Alan Abramson recently penned an article that questioned the credibility of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) steroid testing program. WADA may be administering more and more anti-doping tests every year. And the 2012 Summer Olympics in London may set a new record for the number of athletes and the number of drug tests. But this is meaningless if the anti-doping protocols are ineffective at catching athletes using prohibited performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs).
Abramson highlighted the anti-doping statistics publicly released by WADA for 2010. The 35 WADA-accredited laboratories conducted analyses on 258,267 samples. “Adverse analytical findings” and “atypical findings” accounted for only 4,820 samples or 1.87 percent.
Even this low rate of return may not be an accurate representation of the number of steroid and PED users caught by WADA. Only 61 percent of positives were for anabolic steroids. A significant percentage of the positive tests were for “cannibinoids”. Approximately ten percent of athletes who tested positive were caught using the decidedly non-performance enhancing drug more commonly known as marijuana.
WADA doesn’t appear to do a very good job at catching steroid users.
Dick Pound, a former president of WADA and former vice president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), believes that approximately 10 percent of athletes at the Olympics have used anabolic steroids and/or other PEDs in their preparation for the Olympics. Pounds derisively suggests WADA is only catching the “one or two of them” who are not smart enough to avoid detection.
“People who have prepared in advance and used drugs coming here (to London) won’t get caught,” said Pound.”If you get caught you fail two tests, a drugs test and an IQ test.”
So, the next time you hear anti-doping officials pat themselves on the back for the great job they have done at the London Olympics, consider whether their statements represent a truthful picture of the effectiveness of anti-doping testing or merely public relations aimed at securing future funding.
Source:
Abramson, A. (July 9, 2012). Toward a “robust” anti-doping testing program. Retrieved from http://3wiresports.com/2012/07/09/toward-a-robust-anti-doping-testing-program/
