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Re: Is Anyone Else Disturbed By This? Re: Contador's Ascent of Verbier [mlinenb]
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If you are no longer suspicious- when Lance at his best- had riders 2-5 banned for drug usage, and Lance testing positive for EPO when he was weaker (tour 1999)- than- that's your opinion.

Part of my job is working as a medical review officer. This means I am a physician who signs off on drug tests and definitively states whether they are or are not positive for a given substance. I also supervise the staff that does the testing and I have personally observed innumerable drug tests.

People need to stop this nonsense about "Lance tested positive for EPO". This is false on a number of grounds.

1) An independent investigation was commissioned, headed by Vrijman (an attorney and former head of antidoping in the Netherlands). His report can be found on the Internet. Summary: Proper records were not kept by the lab, chain of custody was not maintained, and Armstrong was specifically targeted.

You can have any opinion you like about Lance Armstrong, but an independent investigation disputes your contention. If I signed off on a drug test as "positive" when chain of custody was not maintained, I'd lose my job and would face legal action. In the United States, a lab representing a drug test as positive without proper chain of custody and documentation would be shut down.

2) Read some of the interviews with Dr. Christiane Ayotte, who was director of the WADA-Accredited lab in Montreal at the time all this went down. “EPO…is not stable in urine, even if stored at -20 degrees.” ; “The stability of EPO in urine isn’t as long as 5 years according to our testing here in Montreal. It is more a matter of months.”

If what Dr. Ayotte said was true, we have a major problem on our hands. How do you get a positive test from a sample many times too old to contain what you are testing for?

There is an enormous problem with doping in sport. There are plenty of results out there that may make me suspicious. However, suspicion does not equal guilt, and no matter how many sensationalized media reports people may read, most have no firsthand knowledge of the state of doping, or who is or is not using drugs to enhance performance. The best most of us can do is demand the highest standards from the agencies, laboratories, physicians and scientists involved in policing the sports we enjoy. In the case above, even very basic standards of competence were not met. In fact, the entire affair was a circus and the people and agencies involved should be ashamed of themselves. Cases like the one in question set back the cause of antidoping immeasurably.

By saying things like "Lance Armstrong tested positive," we are implicitly stating that we are okay with the way the testing was conducted and are confident of the results. Given what I have written above, are you confident? I don't mean, "Oh yeah, the guy is probably dirty." I mean would you personally be willing to sign on the dotted line and cause someone to lose their job, reputation, and life's work on the basis of the evidence provided?

Phil
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Dr. Philip Skiba
Scientific Training for Endurance Athletes now available on Amazon!
Last edited by: Philbert: Jul 24, 09 23:05

Edit Log:

  • Post edited by Philbert (Dawson Saddle) on Jul 24, 09 23:05