More Landis Stuff

This sort of goes hand in hand with my rant of last week but fills in even more gaps on the scientific side of things.

JJ


The CyclingNews Friday Mailbag is still buzzing with letters about the Landis decision. Some people agree with it, some don't, but one stands out:



As a professional scientist who has been working in a strict Quality Assurance (QA) environment for the past 27 years, I am continually discouraged by the general public's overall lack of understanding of science and the scientific process. Lest anyone be confused, the Landis decision was not about proving that Floyd had taken exogenous testosterone. What the majority of the panel was concerned with was whether or not the lab had followed the procedures they had established to detect exogenous testosterone. They apparently considered the scientific validity of those procedures to be outside the scope of their investigation, and it was certainly outside their area of expertise.


The unrefuted testimony of Dr. Amory, the only real scientific expert on testosterone to testify, was that those procedures were not adequate to establish the presence of exogenous testosterone. You will note that the majority opinion does not refer to Dr. Amory's testimony - there is no way to reconcile it with the verdict they wanted to reach. So Floyd was found guilty on the basis of one WADA-accredited lab's flawed procedures, procedures that wouldn't even be accepted by other WADA-accredited labs. (For those who have been asleep through this farce, the French lab accepts the presence of elevated levels of a single exogenous testosterone metabolite as evidence of doping, while the US lab at UCLA requires the presence of three.) As Dr. Amory pointed out, exogenous testosterone metabolizes in a defined way, with the levels of metabolites rising and falling through time in a certain pattern. The analyses performed by the French lab of the entire set of Floyd's samples did not show the pattern that would be present if Floyd had, in fact, doped. Dr. Amory's opinion was that they made no sense at all.


Floyd was found guilty through a political process with no basis in science. WADA and the UCI are on a witch hunt, and Floyd was unfortunate enough to fall into their cross-hairs. I'm all for catching dopers and throwing them out of the peloton, but the tests must be scientifically valid and be performed by neutral, qualified analysts, not by a lab eager to break (or is that "make"?) the news for l'Equipe. Some form of equal protection under the law would be nice too, such as all WADA-accredited labs having the same criteria for what constitutes an adverse analytical finding. And since Floyd apparently passed all the same tests Oscar Pereiro and Andreas Klöden were subjected to, how about subjecting them to the same test Floyd supposedly failed before moving them up on the podium? Or doesn't fairness go that far?


All cyclists being coerced into signing that document promising to give up a year's salary if found guilty of doping should be afraid--the deck is stacked completely against them. Bravo to Bettini for refusing to sign.


Rick Beauheim
Carlsbad, NM, USA
Saturday, September 29, 2007