A doping detection idea - dogs

[Moose McKnuckles]

In the "new era of clean cycling", all the dope-sniffing dogs will report to the chief dog: Birillo.

 

[D-Queued]

Could you train a dog to detect who's had a blood transfusion?

Doggies don't need to sniff each other's behinds for us to know this. Doggies have had blood transfusions. And been on all kinds of PEDs.

Wasn't that the whole point of Operacion Puerto?

Dave.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

A bunch of these may work better than a typical phone call from Hein:

 

[JMBeaushrimp]

I was going to post a reply, but it seemed utterly pointless...

 

[Dear Wiggo]

They are developing cancer sniffing dogs so the dogs can smell when something is out of whack. Who knows if they can detect other imbalances. I would be surprised. Maybe, they could be used to screen suspicious athletes to get a good guess that they still have X in their system to make better use of your 'real' test and make better use of the few blood samples you can take. A cheap effect test really needs to be developed to screen out dopers. Maybe, dogs could help make test more cost effective.

http://www.businessinsider.com/working-dog-center-dogs-can-smell-cancer-2013-8

Guessing you didn't read OP either.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Masking perfumes?

Guessing you didn't read OP either.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Here are your problems:

1. Dogs can't smell everything.

Another person who didn't read OP. Where I said - dogs can't smell unknown substances. But I expected that.

2. Most of the main doping products - transfused blood, EPO, growth hormone, testosterone - occur naturally in the human body.

And here's where yet again your complete lack of understanding of doping shines through.

0. transfused blood isn't tested for now - and has nothing to do with my suggestion, with a plasticizer caveat as detailed in a prior post
1. None of these products you have listed (except the blood of course) are from human sources.
2. Cancer occurs naturally in the body (as OP stated) and can be detected by dogs.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

What prevents there from being more tests is not that they don't know who to test (hint: test everyone), it's money. The drug sniffing dogs would cost money, hence there would be less left over for testing.

How about this idea? A binary search for drugs. Split the peloton into two halves. Have each half pee into a trough. Test each for drugs. The half that has less drugs in it, discard. Split the remaining peloton half into two equal parts. Have each half (now a quarter of the total) pee into a trough. Test each for drugs. Discard the less druggy half. Continue. Eventually, you will find a drug user, and you only needed log(n) tests to do it!

Another idea (like the hour record at the end of the TdF idea) where you're not really thinking it through.

Any idea how long it takes to take a sample? Given each rider would need to do it individually, and they have what 3 sample taking stations at a time, that's 60 x how ever many sample taking durations. Let's say an hour (1 minute each) - a very conservative estimate.

Then you have to do the test. Another hour.

So it takes 2 hours to do the first split.

We now have 90 riders.

30 minutes for the next test, where 90 riders have to be chaperoned so they don't ingest anything but water.

Another hour to test the sample.

We're at 3.5 hours.

45 riders now, taking only 15 minutes to test.

An hour to test the sample.

4:45.

Down to 22.5 riders. The half a rider is lying in a pool of blood on the ground, so we can round down to 22.

Now it only takes 7 minutes. Plus the hour to do the test.

5:52 and we're down to 11 riders.

6:56 and it's now 1am in the morning. We have 5 riders who can all be tested individually.

Total testing: 5+5 = 10 tests to test 5 riders.
Total time pre-testing: 7 hours.

Total superfluous tests over 21 days of competition: ~100
Total time for superfluous pre-testing over 21 days of competition: ~140 hours.

Compare that to 20 teams, split over 10 hotels (conservative again) = 10 dogs. All "operating" simultaneously, spending 30 seconds per rider giving them a quick sniff = 5 minutes.

Only the 5 riders with suspicious puppy attention get tested.

Total testing: 5 tests to test 5 riders.
Total time pre-testing: 5 minutes.

For entire Grand Tour:
Total testing: 1:1 test to suspicious rider ratio.
Total time pre-testing: 1:40 minutes.

And whereas the sample collection requires
1. chaperone
2. hydration
3. private space
4. time

the puppy could simply be a team mascot at the breakfast table while the team has breakfast.

 

[Parker]

1. None of these products you have listed are from human sources.
2. Cancer occurs naturally in the body (as OP stated) and can be detected by dogs.

1. They may have originated there, but they are synthetic versions of what occurs naturally - barely any different chemically, certainly not in terms of smell.

2. Cancer isn't present in everyone. EPO, testosterone, blood and growth hormone are.

You asked for people's thought, so I gave them to you. As you couldn't discuss them politely I'll respond at your level. It's one of the most ill-thought out, ill-informed laughable ideas I've read on this forum - and there's a lot of competition.
Dogs can't smell small amounts of drugs inside the human body. Otherwise they would go nuts every time that a plane landed from Ibiza. And that's for drugs that don't have a natural equivalent.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

1. They may have originated there, but they are synthetic versions of what occurs naturally - barely any different chemically, certainly not in terms of smell.

2. Cancer isn't present in everyone. EPO, testosterone, blood and growth hormone are.

You asked for people's thought, so I gave them to you. As you couldn't discuss them politely I'll respond at your level. It's one of the most ill-thought out, ill-informed laughable ideas I've read on this forum - and there's a lot of competition.
Dogs can't smell small amounts of drugs inside the human body. Otherwise they would go nuts every time that a plane landed from Ibiza. And that's for drugs that don't have a natural equivalent.

Dogs have to be trained - they don't detect them automatically.

That's why they don't go nuts, not because they can't smell them.

I don't mind discussing it, but when you don't know what you're talking about, it kinda muddies the discussion, innit?

 

[MonkeyFace]

Guessing you didn't read OP either.

What if I looked you dead in the eye and let you looking into my soul and said I did?

 

[kielbasa]

Guessing you didn't read OP either.

Perfumes brings images to mind that are funnier than embrocation. Imagine doping enforcement walking into a team bus, or peloton passing through the countryside enveloped in a cloud of Chanel No 5.

 

[JMBeaushrimp]

Wiggo, you may have to face it on this one.

Full ***.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

What if I looked you dead in the eye and let you looking into my soul and said I did?

Dude, we're on a jet, who cares where you looked!? Pass me the caviar, will ya?

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Perfumes brings images to mind that are funnier than embrocation. Imagine doping enforcement walking into a team bus, or peloton passing through the countryside enveloped in a cloud of Chanel No 5.

Think of the sponsorship opportunities.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Wiggo, you may have to face it on this one.

Full ***.

That's no way to talk of forum posters, I'll have you know.

Apparently there's lots of ideas, according to Parker. Other than the hour attempt as part of the TdF, over 10 days, or the 7 hour binary search for dopers, starting with 9 litres of urine (90 riders @ 100ml each - conservative), I can't really think of any others.

 

[Merckx index]

Dogs have an acute sense of smell. They can be trained to detect cancer, which I am guessing has a very subtle bouquet.

Have a few dogs interact with the cyclists in the morning, and anyone who gets special puppy attention can get tested then and there. They can do it at the hotel, so it's kept out of the public eye, and you wouldn't need to limit it to GC / jersey wearers, etc, as the dogs would be filtering the testing pool automatically.

It's not quite that simple. Dogs generally detect substances in some bodily sample. E.g, this study found dogs could detect early stages of colon cancer (polyps) in breath or stool samples. You generally can't just let the dog sniff someone, unless there is some substance secreted in sweat. Usually you will have to take samples of some kind from the individual.

A second problem is that there frequently is not a well-defined line between the physiology of a doper and non-doper. That's why the passport is based on statistical abnormalities; it isn't so much that some new substance is produced by a doper as somewhat more of a substance is produced than is produced by a non-doper. That might not be the case with doping not involving blood manipulation, e.g., steroids, growth factors, etc., but we already have good tests for many of these. If a dog were able to detect use of a substance for which there were no test, that would certainly be helpful, but then the next step would be to identify what the dog was detecting. Then that could be detected through a standard laboratory test.

I think at this point dogs might be useful as a supplement to other procedures, but keep in mind for any test to be validated, it has to go through very rigorous procedures. A dog might be able to identify dopers with 95% selectivity, but that would not be nearly good enough for approved use in anti-doping.

 

[JMBeaushrimp]

That's no way to talk of forum posters, I'll have you know.

Apparently there's lots of ideas, according to Parker. Other than the hour attempt as part of the TdF, over 10 days, or the 7 hour binary search for dopers, starting with 9 litres of urine (90 riders @ 100ml each - conservative), I can't really think of any others.

You know what would be awesome? If the testing actually happened as it was supposed to, and the UCI stayed out of it.

The tests are there, now we just need some teeth.

Notwithstanding the dogs...

 

[D-Queued]

I was going to post a reply, but it seemed utterly pointless...

Agreed.

Dave.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

The human body naturally produces its own EPO, and I doubt a high hematocrit level produces an odour to distinguish it from normal or low. Synthetic testosterone is only distinguishable from mother nature's own by analysis of carbon isotope ratios, which also seems unlikely to be detectable by smell. Plus, the first time a dog incriminated a rider (or the handler misinterpreted the dog's "tell") but lab testing didn't back it up, the rider would have lawyers crawling up the WADA's toches for the slander to his character caused by their inept detection methods.

And I suspect you'd also have about 2/3rds of the peloton submitting protests on the basis of their being allergic to dog fur or dander or flatulence and claiming the searches imperiled their already delicate health. That's the nature of the beast.

 

[ustabe]

The hard part would be getting the dog's deposition during arbitration.

 

[MarkvW]

You know what would be awesome? If the testing actually happened as it was supposed to, and the UCI stayed out of it.

The tests are there, now we just need some teeth.

Notwithstanding the dogs...

No limit to how far you can push the 'war on doping' if you ignore rider's rights.

 

[Tyre Byter]

The hard part would be getting the dog's deposition during arbitration.

No, not really. That's the part where the 2-legged member of the dog/handler partnership usually excels.

The hard part can be trying to interpret what the dogs are trying to tell us, as this sorry situation illustrates.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/07/us-usa-newmexico-lawsuit-idUSBRE9A603N20131107

Also, IIRC sharks and grizzlies have more sensitive olfaction than bloodhounds. Just the mention of a little one-on-one screening test might bring out full confessions.

 

[blackcat]

Dogs have an acute sense of smell. They can be trained to detect cancer, which I am guessing has a very subtle bouquet.

Have a few dogs interact with the cyclists in the morning, and anyone who gets special puppy attention can get tested then and there. They can do it at the hotel, so it's kept out of the public eye, and you wouldn't need to limit it to GC / jersey wearers, etc, as the dogs would be filtering the testing pool automatically.

You can't train a puppy to detect unknown chemicals, but the drugs commonly tested for would be a good start. You can do targeted testing based on how someone smells rather than a computer system, statistics or otherwise. Not to replace those things, but as a real-time, ad-hoc ping.

I have not looked, but data from drug sniffer dogs at airports could be used as
* a template for training and handling
* source for efficacy data, etc.

I realise
* embrocation smells or similar could mask any exogenous chemical smells in cyclists
* the dogs have human handlers, introducing a corruptible link in the chain
* noone in cycling admin, IOC or anywhere else is actually interested in preventing or stopping doping

However, I am curious on other's thoughts?

A doping detection idea - dogs
Dogs have an acute sense of smell. They can be trained to detect cancer, which I am guessing has a very subtle bouquet.

waiting for dogot - dear wiggo

 

[zigmeister]

The average procyclist will find this measure inacceptabe because it treats cyclists as criminals.
for the same reason, i find it perfectly acceptable.
Let these dogs go through the teambusses.
piet de vos would think twice before hiding dynepo near his balls.

Then I'm sure you will have no problems with your employer doing the same with you 24/7.