according to Merckx Index Contador should have eaten half a cow in order to get to the level of CB he had in his blood. If that is true, how much should the German ponger have eaten? Half a herd? Please explain that away.
Not half a cow, but considerably more than he apparently did eat, or that anyone would eat. The amount Bert had to eat assumes that the meat was within the standard of 100 ng/kg. The ponger got off by claiming (rightly or wrongly) that his meat was much more contaminated, ergo, not necessary to eat as much.
But your question is still a good one, because really high levels of contamination seem to be fairly rare. This is why I believe the Mexican soccer players doped, and was glad to see that WADA challenged the decision to let them off.
now, if you never noticed it, think of how long it takes for you to feel the effect of the drink ?
it could be minutes, hours... and will depend on many factors - your individual health, tolerance, amount drunk gender...even your race.
There is some truth to this, but you have exaggerated it. Why do you suppose we can have a uniform standard of what counts for DUI? And why do you think that this corresponds to a reasonable figure on the “drinks per hour” chart? Of course there are individual differences, but they generally are not order of magnitude.
Contador's case is not really representative because he had tested negative on one day and positive the next day or a few days after that (I forget), which more or less allows us to calculate roughly how much clen he must have originally had in his system. That's not going to be the case with 99% of people who test positive for clen.
Correct, and very good point which I have emphasized here before. We not only know that Contador could not have doped with CB directly during the Tour, we also have a pretty good idea of how much he did ingest.
a 'clean' spanish cow would almost certainly be doped in germany as the there is no such thing as uniformity in science.
but the misplaced and self-righteous utterance about 'holy' science and 'irrefutable' eu statistics will continue.
As discussed here before, eating meat from a clean Spanish cow (or clean German cow, for that matter) might result in detectable levels of CB if all the stars aligned just right. Or might not. But it would not result in Bert’s level, which is the beginning and the end of the use of EU statistics. Again, no one has to believe me on this. WADA says so, too.
Science is at least more uniform than your posts, that say one day that anyone against a threshold is ignorant, the next day that some WADA scientists are against it, that discuss one day the possibility that WADA will approve a threshold, the next day that anyone who thought WADA was able to consider a threshold this year was ignorant, the day after that that it was being considered.
But you are uniform in your attitude towards me, I will give you credit for that consistency.
I believe you know my background so you know I believe in statistics, etc. But, stuff happens. People get food poisoning at restaurants, in spite of FDA guidelines for storing and preparing food, kitchen inspections, etc. What are the statistics for getting food poisoning vs every time somebody in the US eats in a restaurant? Probably about as small as clen being used in cattle in Europe. I would bet large sums of money that if I go eat at a the random restaurant tonight I will not get food poisoning. I would also bet large sums of money that the random cattle tested in Europe will be negative for clen. That is irrelvant to my argument. People get food poisoning, the rogue rancher uses clen in his cattle and doesn't get caught because it is impossible to monitor everything. All of this in spite of statistics......
You say you respect statistics, but then you say “stuff happens”. This is precisely what someone says who doesn’t want to accept conclusions based on statistics. “Stuff happens” is just a euphemism for “a one in a thousand occurrence could explain why I tested positive”. Floyd Landis’s supporters used the same argument (among others) to claim that his levels of carbon isotope were not indicative of doping. Some people have naturally high isotope ratios. Likewise, some people have naturally high T/E levels, and some people have naturally high levels of certain EPO isoforms. IOW, there is always a chance of a false positive. The idea is that a doping criterion is set so that false positives are very rare. If one still tests positive in that paradigm, then we are in the “stuff happens” zone.
“Stuff happens” is not wrong. It’s just very unlikely, and puts you on a slippery slope. The logical conclusion of the “stuff happens” argument is not to sanction anyone for a positive, because there is always a non-zero chance that it could be a false positive. At least there is for testosterone, for EPO, and for CB (in the latter case, it’s not really a false positive, but the effect is the same).
Also, the “stuff happens” argument works against the threshold that you say you favor. If you are going to accept the possibility that Bert or some other athlete ate the rare piece of meat that exceeded the Euro standard, then there is no obvious limit to how contaminated that meat could have been. If the meat was contaminated enough to result in 50 pg/ml, why not contaminated enough to result in 100, 200 or 500 pg/ml? If you’re going to break the rules, dope your cattle, not give them enough time to pass most of it before slaughter and take your chances that the meat won’t be tested, it doesn’t much matter how much over the limit you are. If you’re way over you will be flagged, but if you’re barely over you will be in the same position. As I noted above, really high levels are rare even in third world countries, but once we’re in the “stuff happens” zone, that argument loses much of its force.
But, what if his levels were lower, somewhere in the range you calculated was possible by ingestion? Is it fair to have a zero threshold rule then?
I used that argument only to highlight the difficulty Bert specifically would face in using a threshold to support his case—though since there will be no threshold for at least another year, that is academic. But the more fundamental problem with any threshold is, as you are aware, it allows some dopers to get through. Does this mean there should be no threshold? Not necessarily. The rational way to address this is to compare the likelihood of a doper sailing through with the likelihood that someone eating meat will test at some particular low level.
We don’t have the data to decide this, but we could very easily get them by testing populations. As I said before, I really think we should do this. It’s a simple way of cutting through all the rumors and suspicions that more meat is contaminated than is supposed to be, and finding out the real extent of CB. It would also allow us to get an idea of the baseline for someone who eats legal meat. If you eat Spanish meat, could you test positive in Germany? Nobody really knows for sure. Such a study would have value beyond the implications for doping in sports. Any society that wants to protect its citizens should want to know what the levels of various hormones and other additives in people really are.
If we did this, I suspect we would find that the incidence of CB in Europe and the U.S. is extremely low, so low that detection in an athlete is far more likely to indicate doping. But I could very well be wrong, and if I were, I would advocate a threshold. If it turned out, for example, that the probability of having a level of CB of 10 pg/ml or higher in the urine within twenty-four hours of eating meat was greater than 1%, I think we would have to have a threshold to protect athletes. While any single athlete would still be unlikely to test positive, the probability that one athlete out of several hundred elite cyclists is positive becomes very significant.
IF AC would have gotten tested a couple of days later and his level was very low you might have a different position, because your argument about his level not being indicative of accidental ingestion would then fall flat. Of course, then AC would have eaten that meat a couple of days later.
Agreed. I think Bert would have a better case if he had not had that first test, and only his subsequent levels were detected. As I said before, a level of less than 10-20 pg/ml could indicate meat that passed the Euro standard. It’s still stretching it a lot, most pharmacokinetic models that WADA used at the RFEC hearing suggest that his level would have to be a lot lower than this. It would be one of those situations where you could strongly suspect doping, but nevertheless feel you had to give him the benefit of the doubt.
My position in summary is that there should be a threshold because of the possibility, however remote, of accidental ingestion. It could more than likely established along the lines of your calculations of what is possible. Anything above that, then guilty with no more shenanigans.
Even if there is a threshold, I don’t think that being above it should be an automatic sanction. Any reasonable threshold could be exceeded by eating meat that is contaminated beyond the Euro standard, and in some countries the evidence is that meat like that is not so very rare. Hence the ponger had a higher level than Bert. Threshold or not, I think other factors do deserve consideration. Either that, or advise athletes to eat meat in those countries at their own risk.
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