Aragon wrote:
I'll wrap up the case briefly now and leave it for readers to decide who has the best arguments.
Best arguments for what case? There's been a plethora of information on this and other EPO doping threads on cases with elites (e.g., performance improvements, ABP sanction details, testimonials, etc). To decide whether or not rHuEPO is effective based soley on Hesch's ambiguous case is to obfuscate the much stronger anecdotal evidence with elites.
Aragon wrote:
I'll do so, because I have better things to do and I honestly can foresee that we are just one step away from the flood of never-ending and barely relevant references to the seven-year-old OFF-scores of some never-heard Russian runners with names reminiscent of Doperova Eponshki from page 369 of some report.
Too funny..."seven-year-old OFF-scores of some never-heard Russian runners" (?). Well then...how about a very well-known Bahraini runner who competed in the 2005 WCs with off-scores of 157.8 & 148. And lets see here: A ~6% improvement from 2002 - 04, double 8/15 in the 05 WCs, and a gold medal performance at Beijing (btw, you can find the off-score information on page #4 of the "IAAF BLOOD-TESTING 2001-2012: IAAF’s RESPONSE TO ALLEGATIONS OF BLOOD DOPING IN ATHLETICS").
Aragon wrote:
To summarize: We have a rEPO user, who was an OK national level runner. We don't know when his regimen started. We don't know anything about his rEPO-fueled improvements. We can't even believe that anything he tells is necessarily true. I am wondering why anyone hasn't yet written a research paper "Durusselish Magical Improvements Associated with the Use or Recombinant Human Erythropoietin: A Case Study" based on his story.
True...we don't know much about Hesch. OTOH, we know a lot more with the Cathal Lombard case. A head spinning, profound case where with the use of rHuEPO, he improves his 10000m time a whopping ~11% in 18 months (30:35/27:33) & finds himself qualified for Athens! I would implore you to see the thread on: "How fast could a 15:00 5k guy get on EPO?" A poster ("Tyreek") who is familiar with the case from his/her affiliation with Leevale AC in Ireland has further info. I'm seriously wondering why anyone hasn't yet written a case review paper of his profound, extreme, head spinning, etc, improvement with rocket fuel.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/i-took-epo-to-have-an-equal-chance-says-athlete-51094.html
Aragon wrote:
Just one anecdotal illustration of why I occasionally find your logic not the best. I haven't done the math and rEPO isn't even the most expensive product in the market, but if you honestly believe that the guy kept his hematocrit in low 50s for several years in row, I wouldn't be surprised had he ended up spending most of his $40,000 price money to just to finance his regimen.
And perhaps he did spend most of the 40 Gs on PEDs. After all, he may have been addicted to that euphoria of being like a "Kenyan floatng down the road." 😄