My arguments are the same whether EPO use is 0% or 100%. The role of EPO in distance running "at the top", and the expected magnitude of benefit, is unknown, because it has not been reliably observed. Experiments "in the middle" have not developed a model that could help us predict what happens at the extreme.The assumption that EPO use was widespread during the EPO era is not mine, and not one I need, but seems to be a core assumption of the EPO-era mythology. I will admit some surprise, though, that when confronted with the time proven reality of universal lackluster progressions for all native nationals from five continents, for two decades during the entire EPO-era, some EPO "followers" suggested the EPO use was effectively non-existent among what amounts to athletes selected by ethnicity (and not performance) representing 85% of the world population, from five continents, for two decades, while still believing in the significant power of EPO having played a necessary determining role in the performance of East Africans and North Africans. Oh, and it helped some Spanish indoor European record setters, and one German athlete actually busted for steroids, two years after his only sub-13:00 performance. Oh, and maybe it helped Chinese women too, if they indeed took EPO, and did not take steroids, known to turn women into men. We know that Russian women took steroids.World best times are recorded history. These are historical facts in evidence. When non-Africans did not break 27:00 for 10,000m until 2010 (and similar statistics exist in all distance running events), well after the ABP was introduced, I leave it to the reader to decide why EPO was ineffective "at the top" for non-African nationals: because 1) no one close enough to "the top" took EPO, or 2) many runners "at the top" actually took EPO, but still failed to do what East Africans started doing routinely in 1993. In America, the four best marathon runners during the EPO-era were, an Eritrean, a Moroccan, a Somalian, and a native Californian. It's an amazing claim that the best of the rest of the world stepped off the track, and the road, and the grass, and stood by and watched East Africans take distance running to the next level, avoiding the temptation of such a powerful undetectable drug, that works on everyone, that was a poorly kept secret. How did five continents miss the EPO-train? Did no one tell these non-African athletes from five continents the amazing power of EPO for endurance events? 6%! 9 minutes in the marathon! Didn't these athletes believe in it? Or did they believe in it, take EPO, and then were they simply let down by their false beliefs? I don't need to decide this question. Whether EPO use among non-Africans was 0%, 50%, or 100%, my conclusion is the same, that EPO, during the two decades of the EPO-era, was absolutely a non-factor "at the top" for athletes from five continents, in every distance event. Once you've accepted this indisputable reality, that either EPO was not used, or was used and ineffective, in any athlete that mattered "at the top", it should help to put "EPO works on East Africans because it works on everyone" in a better perspective. Someone first needs to make the case that it has worked, or can work, "at the top" for the rest of the world, before attempting to argue that East Africans are no exception."Lack of effective testing" arguments fail, because 1) for a decade, no one could be tested for EPO or blood doping, as no test existed; then for the next decade, testing was ineffective until (allegedly) second generation testing in 2007 (not my claim), and then the ABP in 2009, and 2) East and North African nationals based in Japan, USA, England, Denmark, etc., countries where OOC testing is performed by the respective national ADOs, achieve comparable performances that non-Africans are simply unable to match.Marc Daly's (BBC journalist) EPO experiment certainly makes for great emotional journalism, especially among those looking to confirm their beliefs, but he did not actually take enough samples to build an ABP profile. And he did not measure his own performance. As we learned from the CIRC, in cycling, cyclists believed that micro-dosing also means micro-benefit.My argument about 3 out of 27 being busted for EPO does not rely on any assumption of the effective detection rate. It is simply a statement of fact that we do not know about the other 24. I note here also the blatant contradiction between the assumption that many of these other 24 top-women must be taking EPO, but we simply haven't detected it (in fact I am naive for "believing" it is only these 3, and we've caught them thanks to effective testing), while in the EPO-era, we should assume all of the elite athletes of the first world simply refused to take a drug known to be highly effective and undetectable -- maybe for moral reasons. Whereas "I like Vodka" thinks busting #27 of all time should be the icing on the cake, my argument, here and now, in this context, about the womens marathon, by looking at 3 "anecdotes" of the top 27, is that we do not know anything about the other 24 and any alleged connection to doping. Much of believing "EPO works for all athletes at the top" relies on "believing" many things we *do not know*. I call this faith. We also don't really know *how much* EPO helped the 3 women that were busted, nor by which mechanisms, nor when they started taking EPO. Even with these 3 women, where we know they failed an EPO test, there is much we *do not know* about the relation of EPO and there performance. EPO believers can't decide whether it's due to blood values (where there are many studies on amateurs), or enables harder training or better recovery (where there is absolutely no study). It is not me who requires any effective detection rate, but it is EPO believers that need many of these top times to be fueled by EPO, something we simply do not know, to help confirm the largely unproven hypothesis that EPO is indeed effective and necessary at producing top times. It cannot be the icing on the cake, when you are not even sure if you've added any eggs to the batter yet.The "corruption" that was "proven" in the IAAF, and the attempts to cover-up ADRVs, actually failed, as the corruption was exposed by two whistle blowers, and by pressure from within, from determined IAAF anti-doping staff who did not see timely sanctions for athletes they knew were determined to have committed ADRVs.