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Anti-Doping Book

The Anti-Doping Crisis in Sport. Causes, Consequences, Solutions
by Paul Dimeo and Verner Moller
London: Routledge, 2018

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781134809998

The link provides an abstract for each chapter. Here are four of those abstracts:

1. The inadvertent consequences of anti-doping
The war on drugs in sport has intensified since the late 1990s when the Festina affair during the 1998 Tour de France became one of the precursors for the formation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (1999), which duly coordinated the globalised fight for clean sport through the World Anti-Doping Code (2003). A series of problems have since emerged as direct and logical consequences of these new strategies. Inadvertent consequences which highlight the complex nature of anti-doping crisis include: athletes exploiting the rigour of the testing system; advantages going to athletes who can afford the best doping doctors; increased numbers of genuinely innocent athletes being punished; athletes’ privacy and dignity being abused due to the apparent need to observe urination and to locate them for testing 365 days a year; and the 10-year retesting rule means that we cannot know the results of an event until that period has passed, leading to the end of meaningful winning and thus the end of sport. These problems are the inevitable outcome of a reactionary, fear-based, top-down policy which has severe consequences for athletes. The outcomes are at times the opposite of the stated aims of protecting the level playing field, the health of athletes and the spirit of sport.

Re the bolded: I wonder if they provide evidence for that claim

4. Why anti-doping fails
During the period since WADA was formed there has been a more than doubling of the number of annual global tests (now just over 300,000 in 2016), which has dramatically raised the extent of surveillance of athletes. Yet there is a clear gap between policy outcomes and the reality of doping. Consistently fewer than two per cent of athletes who are tested are caught using drugs to cheat. We compare this to the evidence found elsewhere of significantly higher prevalence of doping in a range of countries and sports and show that the system is not working. Situations of either low levels of testing or failure to fully investigate doping environments exacerbate the deficit between testing results and doping practices. We examine the various reasons why the attempt to force all athletes, in all sports and in all countries, to behave according to the ‘clean sport’ mantra has failed so badly, and focus on the problems inherent in the vision of harmonisation. These issues persist despite increasing policy efforts, international government support and financial resources. Anti-doping is an ambitious and idealistic policy, which has thus far not succeeded in creating a level playing field.

6. Problems with medicine and science
Anti-doping relies upon an understanding of the medical and scientific aspects of drugs, the reasons for their use, and certainty over the methods of detection. Without such an understanding, there can be highly problematic consequences. The ambiguities of policy and the arbitrariness of the Prohibited List are explored by considering legal medicines and health, focusing on caffeine and painkillers. The dilemmas that are inherent in the therapeutic use exemptions system demonstrate the uncertainties that can be exploited by unscrupulous athletes and doctors. By contrast, cases where athletes have been denied clear need for medicines, such as hormonal therapies, show that policies can be unjust and increase health risks. Perhaps just as troubling are the cases which expose weaknesses in the laboratory testing procedures, which should be absolutely watertight if athletes are to be treated fairly and have their basic human rights protected. The organisation of anti-doping mitigates against objective and independent appraisal of these risks, and against athletes mounting appeals against rules or processes.

9. Recommendations for radical reform
Given the state of the anti-doping crisis, the case studies we present of inhumane consequences (which are far from exhaustive and collectively show the problems are systematic not isolated), and the inadequacies of the alternatives proposed so far, we outline several ideas for radical reform. A return to amateurism may not seem pragmatic, but since anti-doping has its roots in amateur sport ideologies and the motivations to dope are often financial, then a solution may well be to simply remove one of the main incentives. Perhaps less radical would be to reform the business model, to reduce the income differentiation between the best athletes and the less successful, and thus undermine the rationale for doping which is to win at all costs. Other recommendations focus upon controlling athletes’ access to doping drugs. If they were only allowed to consult doctors who have been accredited by WADA, then we reduce the risk of unscrupulous medical advisers supplying doping products. Related to which, the TUE system should be discarded if fairness and equity are the key objectives. Less radical solutions could include health checks and better education leading to athletes making informed decisions in the context of their own health and sporting ambitions, while a 24-hour chaperone system would reduce the need for testing if an athlete is constantly under surveillance. While the more controversial of these suggestions might seem unreasonable, they are not much of a departure from surveillance systems and paternalistic approaches already in place. Last, we suggest a model for making sanctions more nuanced, transparent and consistent without the need for an arbitration process.
 
Merckx index said:
Re the bolded: I wonder if they provide evidence for that claim

They might be referring to contaminated supps/steaks (debatable whether that counts as "innocent" but most people probably think so). I mean, if they could prove on a case by case basis that an innocent rider was busted, that rider probably would have been exonerated. And then there are the party drugs (coke & pot & whatever) where riders may not be innocent of breaking rules but are innocent of seeking or benefiting from performance enhancement.
 
With innocent athletes being punished, they might also be referring to the observation that athletes almost always lose in the arbitration.

Writing out of my memory, but some issues have been voiced against the process, at least there were some limitations whether WADA accrited lab employees can testify against the process of another lab etc. and that the labs might have zero incentives to voluntarily bring up the information if they notice having committed an error.

In addition, everyone knows that Hamilton and Landis lost both around a million or two in the process even when guys like David Walsh don't deny that there were some lab errors at least in the latter case, so why necessarily even contest an AAF case at all if you'll most likely lose your case.
 
Dr Paul Dimeo's 'A History of Drug Use in Sport, 1876-1976: Beyond Good and Evil' is well worth reading too if you can get your hands on it. Also 'History of Anti-Doping at the Olympics’, in Lo, V. (ed) Perfect Bodies, training for sport, medicine and immortality'.

WADA have funded his research on a couple of projects too, but I've never found them published anywhere called ‘Team dynamics and doping in sport: A risk or a protective factor?' and 'Doping Behaviour, Causes and Prevention in Elite Level Kenyan Athletes: an empirical investigation’
 

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