Fallout 24

News
Sydney Morning Herald says Ricco was caught in part because of a marker molecule Roche put into CERA specifically for this purpose.

Yet, there is still no word on any of Piepoli's tests. Curious, that, eh?

IHT reports that Roche did NOT plant a marker in Micera, contrary to the claim above, where Fahey seems to have left the wrong impression, as it were.

Roche Holding, which makes a version of a stamina-building drug illegally used by some athletes, said it didn't plant a molecule in the substance to help identify it in doping tests, spokeswoman Martina Rupp said, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.

[...]

John Fahey, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that Roche planted a molecule in its red-cell boosting product CERA, or Continuous Erythropoietin Receptor Activator, during its manufacture to help anti-doping authorities detect its illegal use. Roche sells the drug as Mircera.

"The information that a special molecule has been added to Mircera is wrong," Rupp said in an e-mail.

WADA issued a statement Wednesday saying that Fahey's remarks had been misinterpreted. The agency said the drug can be detected because Roche and accredited sport-doping laboratories worked with the agency early.

"WADA received the molecule well in advance and was able to develop ways to detect it, including through the current EPO detection method," the agency said in the statement.

The last is interestring, because it says there are multiple independant methods of detecting Micera.

But still no report on Piepoli's tests.

Bicycling has a long report on Slipstream, and the proof that Vande Velde is clean, doggonit, by getting data on him and Millar from the ACE and UCI passport programs. It was reviewed by Ashendon. He doesn't look much at hematocrit, but reticulates and OFF score, and marches through data saying everything looks basically OK. It also highlights some variability issues with equipment and transport that make looking at raw numbers problematic:

Lab quality control counts for a lot as well. On one extreme example, Millar was tested late in the Giro d'Italia on the same day by both ACE and the UCI. The UCI results showed a reticulocyte count of 1.15; the ACE test showed only .8; OFF-Scores were 86 and 96, respectively. The test is an object lesson in the perils of relying on hematocrit, as Millar pegged a 49 percent rating on the ACE test, but only 44.4 on the UCI test. According to ACE, his average readings are .86 (retic) 91.82 (OFF-Score) and 44.16 (Hct).

While a hematocrit rising to 49 at the end of a three-week stage race would be a clear cause for concern, Vaughters explained that the ACE test that day had been processed by a partner lab in Italy that had clearly had sample transport issues (causing the red cells to swell and throw off the hematocrit reading). He pointed out that David's reticulocyte count, hemoglobin and OFF-Score that day were within normal ranges and the UCI scores were similarly unremarkable. Finally, he said that he'd be concerned if David had been showing fantastic form at the same time, but noted Millar lost 10 minutes that day and 31 the next. The culprit, then? The lab. "We will not be using that lab again," he said.

Landis got whacked on this issue when some of his raw numbers from 2006 came out.

NBCOlympics reports a A + B positive for stimulants on US Olympic Swim Team member Jessica Hardy. Landis-slammer Abrahamson takes the neutral position on this case, not calling her a dirty, guilty doper cheat. Why do you suppose that would be?

Blogs
Steroid Report discusses biosimilar EPO agents and the BBC report, and has a list of over 40 that are available. Then he lays into WADA's public posturing:

I think the science director of WADA could be considered delusional in his claim that WADA is catching all users of recombinant EPO.

Dr Olivier Rabin is WADAs science director. Is he happy that the test is catching all the drug cheats?

I am reasonably confident, yes, he told the BBC. Now, it would be very presumptuous on my part to say that we are absolutely 100% sure we are going to get everyone. But I can assure you that if you were to take recombinant EPO and that would be in your urine - then, yes, we would detect it.

Maybe the public will buy it, but the athletes already know better.

Mesomorphosis notes a so-far-unsuccessful attempt to void domain name registrations for sites that sell steroids as violations of the registrar's terms-of-service.

Flahute has a theory why Amgen doesn't have markers in its EPO:

In the United States, it would be nearly impossible to insert a marker into a drug after the fact, as it would have to go through the entire testing and approval process from the FDA all over again, which is why Epogen and Aranesp (Amgens EPO drugs) have taken so long to become detectable; they werent designed with the markers already built in, so the drug-testers had to devise another way.

But Micera (the brand-name for CERA) was developed with the marker already built in; a fact that surely would have been disclosed to the approvers, and obviously to WADA, but not widely spread, especially to the athletes. And what better way to catch the cheaters than to not tell them HOW youre going to catch them.

This is the right way to catch drug cheats; not witch hunts.

Adding:

Yeah, Floyd Landis likely doped. He still got screwed by a system which admits no wrong and the system still has a lot of other problems. Now that Dick Pound is no longer pounding his dick at WADA, their organizational issues should get better. Its too bad hes now a part of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but one step at a time and well clean up both the sport and the governing bodies.