USA Today has an outstanding story about the current brouhaha over human growth hormone testing that was negotiated between the NFL and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA). There seems to be questions raised by the players union over the validity and reliability of the WADA HGH testing.
NFLPA has requested WADA to provide documents related to the scientific validity of the WADA HGH testing, according to NFLPA spokesman George Atallah. To quote from the USA Today article:
The players have asked WADA repeatedly for information related to their testing program. Those requests have been denied. For us to move forward with a fair, safe and effective testing program, it is critical that we receive that information.
David Howman WADA director general responded to the NFLPA request:
The union is seeking information that does not exist. There is nothing that we can give them.
Welcome NFLPA to WADA world, the land of fruits and nuts! It is reasonable, prudent, and justified to question WADA about the reliability and validity of their HGH testing in advance of any testing of NFL players. Why? Because if you don't work out ironclad legally incontestable stipulations with WADA, once they get their foot in the door, it will be much too late, too expensive, of too long duration, and too litigious to force them to provide legal documents to justify their methodology and laboratory practice to the defense, if, an athlete contests WADA laboratory results.
NFLPA has a reasons to fear for their players, but there is hope depending upon how NFL commissioner Roger Goodell deals with with truculent WADA director general David Howman. The best possible result for the NFL would be to force WADA to comply with NFL requests for information in an ironclad non negotiable agreement. The NFL is not an Olympic sport and, therefore, must be exempt from International Olympic Committee (IOC) blackmail. The case should be an internal NFL matter exempt from the WADA strict liability rule. If commissioner Roger Goodell acts as czar, if commissioner Roger Goodell imposes a sanction after a positive test for HGH, and if the sanction is contested by a player, in the interest of fairness, he must demand all of the relevant lab document package information be released to the league, and, any other requested information that pertains to WADA accredited laboratory testing that could be contested by the athlete. WADA would also be forced to comply with NFL requests for information pertaining to adherence to International Standards for Testing (IST) or Laboratories (ISL), or to issues pertaining to calibration of equipment, chain-of-custody, security of the samples, or to any other information that would be considered germane to a case. Then the NFL could provide all of these requested documents to the defense team for consideration, before a potential arbitration hearing or civil trial could be convened. Of course, this may force WADA laboratories to become a transparent organization for the first time in history, the sloppy laboratory practices exposed, the cover-ups exposed, the whole system vulnerable, unprotected by the IOC umbrella.
Wouldn't it be better for the NFL to reconsider the necessity of using WADA accredited laboratories UCLA and UTAH (PAC-12!) and instead seek another organization with an accreditation in International Standards for Laboratories and Standards, and avoid all of this nonsense?
Because the scientific issues of HGH testing seem to be very straight forward according to David Burns, pathologist, University of Virgina:
HGH comes in two isoforms weight 20 or 22 kilodaltons. Synthetic HGH comes in only one weight or the other and can't easily be mixed to achieve the "proper ratio."
The proper ratio? Whatever that means. The NFLPA wants a population study done to establish a "baseline," rather than to accept an arbitrary "normal" physiological "range."
Perhaps the NFL could establish the NFL Biological Passport and establish a baseline for all NFL players. The concept seems so basic, the International Cycling Union (UCI) has used one for years, they have even suspended cyclists in the absence of a "clear laboratory result," based upon red flag tendencies voted upon by a committee convened for the purpose to establish the presence of doping. And the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) has determined that banishment of riders by committee consensus is appropriate, incontestable, and has no appeal to a higher power! Of course, the NFL does not come under the jurisdiction of the UCI or the CAS, so, they can invent their own committee to establish doping offenses based upon suspect biological parameters, if desired. And they could even convict some poor guy from the practice squad and use him as an example of how successful the program is, and how this justifies the contribution made to the program by all of the teams in the NFL. Besides, if you are going to select a scapegoat you sure are not going to highlight film suspect values from Payton Manning or Aaron Rogers, and you sure are not going to use them as examples of dopers in the NFL, even if you are convinced that they are using HGH, because they put butts in seats and generate revenues. In sport, money is the bottom line. In football, careers are short, competition is intense, performance is demanded in a violent environment. In football, injury is a common occurrence, and injuries can terminate lucrative contracts. So the goal is to recover as quickly as possible from injury, and HGH has been alleged to speed recovery. Therefore, there is a temptation to cheat! Baseline scores are all well and good, but be careful what you wish for, baselines can be manipulated by micro-dosing of prohibited drugs, which make individual differences meaningless, and a biological passport system can be manipulated in the interests of money. For example, WADA has an interest to modify the strict liability rule in the interests of a single athlete, Alberto Contador, because the organizers of the Tour de France are worried that even a one year suspension of a Spanish cycling idol, required under the WADA strict liability rule, would cause the television stations in Spain to stop televising the race like the German television stations did a couple of years ago. And non televised races cost millions of Euros in sponsorship fees and advertising!
Roger Goodell, don't invite corruption to stain the shield. Dump WADA before it is too late.
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