Project Believe: Be Very Afraid

The Associated Press has reported that the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has announced a new pilot longitudinal testing program which will measure blood and urine values of twelve participating athletes. This program was patterned after the UCI biological passport and may become a requirement to participate in the upcoming Beijing Olympics. In theory changes in an athletes' biological profile may indicate performance enhancing drug use.

Participate with enthusiasm or else

At present, in the adversarial nature of the anti-doping crusade athletic contests are presumed to be filled with athletes who resort to any method to succeed, including doping. In an attempt to reverse the doping scourge, USADA now measures virtuous athletes by demanding overt vocal enthusiasm of chances to participate in new anti-doping strategies. Athletes are cowed into a state of fear and loathing by WADA labs and USADA prosecutions where athletes never win. As a result of this unfair system of arbitration, athletic paranoia has become manifest. Bryan Clay a selected subject of the new USADA longitudinal pilot program "Project Believe" says, "I'm anxious to let people know hey look I'm clean." Allyson Felix echoes the fear, "Whatever I can do to prove I'm clean, I'll do it, no matter what time I have to wake up, where I have to drive. I'll do whatever possible to prove I am a clean athlete." And former director of WADA accredited lab UCLA, Don Catlin, cheer leads "It's no surprise that good athletes, clean athletes, will jump up and down for this thing."

Be very afraid

So, if ghoulish vampires appear to collect your blood and urine at a crematorium where you are attempting to inter your infants' remains, like they did to Kevin van Impe, you had better cloak your grief and submit a sample with elan. Otherwise, you will be regarded with suspicion of attempting to subvert the anti-doping process.

Project Believe: Any change in physiology could constitute a failed test

The Associate Press article states the rational of the new longitudinal testing pilot program thus, "These tests wouldn't necessarily look for specific substances, but could detect changes in body chemistry that would indicate use [of performance enhancing substances.]" This is a very dangerous departure from current criteria needed to establish an Adverse Analytical Finding. At present an Adverse Analytical Finding can only result from a positive test of a performance enhancing substance. Changes in biological parameters do not constitute a failed test. However, the anti-doping crusade is attempting to negate clear evidence of doping by positive tests. They are attempting to file Adverse Analytical Findings based upon changes in biological parameters. Danilo DeLuca can attest to this new policy. DeLuca was measured after Stage 17 of the Giro de Italia with hormone levels "of a child." The Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) dismissed the allegations against DeLuca because he did not test positive for a prohibited substance. But as is always the case, WADA and the UCI can appeal to the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS). If the CAS were to imply that an medical method was used to evade detection of performance enhancing drugs by DeLuca or his doctor based on low hormone levels, then any "abnormal" change in an athlete's profile, no matter how small, could be used in future cases as a rational to file an Adverse Analytical Finding. In these cases there would be no defense since the locus of the change in a biological parameter could never be determined.

Down the slippery slope

How many more promising athletic careers will be destroyed? How many more lives? Changes in biological parameters of urine and blood without a locus cannot substitute for a positive test for exogenous performance enhancing substances. Think. A "biological passport" scheme to detect doping in absence of a "positive test" is useless. Longitudinal tests should only be used when a WADA lab result is inconclusive, or in cases where a valid concern exists that the Adverse Analytical Finding was caused by a departure in International Standards by a WADA accredited lab.

USADA, WADA, and the UCI should never water down the criteria needed to establish an Adverse Analytical Finding by intimidation of athletes. USADA abandon the "Project Believe" pilot program now.