The role of Dr Don Catlin + His rsponse to SI Article on Lance Armstrong [merged]

[joe_papp]

when after comeback 2.0 armstrong released the results of his tests, unlike the ‘crowd’ that thirsted blood, i kept calling attention to the foul odour emanating from his mundane urine, or more specifically i referred to some peculiarities in his urine t/e tests. ff course, my calls went unheeded.

in light of the SI article, it seems that now is an opportune time to revisit some of the facts i was pointing to a while back. imo, they are damming to armstrong and god-sent to novizky. let's review them...

i start with the key reference facts from the SI article:
armstrong tested above what was considered then the doping threshold (t/e=6) three times. quoting the paper: '9.0-to-1 ratio from a sample collected on June 23, 1993; a 7.6-to-1 from July 7, 1994; and a 6.5-to-1 from June 4, 1996.'

next, lets turn to armstrong’self-published T/E values:
http://cdn-community2.livestrong.co...c981f7be-e46c-4245-aa9d-d61ae110a264.Full.jpg

10/16/08 - t/e=0.4
12/3/08=0.5
12/11/08=0.6
12/16/08=.4
1/16/09=1.1 (!)
2/4/09=0.5
2/19/09=0.2
6/16/09=0.4
6/17/09=0.6
7/2/09=0.2
7/7/09=0.7
7/8/09=0.5
7/11/09=0.5
7/17/09=0.4
7/23/09=.7
(an important note: the above are all screening tests )


those with more more time on their hands can do the lohgitudinalanalysis, but it’s easy enough to eyeball that the average t/e was about 0.5 with 2-3 significant spikes both in terms of day-to-day changes and compared to the mean value.

none of the values above are abnormal but the trend is not good. why ? read below.

right away the big kicker jumping at you is that armstrong’s three suspicious values from the 90’s are over 1000 (one thousand !) percent above what should have been his average.

how stable are T/E ratios in a given individual ?

an unequivocal consensus answer: extensive multi-year research says that in a healthy individual it should be very stable throughout active life..

how much variation is abnormal and is considered a proof of doping ?

an unequivocal hard answer: in males -30% (source: still current wada technical document TD2004EAAS).
http://www.wada-ama.org/rtecontent/document/end_steroids_aug_04.pdf

iow, in the absence of carbon isotope ratio test, you will be sanctioned if your T/E collected over 3 months in just three tests exceeded 30% of the bases line (mean value).

And here is another significant fact, wada considers screening tests sufficiently robust to be included in the longitudinal studies along with confirmation tests.


now you can ponder all you want if armstrong’s 1000% variation from the 90s is bigger that the allowed 30% and if his body changed post cancer.

to me, armstrong’s t/e ratios (in total) represent as hard an evidence (if not more significant) as the infamous french EPO tests, armstrong doped and betsy was telling the truth all along.

Ahhh, uhhh, dude: everyone knows that cyclists don't use testosterone, because there's no scientific study demonstrating its efficacy, so unless you're saying that LA manipulated the E in his body, I don't get it.