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Thyroid Meds

Thyroid medication is prescription only, so if it's being facilitated by the team then the most effective thing to do would be to go after the doctors for prescribing medication that is not required by the patient. Again, I'll make the point that the best way to do this is to have a central pool of doctors, funded independently, that are randomly distributed among the teams every year.
 
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King Boonen said:
Thyroid medication is prescription only, so if it's being facilitated by the team then the most effective thing to do would be to go after the doctors for prescribing medication that is not required by the patient. Again, I'll make the point that the best way to do this is to have a central pool of doctors, funded independently, that are randomly distributed among the teams every year.

Tramadol is also prescription only, and yet British cycling/Sky doctors (ha fuckin ha) seem to be offering it around like sweeties. Your second point is a fair one but not in any way workable I'm afraid.
 
Re: Re:

ferryman said:
King Boonen said:
Thyroid medication is prescription only, so if it's being facilitated by the team then the most effective thing to do would be to go after the doctors for prescribing medication that is not required by the patient. Again, I'll make the point that the best way to do this is to have a central pool of doctors, funded independently, that are randomly distributed among the teams every year.

Tramadol is also prescription only, and yet British cycling/Sky doctors (ha **** ha) seem to be offering it around like sweeties. Your second point is a fair one but not in any way workable I'm afraid.

Yes, but Tramadol is a pain killer. It's fairly easy to justify in terms of any review panel as many of the other opioids are banned in-competition, so you give the one which won't accidentally trigger a positive test. I'm not saying that's fine with me, I think if you need opioid pain killers you shouldn't be racing/training, but that's currently why it's hard to do anything.

Thyroid meds are different. They have a single medicinal purpose for a specific treatment. While Tramadol can be given for a variety of pains, either alone or with other specific treatments, thyroid meds are only given to those with thyroid problems. As such there should be a paper trail proving that they are required.

The second point would actually be fairly easy to enact if the sport wanted to. Each team pays a doctors wages and an overspend for management and review to an independent body. The board then assigns doctors, from a pool, to different teams each year. During that year doctors are assigned to a team and their expenses are covered by the team. All are required to submit notes to the body and all practices are reviewed. Anything questionable is then on the doctors shoulders and they are the ones who are held accountable. Of course, there would need to be a will to do it...
 
They have been abused in distance running for a while. As low thyroid activity is a symptom of heavy training runners were being prescribed medication to "get back to normal levels", allowing them to train even harder (then up the dose) repeat ad nauseam.
 

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