Tom
On Oct 7, 2004, at 11:29 AM, Don Campbell wrote:
Jones, Carleton wrote:
Upper hand? Your brief statement doesn't explain what you mean by "upper hand."We've always had the upper hand...
-Buck Jones
I'm afraid that the history of doping/anti-doping is not one of an upper hand
for anti-doping chemists. Rather, the history has been one of anti-doping
tests playing catch-up to ever evolving and ever more clever doping techniques.
The massive doping program of the former East Germany wasn't discovered by
anti-doping tests. It was revealed in documents and testimony after the re-unification.
There's no "upper hand" lesson in that story.
The Balco Labs story isn't one of anti-doping tests being in control and having the
upper hand, it's a story of a clever illegality finally being caught in a long catch-up
game of detection. What was the key? It was the turning over of material in a syringe
to the anti-doping chemists--not some quick and sure "upper hand" catching of an
athlete who cheated.
For years athletes have known about EPO and HGH use among other athletes.
Only recently have tests evolved with the sensitivity sufficient to detect them.
That's not what I'd call an "upper hand." I call "upper hand" the newly instituted
blood testing to supplement the long-standing and less powerful urine testing.
I call an upper hand the leverage that is applied when samples
are saved indefinitely to be retested when testing techniques evolve sufficiently
to detect the formerly undetectable. It's not an "upper hand" when an athlete's
B sample is ruined by poor storage so that one can't even complete the testing
process shortly after the competition.
Don
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