Congress Ignores WADA Pitfalls

In a rush to "protect the children from performance enhancing drug use" some representatives from the United States government have met with some WADA people and with Travis T. Tygart of the United States Anti-Doping Agency to pressure the National Football League to rush through WADA testing for human growth hormone (HGH), according to the New York Times. Not included in the discussions were the National Football Players Association (NFLPA), concerned NFL players, or Maurice Suh and his scientific team concerned with resolving scientific reliability and validity claims made by WADA about their human growth hormone tests. Reviewing the past history of WADA behavior in testing and adjudication of tests for performance enhancing drug use in sport, there are a rational grounds for concern.

This discussion is not intended to be a dissertation of the complexity of the scientific issues involved in determining the presence or absence of performance enhancing substances in an athlete sample. For example, in the Floyd Landis synthetic testosterone case, there were multiplicitous issues. Serious students of the anti-doping process interested in the minutiae of the scientific issues raised by the Floyd Landis case should visit the excellent and very comprehensive Internet site trust but verify. Some of the scientific issues raised by the Floyd Landis defense are very technical and very alarming and should serve as dire warnings to all athletes never to trust WADA. In a football analogy, WADA would change the rules in the middle of the game to ensure that no matter how many yards they rushed on any given play, the result would always be a first down. For the defense, every play would result in a forth down, no matter how many yards they gained. Thus, it would be impossible for WADA to lose the game.

Accusing an athlete of doping is a very serious concern and cannot be taken lightly. The burden of proof, in the current anti-doping system, is pointed straight at the athlete. The athlete has the burden to prove that the laboratory made a mistake in the testing process to clear his or her name. The athlete must provide his or her own legal counsel, expert witnesses, the athlete must pay for any antecedal information that would support his or her contention of innocence, and if an award goes in favor of the prosecution, must pay additional legal costs. Meanwhile, anti-doping agencies are flush with legal counsel, expert witnesses, and cash. It costs nothing for USADA to refuse to provide documentation under it's control to the defense, even after oral argument and a arbitration panel order, but the cost to the athlete is exorbitant; needless delay while the defense team examines the evidence to prepare a proper argument. Travis T. Tygart refused to comply with an arbitration order to release evidence to Floyd Landis until moments before the oral arguments in at the Pepperdine law school were about to commence. In a normal constitutionally convened court of law, all of the prosecution evidence would have had to be surrendered to the defense. Prosecutorial surprises, in most cases, would be deemed inadmissible as evidence.

WADA repeats tests until it gets the desirable results:

First there was the repeated testosterone/epitestosterone samples conducted by the French accredited laboratory LNDD located in Chatenay-Malabry, France. I have mentioned these tests before as an example of WADA incompetence and chicanery. As a justification for a necessity for a carbon isotope ratio test to determine the justification for the presence of synthetic testosterone in Floyd Landis, the laboratory ran three separate testosterone/epitestosterone tests to determine threshold, even though after the first sample result of 4.7:1 further tests were unnecessary. Perhaps the additional tests had an ulterior motive: press rattling sensationalism. When the 11.4:1 test result was measured, an employee of LNDD raced at full speed to the office of Amaury Sport Organization owned L'Equipe writer Damien Ressiot with the startling news. Before the ink was dry on the lab document package, news organization all over the world repeated the myth that Floyd Landis had tested positive for high levels of testosterone. And in a rush to judgment most media outlets were claiming that Floyd Landis would also test positive for synthetic testosterone as well.

WADA changes the rules on what constitutes a positive test:

There was a problem with the metabolite androstanediol in the Floyd Landis case that created a nightmare scenario for WADA. The problem centered around a generally understood criteria that for the presence of synthetic testosterone to be conclusively proven in a sample two C13 metabolites must have a three delta unit separation from C12 background endogenous metabolites to establish threshold, since synthetic testosterone is derived from C13 based supplements, stigmasterol, for example, and these supplements must be metabolized in order for it to be utilized by the body, and while being converted into energy a waste bi-product is produced, metabolite(s) of C13 based testosterone, androstanediol, 5-alpha androstanediol, and others.

Very well, the science seems quite clear and the criteria on what constituted a positive sample seemed as clear until the metabolite androstanediol did not meet the WADA established criteria for threshold. A separate tested metabolite 5-alpha androstanediol did meet the three delta unit threshold value at -6.39 delta units and was therefore not in contention. A single metabolite above threshold, however, did not meet the WADA requirement for detection of synthetic testosterone in the sample. This would require a second metabolite, androsterone, because the other two metabolites measured did not reach threshold, the delta unit separation was below three delta units. The "B" sample confirmation score for androsterone was -3.51 delta units, and at first glance one would come to the conclusion that this score was above three delta units, therefore constituting threshold. But not so, there was a catch, known as the published lab uncertainty of +/-.8 delta units, meaning that the score could be argued by the prosecution as above threshold and by the defense as below threshold, and both versions would be the correct answer.

WADA was so desperate to avoid a determination that the test was inconclusive that they changed the rules as what constitutes a positive test for synthetic testosterone by exploiting a loophole in a WADA technical document. The document stated that C13 based metabolite(s) above three delta unit threshold constitute the presence of synthetic testosterone in the sample. Therefore, the technical document did not necessarily require the presence to two metabolites above threshold.

The American Arbitration Association (AAA) Panel of Patrice Brunet and Richard McLaren agreed with the WADA single metabolite requirement over the strenuous objection of Christopher Campbell, and the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) voted against Floyd Landis in a 3-0 unanimous vote. So you see, changing the criteria on what constitutes a positive test has the most desirable results: a perfect conviction rate of "doping" athletes.

Of course, it cannot be forgotten that the actual uncertainty of LNDD carbon isotope testing was not the published value of +/-.8 delta units, but actually the measured values were incorrect by a factor of twenty percent! So all the raging academic debates that occurred during the Floyd Landis hearing were moot, uncertainty had no bearing on the case, the single metabolite 5-alpha androstanediol was so far above threshold at -6.39 delta units that it could not possibly be effected by a twenty percent uncertainty in measurement, as the Court of Arbitration of Sport pointed out in the Floyd Landis award.

WADA got lucky with Floyd Landis, he doped during the 2006 Tour de France and was caught red handed. Next time with variable rules and with repeated tests to obtain a desirable result some innocent person may be the next WADA victim. With some of the lower profile athletes who do not have the financial where with all, in the form of millions of dollars in ready cash to challenge "clear laboratory results" they may have already been victimized, helpless to defend themselves. It is imperative that the NFLPA does not become another UCI and that before any HGH testing takes place that issues in technical document wording, and other issues of this nature are addressed before testing commences, to assure players that WADA is not operating with a variable playbook that changes depending upon the results of any given test, and to assure players that WADA is adhering to it's founding principal of "harmonization" and "fair play."

The United States government needs to wake up to the problems that WADA and people like Travis T. Tygart create with unfair practices that only serve to feather their caps at the expense of athletes. Congress needs to give the defense a chance to express their concerns too, in a special meeting. Congress would be shocked to learn all that Maurice Suh knows, but perhaps they simply don't care about a "fair process." There is plenty of time to test athletes for HGH. Better is to work out all of the problems in advance before another rush to L'Equipe.