Greetings fellow Rant-aholics, Rant fans, or occasional readers. Your humble Ranter will be traveling for the next week or so, with intermittent Internet access. I hope to find the time to write a post or two, but either way I’ll be back to ranting full-time on the 25th.
In the meantime, my wife and I will be meeting up with some of her Danish relatives, who are taking a month’s holiday in the US. We’ll get to spend a week with them, since neither of us has the kind of vacation time that the folks in Europe get.
Check back from time to time. Or start a discussion in the comments section. If I get a chance, I’ll dispatch a post or two from distant locales.
have a wonderful holiday, Rant, you deserve it! we’ll miss you — but, please, stay away 😉
And just as you leave town we have:
“”UCI President Pat McQuaid on Tuesday called on ProTour riders to pledge their commitment to a dope-free Tour de France by making a sample of their DNA available and lodging the equivalent of a year’s salary which they will lose if they fail a drugs test in next month’s race.”””
So my question is do the leakers of “false” or “incorrect” or even “un-verified ” lab results have to give up a years salary as well? Or does the lab have to donate all of their income for a year to a charity when they screw up someones test?
Is this a two way, or only a one way, street?
JBSMP,
Here’s the thing about DNA — the only thing it’s good for is checking for blood doping with someone else’s blood. Think about all the other doping cases — EPO, testosterone, nandrolone, etc. Those tests are looking for chemical signatures of metabolites, or differences in the types of carbon isotopes present. No DNA there. So any athlete who tests positive for something other than blood doping won’t be saved by DNA. The only thing that it does is give the anti-doping authorities more info to compare against when they suspect a rider. Nothing wrong, per se, with asking them to give a sample — other than the fact that it starts from a presumption of guilt. But anyone who thinks that this is going to go a long way towards solving the doping problem is barking up the wrong tree. And except in cases of homologous blood doping (someone else’s blood), it’s not going to be worth much in blood doping cases, either.
Operacion Puerto, if nothing else, has proven that good, old-fashioned blood doping with one’s own blood is still alive and kicking in the sports world.
– Rant
And by the way, if there’s a lot of material in one’s urine that contains DNA (think blood cells, which would be one of the more likely things), then the athlete has a potentially serious health problem.
Well yes and no. The DNA test only works if is YOUR blood that is in the cooler. If Jan’s blood bag came back with DNA that did not match him, then it must have been for someone else. Right?
No matter how dumb they might be, I can’t believe any cyclist or trainer or doctor would help a rider dope with some elses blood. Hell, they could die right in front of them, especially if they went back to the same well (i.e., the same donor) a few times. That would make an awesome immune complex disease: it would make LUPUS look like a walk in the park.
The goal is to increase your red blood count. So if you can’t take EPO, then you dope with your own blood. If you can’t do that then you buy one of those tents that lets you sleep at base camp on Everest. Or you come up with a new designed drug that pretends it is EPO. Hell, I could make one of those….easy!
JBSMP,
I was thinking of the possibility where some blood test might reveal blood cells from two different individuals based on DNA, rather than the markers currently used. I don’t know if or how such a test could really work. You’re right, anyone would be a fool to dope with someone else’s blood. Especially if they weren’t sure it was a match for their type. And even if it was, there could be some complications that, as you say, would make Lupus look like a walk in the park.
– Rant