There’s Something About WADA

In the last few weeks, articles have appeared in a number of places (such as the LA Times articles by Michael Hiltzik) that have raised an interesting point about the World Anti-Doping Agency: The organization serves as judge, jury and executioner, and that it makes the rules by which anti-doping cases are decided. This is not exactly news to those who’ve been following the many doping scandals over the last year or more.

And it’s not really news to those of us who’ve been following the Floyd Landis case, or Operation Puerto, or any of the other doping cases in recent memory that many athletes don’t trust the system, as Wired’s Mark McClusky notes on his blog:

[R]ight now, the athletes don’t trust the system. They see it as arbitrary, and out for blood. Until you have some sort of system that athletes buy into, I don’t know that you’ll ever get anywhere.

So what could be done to craft a system that athletes could buy into? In a word: Decentralization.

You certainly have to give Richard W. Pound credit for having the vision to pull together an organization such as WADA. He’s a man who saw a problem and brought disparate groups together in order to solve the problem. Well, sort of.

Pound certainly was a visionary, but visionaries often aren’t the best people when it comes to the nitty-gritty details of creating a working structure for an organization. And it’s the structure, itself, that leads to the mistrust athletes feel for the system. I’m just a lowly Cat. 3, but if I were at the level where I’d be subject to the kind of treatment and scrutiny that elite and pro riders face, I would seriously question whether I’d tolerate the system and treatment they face.

The thing is, there are structural problems with WADA that call into question the overall fairness of the system, itself. For one, there are built-in conflicts of interest. As the organization that creates the rules, certifies the labs that test for doping, and oversees enforcement of the rules, there’s a natural temptation to skew things in favor of the anti-doping labs and agencies under WADA’s umbrella.

Want an example of how the rules are skewed in favor of WADA and the national ADAs? Consider this: When challenging an adverse finding, the athlete cannot challenge the scientific validity of the tests used. Those tests are deemed to be valid, regardless of whether they are, in fact, valid or accurate or even detect whatever it is they claim to detect. The athlete may be able to argue that procedures weren’t followed, or that the data doesn’t support the conclusion, but the “science” behind a test is beyond reproach.

But what if the science is wrong? What if you could demonstrate that the test does not actually do what it’s purported to do? Doesn’t matter. That’s not an avenue one can use to challenge an adverse analytical finding.

So what can be done to convince athletes that the system is fair so that they’ll buy in to the whole process? Lots of things, but let’s start with how WADA is organized.

In many countries, the legal system is broken into separate, independent branches. You have one branch (the legislative branch) that writes the rules (laws), another branch responsible for enforcement and prosecution of offenders (police, district attorneys, etc.) and another branch that passes judgment (the courts). While these may all be part of an overall organization (the government), they function independently of each other (at least, in an ideal world).

So, maybe this model should be applied to WADA. Maybe there should be one branch of the agency that is solely devoted to crafting the rules, such as the anti-doping code and the list (or lists) of banned substances. And that would be their sole role, and they would function independently of the other branches of WADA. Another branch would be responsible for the enforcement functions, which again would be independent of the other branches. Dick Pound could fit in perfectly here, not as the head of WADA, but as the lead prosecutor for WADA. As McClusky notes on his blog:

[Pound] views his role as prosecutorial, and that’s clear from what he says and how he says it.

So there you have it. Dick Pound could be the prosecutor he always wanted to be, and WADA, as an organization, could be led by someone more capable of administering a living, breathing, functioning entity. (Pound will be out later this year, anyway, but here’s an opportunity for him to do what he does best — accuse people.)

Certification of the labs’ quality and competence, however, should be left to an organization known for such things, like the International Standards Organization (ISO 15189:2003 addresses this very thing for medical labs, of which anti-doping labs are a specialized form). Certification of tests, themselves, should be left to organizations like various drug/pharmaceutical approval agencies such as the FDA in the US, or other similar agencies around the world. And the tests, and the science behind them, should stand up to scientific rigor and scrutiny.

And then there’s the matter of an independent court system. Not arbitration, a court system. And in that court system, the accused should have the right to challenge all the evidence against them, including whether the science of the tests is valid, or whether the tests actually detect what they’re alleged to.

There are a number of other things that might be necessary to change in order to get the athletes to buy in to the system. (The strict liability rule comes to mind.) But if WADA were organized like this, it would go a long way to gaining their trust. And that would be a good thing.

Will it happen? Hard to say. But it would be a better system than what we currently have.