of 2015 are focused on LCHF diets, various hormone receptors, cannabis (like, three of these people spend the last year working on cannabis...) and all sorts of stuff. Only Thevis and Thieme have work in the last year-and-a-half specifically on anti doping. Thevis was an author on that Mildronate in Professional Sports article. In fact, he has published A LOT in the past year monitoring different substances, and reporting on detection methods of substances (such as Xenon, urinary Nickel in horse racing or Mitragynine (Kratom)... interesting stuff (seriously)).

In fact, Thevis seems to be the workhorse of this group in terms of actual anti-doping work. Thieme only has a few publications since 2015, but at least they are related to anti doping.

I looked at the other authors of the Mildronate in Professional Sports article to see if THEY knew what was up with meldonium, but they haven't done other work with it either (those authors have worked together a lot recently.)

And given the national make-up of the WADA expert group, with no Eastern Europeans, no one likely had real familiarity with the drug.

Now, WADA doesn't need to publish everything they do. They're not an academic institution. But the fact that of their Prohibited List Expert Panel, only one researcher had one connection to one study (he was the last author btw), shows that WADA messed up.

Like rjm33 said, performance enhancement or potential to have health risks should not have been hard to prove, but they didn't. Any graduate student could pea-hack their way to conclusive evidence given the way this drug was circulating around athletes and teams. Having looked more into this situation, the WADA process is especially troubling. And that's not to mention the bureaucratic troubles: Director General is sailing off to retirement in a few months, Craig Reedie being up Coe's ass on every move he makes, suspicious contributions during his run for WADA president, and talking down the only tools WADA has to combat institutional doping. He's an IOC vice president, despite the fact that WADA and IOC have opposing interests (promoting the sport vs. controlling its doping-fuelled spectical) The guy wants a magic box to detect doping "

but gives his "President of WADA" scientific opinion on thyroid hormone or as if its holy gospel. anyways. I'll save that for a different thread.

I misunderstood the different WADA expert groups.

The Prohibited List Expert Group is overseen by the Health, Medical and Research Expert Comittee. Valérie FOURNEYRON (Chair) France, Alessia DI GIANFRANCESCO Italy, Jiri DVORAK Switzerland, Lars ENGEBRETSEN Norway, Kamal HADIDI Jordan, David HANDELSMAN Australia, M. JEGATHESAN Malaysia, Margo MOUNTJOY Canada, Toni PASCUAL Spain, Orlando REYES Colombia, Jürgen STEINACKER Germany, Cristian STRASBURGER Germany, Hidenori SUZUKI Japan, Fabio PIGOZZI (observer - FIMS Representative) Italy.

Not sure how, but it seems they would have a role in collecting the data and relevant research for making decisions regarding the Prohibited List.

Here is a list of the WADA-backed research papers since 2001 (nothing on Meldonium)

https://www.wada-ama.org/en/funded-research-projects

Meldonium should be more in the supplement category. What we should find out is if it really does help people's heart's as its claimed.