Towards A New Anti-Doping Approach, Part IV

In the previous post, we looked at the question of how to determine what drugs are performance-enhancing and what drugs aren’t, and we looked at who should be be conducting anti-doping tests. At this point, it might be useful to look at the World Anti-Doping Agency and ask the question, “What should their role be?”

The answer might seem obvious. They’re the central organization who establish the list of banned substances, certify the testing labs, and establish the tests to be conducted either through direct research or funding research at other labs or by accepting tests developed by other labs. Given who they are and how they’ve been constituted, they’re also the agency who set the rules for how doping violations are determined and what sanctions or punishment should be given to those who’ve been caught doping. As part of that, they also established the structure of how an athlete can (or more to the point, usually can’t) defend him/herself against anti-doping charges.

That’s a lot of power, centralized in one place. But should all of these functions be WADA’s domain? Before answering that, let’s take a moment to briefly ponder WADA’s history. Remember that the agency came into being after a slew of doping scandals in a wide variety of Olympic sports — including the infamous Festina scandal at the 1998 Tour de France. At the time, the IOC’s efforts to stamp out doping in sports were seen as ineffective and loaded with certain conflicts of interest.

That wasn’t the only scandal plaguing the august members of the IOC in 1998, however. There was the small matter of certain Olympic officials, who were involved in the selection of host cities, expecting to receive, well, to be blunt, payoffs in exchange for their votes. Trips to potential host cities turned into personal junkets for a number of these officials, and it all came boiling to the surface with a scandal involving the selection of Salt Lake City as the host for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

The IOC was in the center of an almost perfect storm of bad publicity. They needed to re-establish credibility, both in terms of anti-doping efforts and in terms of their selection procedures. Failure to regain their good reputation could lead to some dire consequences further down the road. Like the Olympics juggernaut grinding to a halt. That would be bad for the IOC, to put it mildly.

And so, to skip ahead just a bit, after some politicking and back-and-forth negotiations between a number of stakeholders, the World Anti-Doping Agency came into existence at the end of 1999. They didn’t formally take over anti-doping efforts until shortly after the 2000 Olympics, however. The IOC required that all Olympic sports recognize the new agency as the authority for anti-doping policy and testing. Those that didn’t would be ejected from the Olympic family.

Dick Pound, who had headed the investigation into the other Olympic scandal (the one having to do with the selection of Salt Lake City as the 2002 Winter Olympics host city), and who also had recently lost a bid to become the head of the IOC, was named the interim head of WADA in 1999 and then became the agency’s first official chairman. (Given his propensity  for lobbing verbal clusterbombs, imagine what a Dick Pound IOC presidency would have been like.)

Over the next several years, Pound and his agency set about creating the World Anti-Doping Code and establishing the framework for anti-doping practices at labs throughout the sporting world. In theory, those practices should be standardized. WADA, however, chose a different term to describe the coordination of practices at the various labs. The word they use, instead, is “harmonise.” Which is not exactly the same thing.

As part of the WADA Code, the agency established draconian penalties for people caught doping, with some (very limited) flexibility in terms of punishment for those convicted of doping offenses. It’s been a valiant first effort, but there are certainly areas that can be improved. So, as I asked earlier, what should WADA’s role be in the anti-doping world?

First, someone has to come up with a list of performance-enhancing drugs, no matter who ultimately sets the rules for a given sport. WADA’s role definitely includes the creation and maintenance of such a list. But right now, the list is a one-size-fits-all kind of thing, so that any athlete in any sport who tests positive for any of the hundred-plus (give or take) substances currently on the list will be subject to sanctions. For a first offense (until January 1, 2009), the sanction is an automatic two-year ban. After the beginning of the year, that can be increased to a four-year ban for “aggravated” cases. I haven’t seen WADA’s definition of what an aggravated case of doping would be. Time will tell exactly how such power gets applied.

Doing the research for a master list of doping products and techniques is the province of WADA, without a doubt. As is funding research at other institutions and monitoring the scientific world for useful information and developments.

Now, what should such a list look like? In my view, it should not only list PEDs, it should list the types of sporting activities where each drug might have an impact. And, it should go further, to define standards of how much of a drug actually gives a performance-enhancing effect.

This last point is important, especially for those who might be accidentally exposed to a banned substance. Some drugs have a very short acting effect. So, for tests conducted during competition, it’s important to get a handle on whether those drugs were used roughly during the competition, or close enough to make a difference, or perhaps not at a time when the drug would have made an impact.

Those who are accidentally exposed may or may not have gotten a boost from the drug they test positive for. So, if the lab results show that the drug was in such a low concentration as to have no benefit, no penalty should be assessed for the event where the positive test occurs.

Now, one could argue that perhaps a low concentration below the level where an athlete could benefit means that he or she was doping during training. This is a possibility. The answer to that is simple. Conduct more out-of-competitions on the individual to see if the drug shows up again. (One might even call such testing, “targeted testing.”) If the drug shows up again, and if it’s at a level that suggests the athlete is using a drug for training benefits, then disciplinary action would be warranted. On the other hand, if it never shows up again, we might conclude that the athlete’s claims of accidental exposure are true.

WADA’s current rules enshrine a concept called “strict liability.” That means, in essence, if it’s in you (in any amount) then you’re guilty of a doping violation. Strict liability is a concept that was created for convenience. The convenience of the anti-doping agencies. It eliminates the need to prove intent. And, in the current adversarial system, proving intent could be a difficult thing to do. So it makes for a shortcut in the process of catching and punishing cheats. But it also ensures that a number of athletes will be punished not because they intended to cheat, but because something was in their system unintentionally. So, while strict liability may speed the resolution of cases, it doesn’t always ensure a fair outcome.

In the alternate system that I envision, however, intention is part of the equation. (And that means the standard of strict liability is either amended or eliminated. Most likely eliminated.) It’s not always possible to prove someone’s intentions. But there are some things that are pretty good clues. Like the regular use of PEDs, detected over a series of tests over a given time period. Or the use of certain types of products, which are difficult to get and have very specific medical uses for conditions that an athlete doesn’t suffer from.

And, among those things that might address a person’s intentions would be the use of masking agents. These drugs (or sometimes techniques) are used to mask the presence or use of PEDs. So on WADA’s master list of banned substances, there should also be a list of masking agents. Like the PEDs themselves, the list of masking agents needs to be created from solid scientific research. And, like the list of PEDs, there should be thresholds established above which an athlete might test positive and below which the athlete would not. Also like the list of PEDs, the list of masking agents should detail the drugs or categories of drugs these masking agents affect. (The reason for listing this kind of information will become clear in a different post.)

Maintaining these master lists is certainly a WADA function. So how do the drugs get listed? Through research. And this plays into another WADA function. WADA rightly should be leading the research into performance enhancing drugs and techniques. That means that scientists employed by WADA might be doing the research, or that WADA might be funding research by scientists at other agencies or facilities. And WADA should be keeping on top of new studies and research, so that when new information emerges from facilities not funded by WADA that information can be added to the mix as well.

So what should WADA and other related agencies be concerned with? They should be funding research into how drugs might affect performance, what amount of a given drug is needed to affect athletic performance, and how various drugs can be reliably detected. Though it should go without saying, I’ll add that all research used in the struggle against doping should be peer-reviewed, not just by the anti-doping community, but by the broader scientific community, too.

What else should WADA do? They should be defining performance standards for the labs, defining standards for each type of test (such as a standard for declaring a sample positive for a drug), standards for the training of lab personnel, standard for certifying labs as being competent in anti-doping testing and so forth. Having defined such standards, WADA’s mission is also to ensure that the labs meet those standards. Labs that don’t meet those standards would then be subject to sanctions up to and including loss of their certification as an anti-doping lab.

By standard, I mean just that. The performance of a given function will be the same at all accredited labs. If we’re talking about declaring an athlete positive for a banned substance, every lab will use exactly the same criteria. WADA may even need to define standards on what type of equipment each lab should have, down to a particular brand of instrument if only one brand is capable of gathering the required data necessary.

And there is one other thing that WADA should do (and this could be a revenue-generating thing, which would then raise money to fund research and development). There are a large number of supplements aimed at helping athletes improve their performance legally (and a few that aren’t so legal). The current strict liability standard means that an athlete must be aware of everything he or she consumes.

But most athletes don’t have the wherewithal to pay for an analytical chemist to test each and every supplement they might wish to use. WADA should create a “WADA-certified safe” program where manufacturers would submit samples for testing. If the products come up clean, they get the WADA seal of approval. And, athletes using these supplements should be assured that if the substance is contaminated, the athlete will suffer no harm if he or she tests positive for the contaminant. (On the other hand, the manufacturer might lose their coveted WADA endorsement if athletes test positive for banned substances.) As part of this program, manufacturers would have to send samples for analysis on a regular basis, otherwise, they would lose the “WADA-certified safe” label.

Those are all the things that WADA should be doing. But there are some areas where WADA should not be the responsible agency. Among those are the enforcement function and defining the adjudication process. Those roles should fall to other groups to ensure separation of powers and to ensure that any athlete accused of doping will receive a fair shake from “the system.” In the next post, we’ll look at who should be doing the enforcement and who should be defining how anti-doping cases are decided.