Poll: Innocent or Guilty?
posted by Patrick Herron at 10:22 PM
Monday, August 14, 2006
Why I Care
I'm a former (very) amateur cyclist with debilitating arthritis in my left knee. I live my dreams of cycling glory vicariously through people like Lance and Floyd.
My bias in Floyd's favor is offset by the familiarity I developed with performance-enhancing drugs while in high school; I *know* the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs is far more prevalent than is being reported. Later in life I had a good friend who was advised by his college head coach that if he wanted to make the NFL he should take steroids. He did take steroids, and he did make the NFL. That coach is now a division I coacn at a big sports program. If Floyd used, it wouldn't be shocking. Cycling has been dirty for over two decades.
Having said that, I have serious and well-founded doubts that organization ssuch as the WADA or UCI can be effective at making determinations about drug use, at least not without checks and balances and good independent oversight.
My understanding of the underlying issues goes beyond the mere anecdotal. I've worked professionally as a researcher in gene toxicology at the NIEHS and later helped start two organizations in the US federal government that evaluate governmental test method standards both in the US and internationally. Let's just say I'm accustomed the the bureaucratic influences involved in setting standards like the ones used for detecting drug use in pro athletes. I have been first-hand witness to a phenomenon worse than groupthink: political machinations, dictated by greed, deliberately undermining the quality of well-researched test standards.
In December 2006 I completed graduate school. I studied the adoption of innovations by pharmaceutical companies for my master's thesis. My academic study focused on biomedical informatics: consumer health, evidence-based medicine, clinical and biotech data mining, and biomedical text mining. I took the Summer of 2006 off from school, working as an enterprise architect responsible for the reorganization of the SAS corporate support site, optimizing findability for the 4 million or so SAS users. I performed a great deal of language use analysis geared towards making sense out of large collections of expert domain documents, the domain of expertise in this case being statistical analysis.
I am currently seeking employment and have recently enjoyed some good interviews. I haven't found the right match yet. I want to get it right.
In my spare time I write poetry. I've written five books to date but have stopped writing for the moment. The second book of mine to be published will be released this fall by Effing Press. The forthcoming book, written by my puppet Lester, has enjoyed a cult status among poets for years.
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5 Comments:
Interesting info from cyclingnews.com.
German doctor Kurt Moosburger, who has looked after J Jaksche (among others) for the past two years, has told dpa that he believes that performance enhancing drugs are "indispensable" for high level cycling
To help recover, testosterone and human growth hormone can be used. "Both are made by the body and are therefore natural substances," he said. "They help to build muscle as well as in muscle recovery."
Dr Moosburger explained how it was done. "You put a standard testosterone patch that is used for male hormone replacement therapy on your scrotum and leave it there for about six hours. The small dose is not sufficient to produce a positive urine result in the doping test, but the body actually recovers faster."
Could this be a scenario that would apply to Landis?
Would using a T patch account for Landis' remarkable stage 17 ride?
Also worth a listen to Phil Liggett's comments. There seem to be a lot of cycling experts saying that something doesn't smell right about the whole thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfu7P_gLTFI
I hope you and this entire site all feel bloody stupid after he's admitted doing it.
Lance took Floyd under his wing earlier in his career when he was an average rider.
Floyd couldn't live up to expectations and had to resort to doping.
Now he's trying to deflect attention and bring everyone else down. God only knows why Lance is even having to defend himself against a proven liar and cheat, when Lance has never once failed a drugs test.
Floyd is rotten to the core. No question.
Dope addicted, mini-brains with no discernible sense of ethical behavior (riders and fans alike) have ruined a sport I loved. Goddamn cheating a-holes and the imbeciles that think it's all OK because "everyone does it" make me sick. No matter what is "won" you're ultimately pathetic losers.
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