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
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martin_Bidlingmaier/publicationsGermany
Xavier BIGARD
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Xavier_Bigard2/publicationsFrance
Richard BUDGETT
United Kingdom / Switzerland
Michael CULLER
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Culler/publicationsUSA
Bryan FINKLE
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bryan_Finkle/publicationsUSA
Thomas J. HUDZIK
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Hudzik/publicationsUSA
Marilyn HUESTIS
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marilyn_Huestis/publicationsUSA
Mark STUART-
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark_Butler3/publicationsUnited Kingdom
Justice TETTEY-
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Justice_Tettey/publicationsGhana/UK
Mario THEVIS-
https://www.researchgate.net/researcher/38828080_Mario_ThevisGermany
Detlef THIEME-
https://www.researchgate.net/researcher/39736908_Detlef_ThiemeGermany
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.