Tests to detect performance-enhancing drugs in athletes "are improving, but even the newest have limitations, testing experts say, following recent reports of widespread doping in athletics," according to Toni Clarke of REUTERS.
Most doping tests "are designed to identify known substances." But athletes "are constantly on the lookout for chemicals that are not on testers' radars."
Increasingly, these are "genetically-engineered products that mimic the body's own hormones and proteins." Among the problems facing testers "are the costs and difficulties of detecting drugs" (REUTERS, 8/6).
IN HIS VOICE: IAAF VP Sebastian Coe wrote in the London TELEGRAPH, "I have never hidden away from the fact that there are elements of athletics that drift away from the moral framework. The sport has its problems and we face many challenges. ... But what has so angered us in recent days is the implication that, in some way, athletics and the International Association of Athletics Federations are complicit in encouraging doping. Quite simply, there is nothing in our history that points to such a conclusion being drawn. We were the first sport to introduce out-of-competition, wholly random, independent drugs testing; we were the first to set up arbitration panels; we were the first to set up accredited laboratories; and we were the pioneering partners in establishing the blood passport.
We have shown on numerous occasions that there are systems in place to weed out cheats wherever the technology allows and where there is not we can go back, sometimes up to 10 years, to re-evaluate data with greater technology. ... We do have challenges to face and I would defend to the ditches the right of any media organisation to question institutions. ... But our anger in the last few days has stemmed from the selective interpretation of data. What is crucial to understand -- and what was accepted by the anti-doping experts employed by the Sunday Times and ARD -- is that a one-off reading is not an indication of a positive test. Blood values must be assessed over time" (TELEGRAPH, 8/6).
