Landis gives positive drugs test

BBC News ^ | 07/27/2006

[victor hugo dog]

right on man!!! to quote the vernacular from the sixties!!!!

[victor hugo dog]

J'ai pense que vous etiez francais! my French is a bit rusty after living in the south for many years!! you need to follow the suthern Victor Hugo Dogs other posts.. Its refreshant(sp?) to have a French person on the Freepper!

[commish]

But if you read how the tests are conducted and what the normal ratios are it is for all intents and purposes impossible for the tests to be faulty.

Please explain then why EVERY SINGLE challenge to this 'Impossible tobe faulty" test has been successful then.

[commish]

Let me put it in these terms. If I were Floyd Landis and knew for a certainty I was clean, the very first thing I would have done was to have called a press conference and looked the camera and audience in the eye and declared unequivocally that the tests had to be wrong as I hadn't used anything. Offer to take a lie detector test. And let the press conference go on for hours or however long as there were questions to be asked. Instead he went into hiding almost immediately.

Now you are just making things up. Landis was suspended by his team as per the rules. As such he left the races he was at and he returned to his team HQ. He then went to his Doctor, and gathered a team together to find out what he had to do to beat this thing.

Within 4 hours of his name being released -- REMEMBER THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE CONFIDENTIAL UNTIL THE B TEST WAS TAKEN -- he called Austin Murphy of CNN-SI and gave him an exclusive interview. Then within 7 hours of his name being released he held a 25 press conference with all press who wished to attend.

But go ahead and smear him and pronounce him guilty and have him skulking around back alleys if it makes you feel good.

[leilani]

Reading this morning's papers with commentary from World Anti-Doping Officials, endocrinologists etc, I'd have to say you are overly pessimistic, RichardW. Commish is right. This test is by no means definitive according to lots of people in this business. Lots of false positives. Commish - we need a thread posting a roundup of articles with the experts weighing in. I've got a lot of articles/quotes this am after a half-hour of reading. Can you start us a new thread where people can post what experts are saying today?

[Ready4Freddy]

According to the press conference (article posted in #100), the threshold ratio was recently lowered to 4:1. Doesn't say how recently, though. Also says that mere mortals typically have a 1:1 ratio.

Two things are evident from this - one, that the anti-doping authorities obviously take into account the increased levels that a world-class athlete would naturally have, and two, there's a lot of 'art' here to go along with the science.

'Art', in that they use a threshold ratio of naturally-occurring subtances to impute use of a banned substance. Much like they use haematocrit levels to impute use of banned substance, EPO, for which they have yet to develop an accepted definitive test.

Really doesn't sound anything like DNA testing....

To detect the use of synthetic testosterone as a muscle-building anabolic steroid, anti-doping officials have declared that a ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone above 6 to 1 is evidence of drug use.

[muawiyah]

Reading through a bunch of authoritative references to the testosterone/epitestosterone ratio test I found that the International Olympic Committee has replaced the most common testing method with one using mass-spectrometry technology. This newer test allows them (the IOC) to differentiate between human testosterone and exogenitic testosterone.

So, in answer to your question, the test has been found faulty and abandoned by the IOC, and that mostly due to frequent false-positives.

Remember, this is just a ratio test. Turned out Landis does not have a higher than normal testosterone level. Instead, he has a lower than normal epitestosterone level, and that may indicate something else. What it might be we do not know.

[Ready4Freddy]

Correct - Landis' has numerous options after the 'B' test. Those options are within the UCI purview, and will probably include more definitive tests to demonstrate that his ratio wasn't caused by exogenitic testosterone.

This is not a court case.

[muawiyah]

Reading through all sorts of stuff this morning it would be mighty difficult for anyone but a woman eating birthcontrol pills to satisfy the munchies, or a very old man to get down to a ratio of 1:1.

The ratio changes during your life, but just about 6:1 is normal for a man at age 35 and a woman at 31.

[Ready4Freddy]

LOL on the munchies! :) Yet I've seen at least 1 report that indicates that the 'legal' (for UCI) threshold is now 4:1...

Lotta 'art' involved here...

The ratio changes during your life, but just about 6:1 is normal for a man at age 35 and a woman at 31.

[spatso]

I was reading, thinking perhaps I might comment that several postures failed to recognize this is about sport and cheating. Your comment stated my thinking better than I would have.

[RichardW]

My point about the DNA is that was my area of expertise. A lot of people want to denigrate these tests as being unreliable. They are grasping at straws.

[Ready4Freddy]

I understood your comment about DNA, Richard, and perhaps the ability to detect the exact testosterone / epitestosterone ratio is "...almost as accurate [as DNA testing]", as you put it in your post #116.

Trouble is, they (UCI, et al) don't know exactly what the ratio means - they don't use a discrete test for non-naturally occuring testosterone, so they impute its presence from the ratio. That ratio is obviously subject to interpretation (as their reported changing of the allowed ratio would indicate).

My point about the DNA is that was my area of expertise. A lot of people want to denigrate these tests as being unreliable. They are grasping at straws.

[muawiyah]

The IOC appears to have "denigrated" this particular test already ~ couple of years ago in fact.

Like the man said, no one knows what the ratio means.

[leilani]

Trouble is, they (UCI, et al) don't know exactly what the ratio means - they don't use a discrete test for non-naturally occuring testosterone, so they impute its presence from the ratio. That ratio is obviously subject to interpretation (as their reported changing of the allowed ratio would indicate).

HEY! What are you doing over here? We need to borry all that fancy high-fallutin' skool larnin' of your'n over here today.

[vox_freedom]

...but I have a problem with describing an above normal level of testosterone - a natural male hormone - as "doping."

Good point, and I agree.

[vox_freedom]

An excerpt from Landis's press conference today. First that we have heard that he has been taking a thyroid medicine which is a hormone....

Q: I want to dig a little deeper on the thyroid medicine you were talking about. Who prescribed that, and was the team aware? And have there been any tests to determine if that was going to affect your testosterone/epitestosterone ratio?

Landis: The medicine was prescribed by Brent [Dr. Brent Kay] who is on the other line here. You can talk to him about that. Certainly the team was aware from the beginning. I needed to call them to find out if it was an issue with the UCI as to whether I could take thyroid hormone and as far as I know it is not a performance-enhancing drug.

Dr. Brent Kay: Floyd was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, which is a very common medical condition and is simply treated with thyroid hormone replacement medication, which he has been on now for, like he said, the last couple of years. We followed his levels throughout this time and throughout this year he remained in a normal range. That's all been stable and pretty straightforward. Thyroid is in no way any type of performance-enhancing drug or medication. It is not banned. It is a perfectly straightforward medical therapeutic medication.

Q: Has there been any research at all if that can affect the testosterone/ epitestosterone ratio?

Dr. Brent Kay: We are consulting with a number of the world's experts so that we don't speculate at this point. Particularly since the testing process is not even complete. We are just really stuck here with this elevated testosterone to epitestosterone level. We are getting the experts involved to give us a detailed explanation and to look at all the possible scenarios.

This test has been criticized for years. It has a long documented history in the scientific literature with its problems due to inaccuracy. Even if you go to the WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] Web site and you pull up their technical document on this test, on page one, even they say we should bear in mind that there are significant variations between individuals and the normal level for one individual may, in another individual, be elevated.

So, that's kind of the route we are taking. We don't want to speculate. We want experts involved to tell us really what's going on here and what potential factors may be playing a role.