Dr. Maserati said:
I have mentioned it before
but the discrepencey between the CB positive may have something to do with the tests up to and including the 20th being sent to Lausanne and the ones on the 21st and after going to Cologne, which we know has more sensitive equipment.
As an example - sample from the 20th may have had clen in it above what was discovered on the 21st (50pg/ml) but below what could be detected in Lausanne.
Very interesting, I missed the implication. That would explain all the anomalies, except that he would be transfusing before the rest day. But also, if he did infuse on July 20, his 50 pg/ml value would have come more than twenty-four hours after transfusion, which means that estimates of how much he originally ingested go up considerably--to the point where he would have perhaps had to take more CB than one would expect even for PE. Instead of the 50 ug minimum I estimated earlier, the minimum would probably be around 80 ug, and the 200 ug value WADA is allegedly using would maybe go up to 300 ug or more, which is definitely too high.
There is an irony about these estimates. To a certain point, the higher the estimate of CB originally ingested, the more it favors the prosecution, as it means it couldn't have come from eating meat that passed the Euro standard. But once you get to that point, higher estimates favor the defense, because you have to postulate higher intentional dosing with CB, while the contaminated meat scenario just argues that the contamination was higher. Once you claim the meat did not pass the standard, you can pretty much argue it was any level of contamination you want.
Also: if he was an undetected positive for CB on July 20, that raises the possibility that he was an undetected positive even earlier. IOW, it brings into play a third alternative that was ruled out on the basis of the July 20 negative: that he was intentionally doping with CB during the Tour--or much more likely, just before the Tour. In this scenario, he stopped taking CB before the Tour, and his levels fell enough to pass the insensitive tests. But they remained high enough to test positive at Cologne. Whether this is possible would depend on when he was tested earlier in the Tour (I don't know these dates, obviously they are out there),and the sensitivity of the other lab hypothetically testing these earlier samples, and would take some serious pharmacokinetic analyses to support.
But the bottom line is, if he was positive for CB on July 20, it could open up a real can of worms. It would probably favor the prosecution, which could now argue another way the CB got into his system. If the kinetics worked out, they would not have to deal with the transfusion anomalies. They could argue that the positive DEHP on July 20 resulted from a real transfusion, but since they had another way to explain the CB, they would not pursue that any further.
Edit: Here’s a rough calculation. The half-life of CB clearance from plasma is about 35 hours, or a day and a half. The minimum standard of CB detection, or whatever they call it, is 2 ng/ml, or 40 times what Bert tested for. This means that if Bert (just) passed detection at this level on a certain date, it would have taken about 5-6 half-lives, or 7-9 days, for his levels to fall to 50 pg/ml. So by this calculation, if he was tested more than 9 days before July 21, July 12 or earlier, as I assume he was, this scenario would not work. Before July 12, he would have tested positive even at the most lax standard.
But the 35 hour half life only holds for the initial clearance of CB from the bloodstream. After that, clearance is much slower, because some of the CB is taken up by various tissues, and cleared from them over time. So in principle, he might have passed the 2 ng/ml standard before July 12, might have passed all the tests he was subjected to during the Tour.. But very complicated kinetics come into play at this point, with lots of assumptions and a very broad range of possibilities. Still, if you are right that he was not tested at Cologne for the July 20 sample, this would definitely be worth pursuing.
Just one question re saline or reinfusing with plasma - would there be a possibility that it was done to keep a 'normal' or consistent looking Bio Passport?
Saline would be just as good as plasma from the point of view of HT, Hb, reticulocytes and other blood parameters. There are substances in the bloodstream that I believe are tested in one of the other passports, the hormonal one, but a few hundred ml more or less of plasma are unlikely to affect those numbers significantly, even if tested for. OTOH, it's possible Bert thought that they might be affected, i.e., he felt transfusing plasma rather than saline would provide a more normal looking profile. I think what is needed here is the testimony of a former rider about how blood dopers do it.
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