What Motivates Ryan Braun?

There was the facetious notion that the steroid era was over, that sport has entered a new "clean" era where competition was based upon natural talent and hard work. This fantastic notion was short lived and unrealistic, there seems to be an incredibly strong incentive among professional athletes to perform at a level that would be considered beyond any physiological medical possibility and for sustained periods of time, with remarkably short recovery times also considered physiologically impossible. Consider Ryan Braun. Ryan Braun was voted as Major League Baseball's most valuable player, a man who lead the Milwaukee Brewers to the first post season playoff possibilities in years. And yet, even though Ryan Braun was considered an academic success with a outstanding scholastic record, a role model for children to emulate as a hero, he tested positive for synthetic testosterone that was synthetically derived from a carbon 13 supplement. Why do these things happen? What would motivate a person to risk all, to be derided in the press as a villain and subjected to ridicule, to face a certain 50 game suspension, loss of revenue, and a eternal tarnished legacy? The answer is obvious, "greed is good." There seems to be something genetic in the makeup of the modern athlete that compels these people to bask in the glow of accolades, there seems to be something positively endearing with the knowledge that in the era of twenty-four seven sport radio, that your name is being discussed as the topic of conversation and the current trend, it seems to be addictive to be regarded as the leader who is leading a struggling, average team into a new era of successful competition. Me, me, me! There is, as the old cliche says, "there is no I in team," except when you are pounding out 33 home runs a year and batting a .400 at bat average. And hey, when you are at the pinnacle of the sport there is an absolute desire to stay there as long as possible, to extend a career, to negotiate a lucrative contract extension...built in incentives that motivate otherwise outstanding role model athletes to cheat by using performance enhancing substances. But this is the nature of a cut throat business, sport demands outstanding performance levels of the most elite athletes, the top one tenth of one percent, performance dictates duration and duration determines contract extensions. Injuries, the bane of athletic performance, are unavoidable and additive, injury leads to decreased athletic ability, injuries lead to questions as to the continued sustainability of the athlete over a long term bases and therefore to the long term beneficial feasibility of this athlete to the overall long term success of the team, should this person be retained or waived or released? Consequently, there is an incentive to speed recovery from injury in the shortest possible time, for the longest possible duration, with the shortest possible discomfort, and with the smallest possibility of re-occurrence. Injuries, as all athletes know lead to side-effects that become manifest over time, debilitating arthritis being one of the most common and most devastating. So why not use human growth hormone at the sight of injury to speed recovery and increase performance levels? There are always young hungry athletes coming up through the AAA ranks ready to bask in the limelight of the big leagues, and youth will replace an aging athlete every time. Ryan Braun does what most indicted athletes do, he denies everything and then claims extenuating circumstances as an alibi.

Ryan Braun is claiming that he has a medical condition that requires testosterone supplementation. Very good. No one has a better understanding of his body than Ryan Braun. But as Rob Dibble sneeringly notes on Fox Sports Radio Major League Baseball provides in the rules an exemption for athletes with existing medical conditions, the Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE). The therapeutic use exemption allows athletes with medical conditions that can be ascertained by a medical doctor and verified by medical documentation such as laboratory test results, attestations from the doctor as to the legitimate nature of the disorder and to the necessity of a known performance enhancing drug to be used as an medically necessary and efficacious treatment option, to be given an exemption to use a performance enhancing drug during a professional sport event, or during a professional sport season. But, even though the requirements are very straight forward and though every medical doctor treating an professional athlete should be aware of and explicitly understand these rules, there seems to be an astonishing number of cases where after an athlete tests positive for performance enhancing drugs, there is an astonishing number of people who claim confusion of or ignorance of these basic rules. Thus originates among the scathing public, commentators, bloggers, doubt as to the truthfulness of these claims. Frankly, Ryan Braun will certainly lose in an impartial arbitration hearing if he argues an existing medical condition as an extenuating circumstance. Of course, nobody wants to rush to judgment in this case, or in any other case.

Major League Baseball should be congratulated for their outstanding effort to ensure fairness, accuracy, and credibility in this case. When Ryan Braun tested positive for testosterone on the testosterone/epitestosterone screening test at an "incredible level" they sent the test results to a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accredited laboratory for verification! Whoa! WADA! the golden standard for testosterone/epitestosterone testing throughout the world! You are laughing, mon ami? Outside of the delusional world of WADA the testosterone/epitestosterone testing done by WADA accredited laboratories resembles more of the tin foil standard than a golden one, with variable results obtained from a single urine sample! So much for reliability and validity at WADA! Ah so, if Ryan Braun and his defense want to attack anything it should look no further than the Floyd Landis arbitration award to document the incompetence of WADA testosterone/epitestosterone testing! However, there is an independent confirmation of the testosterone/epitestosterone test available at an independent laboratory, and even worse, a carbon isotope ratio (CIR) test that confirms the existence of a synthetic carbon 13 base for this testosterone "spike." Nevertheless, Major League Baseball made an inordinate effort to state their case as to the validity and reliability of their test results beyond the tinfoil standard of comfortable satisfaction. WADA, as the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) knows full well, will never allow anyone to question WADA results by independent means, ye simpletons! Therefore, even thought the Super Bowl is one week away the dispute over human growth hormone testing is unresolved due to the intransigence of WADA, who refuses to release information as to the reliability and testing of their testing methodologies. Disgusting.

Ryan Braun has no chance. The carbon isotope ratio results allow for no extenuating circumstances.

Alberto Contador: A Lot of Blather

Whew.  There was an incredible amount of simpering about the mistaken positive test of Alberto Contador for clenbuterol: a known anabolic steroid commonly abused in cycling to enhance performance.  Equally perplexing was the incredible amount of leniency shown by the Spanish authorities who concluded that the positive clenbuterol test could be explained by eating contaminated steak imported from Spain into France during a second rest day dinner of the 2010 Tour de France.  The Spanish Sport Federation acceptance of the Alberto Contador alibi was an incredible leap of pariah faith; meat as a source of contamination that would test positive by modern valid and reliable testing currently used by WADA accredited laboratories was declared an impossibility by some medical experts. The whole farce was compounded with an incredible exoneration by the Spanish Spot Federation that supposedly adhered, as a World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) signatory to the sacrosanct, ironclad rule of strict liability, or the notion that an athlete is responsible for the chemicals that are contained within their bodies, in proper ratios, whether legal or illegal.  The concept of strict liability was the guiding principal of the Richard Young WADA code; sacrosanct and unsuccessfully unchallenged by any athlete in the history of doping arbitration, and this bedrock principal should never be modified under any considerations ever.  There must have been a breakdown in communication, or a brief period of lunacy, by the Spanish Sport Federation who for inexplicable selfish reasons, forgot to enforce the golden standard.  WADA calls for harmony of all adherents whether it be the laboratories or case management and detractors are sadistically prodded back into line with electric devises, like cattle.

It must have been quite a shock to WADA when the Spanish decided to protect their cycling hero by accepting insidious propositions by blatantly ignoring the universal concept of strict liability; a concept that has caused an amazing amount of pain and suffering among innocent athletes who made silly mistakes or who acted in ignorance.  But under the WADA dialectic silly mistakes or ignorance are unforgivable and indicate intent.  Even in rare cases where it can be conclusively proven that intent be absent, suspensions and loss of income and prestige continues unabated, only for a shorter duration.  And this cornerstone founding principal of the war against doping; strict liability: would continue a gilded guiding principal, except for the fact that these nation states continue to insist on ignoring the obvious test results that prove doping, and substitute fictional fables in order to protect their favorite sons reputations against unfair onslaughts from vindictive skeptics who are intent upon debasing a honest athlete's character.

Not that WADA or it's signatories need any examples on how to defame character, although after the demise of Dick Pound there has been a vast improvement.  Alberto Contador and his legal team have insisted that the Court of Arbitration of Sport plug the leaks, after all, the arbitration hearings are to be held in "strict confidence" to protect the athlete from arbitrary and unfair assaults from the media, blogs, and other assorted riffraff.  Perhaps the paranoia generated from the cruel and unreasonable assault upon hapless Floyd Landis made these WADA people reconsider their own orchestration of the media and riffraff attacks.  Incredibly, in the new evolutionary theory of fairness WADA has initiated a new era of caution; warning their people to shut up and let justice prevail.

So will justice prevail?  There were hints that WADA was even considering modifying the golden standard of strict liability and concede that accidents happen even in the presence of a prohibited substance residing within the body of a "cheater," considering the formerly unheard of pleas of accident or ignorance, but only in exceptional cases, and only with certain known anabolic steroids, like clenbuterol, and only if the athlete happens to be an international favorite like Alberto Contador.  As of days of yore, all other athletes and performance enhancing substances would have to adhere to the "old standard of strict liability" and serve the minimal bans as before, without exception.  Whether modification of the strict liability rule would have been an improvement or a liability in the case of Alberto Contador, with his lame excuses, and accepting the fact that other athletes would provide similar lame excuses as to the cause of known anabolic steroid positive tests, it is difficult to conceive of a proper cost- benefit analysis as a guide for leniency in relaxation of the enforcement of strict liability rules as a proper action, considering human nature and the need to succeed under any circumstance where the ends justify the means.  So you see the modification of the rule does not seem so clear cut and may invite others to engage in practices that would support a deception of detection, a hoodwinking of the fools, and money and fame in a sport event that is based on evil acts.

In any case the Court of Arbitration of Sport decision, rightly or wrongly, will closure on Alberto Contador  soap opera.  At last.  

Human Growth Hormone Testing Goes Viral

There are some new and interesting developments in anti-doping world that deserves some attention, and if some action was forthcoming instead of interminable delays there would be a need for some commentary as well.

Alberto Contador

First, there is the never ending Alberto Contador saga, which, after two years of delay and possible re-structuring of the strict liability rule appertaining to the possible accidental ingestion of clenbuterol, an anabolic steroid that promotes accelerated lean muscular mass and acts as a bronchial dilator; also a substance incidentally, that has been abused for years to gain an unfair competitive advantage in cycling; as an incredible substance that could be ingested accidentally at the dinner table, causing a false positive test, and a possible two year suspension from professional cycling.  This tale of woe could not possibly get any more bizarre, but believe it or not, a final resolution to the problem may be forthcoming in November, 2011. Break out the champagne!  An issue that, according to the history of the WADA anti-doping crusade strict liability rule, is like everything else in the WADA world, a slam dunk conviction, no need for supplemental evidence that probably will not be admitted into evidence, like an excessive level of plastics consistent with blood doping.  For as history will show with a constant consistency, a rare value in WADA, a constant, anyone who has any amount of an endogenous steroid in the body is subject to suspension, intent be damned.  Not like any endogenous substance that seems to have variable values that could sustain a averse analytical finding, based upon a weak lab document package, or no lab document package, depending on the flavor of the International Standard of the day, as interpreted by the WADA signatory of the day.

NFLPA, the NFL, and Human Growth Hormone Testing

Boomer Esiason shocked me with his well founded assertions that as much as twenty percent of all current National Football League players may be abusing human growth hormone, as he stated on a syndicated radio channel Westwood One. Boomer Esiason claims that this information comes from contacts within the professional teams.  What knowledge do these people have that support their  claims that human growth hormone abuse is as high as twenty percent of all current football players?  Are they providing the dope?  Do they know of others who are providing the dope?  Are they injecting the dope?  Boomer Esiason claims that the National Football League Players Association is dragging their feet to protect their players from testing. And depending upon the level of punishment, suspensions from games and fines, will these punishments not lead to an astronomical decline in quality of the games, chaos that will be created from absences in the rosters? These factors could devastate the game as we know it.  Who wants to watch a third string quarterback blunder away the ball with a half a dozen turnovers a game, or a defensive lineman who can't block, or a safety who can't cover a receiver?  Without the human growth hormone is the game of football going to become a second rate affair without all of the former speed and power of the former juiced athletes?   

This undocumented estimate of current use of human growth hormone within the NFL better be wrong, or there are going to be some very disappointed fantasy football fans, and a great deal of interest and revenue in the NFL is generated from fantasy football.

It is an academic argument that has no potency since there is not human growth hormone testing currently in effect in the National Football League at the present time and the arguments over whether the union is stalling for time because the players want to eliminate all of the synthetic methods, or markers, or isoforms, or metabolites of synthetic human growth hormone abuse before they agree to allow WADA accredited laboratory testing is absurd.  Probably, more important than the cheaters trying to appear innocent, is, as Boomer Esiason admits, the concern over the trustworthiness of WADA accredited laboratories, and the proven ability of WADA accredited laboratories to conduct tests in a competent fashion.  But in the rush to prove the existence of synthetic human growth hormone in players in the NFL, reasonable objections as to competence of the laboratories to measure accurately human growth hormone supported by a reasonable amount of independent peer reviewed scientific literature that demonstrate the un-contestable WADA scientific concusions that their testing has reliability and validity seems trivial and unnecessary.  After all WADA has used the current human growth hormone testing in the Olympics without the test results being contested.  Independent peer review of WADA testing seems to be an unnecessary bother to people like Boomer Esiason, independent peer review of scientific assertions, seem more like weak fabricated excuses and stalling tactics designed to delay the commencement of human growth hormone testing. After all, the collective bargaining agreement contract between the NFL and the NFLPA called for human growth hormone testing and this testing should have been done long ago.

A wonderful mess, maybe they will resolve all of these issues and commence testing by the 2012 season, and maybe by then Alberto Contador will be stripped of two  grand tour titles.