Article on Tyler Hamilton doping case in the NY Times

One point that is rather stupid is that they don't mention that:

1) The test used never had a study for false positives
2) They never mentioned that in the study that was done they only used
24 people ALL KNOWN TO BE POSITIVE and that one of them tested negative
and another as "questionable".
3) That Tyler's sample was interpretted by the testing laboratory as
negative and was later changed to positive by the man who developed the
test and who has a financial interest in it.
4) That blood doping was touted as being the ONLY way that the
hematocrit in the peloton could possibly be so high and that Tyler and
his roommate were the only two to test positive demonstrating a VERY
strong possibility that false positives might be the majority of
findings.
5) That the hearing stated that they wouldn't even QUESTION the
efficacy and accuracy of the tests despite strong scientific data
demonstrating that the tests could not be used for any medical purposes
in the USA without a strong possibility of medical malpractice.
6) That Tyler and his team were 'warned' months ahead of time that his
blood was testing 'funny' according to their lights.
7) That both Hamilton's and Perez's positives were led by a phone call
warning to the Phonak Team management (reported to police when it
occurred ) that unless blackmail was paid that they would have some
'positive' drug tests on the team.

Personally, I believe that WADA has lost all credibility.

Jeff said:

Talks about "chimeras" etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/health/10bloo.html?

I sometimes blame things on my brother, but this is ridiculous!

Steve

--
Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDS
http://www.dentaltwins.com
Brooklyn, NY
718-258-5001

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Quoted message said:

One point that is rather stupid is that they don't mention that:

1) The test used never had a study for false positives

I don't think such a test is necessary.

It was not a great choice of defence for Tyler given that later tests
on his blood were negative for homologous transfusion (in Nov '04). If
he really were a chimer and that was the reason for a false positive
test result, he would always be positive.

"Jonathan v.d. Sluis" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:

"Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]> schreef in bericht
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Quoted message said:

One point that is rather stupid is that they don't mention that:

1) The test used never had a study for false positives

I don't think such a test is necessary.

Uh, why would you think that? Would you want to be tested for a serious
disease with a test that hadn't gone through a peer reviewed process?

"Patricio Carlos" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:

It was not a great choice of defence for Tyler given that later tests
on his blood were negative for homologous transfusion (in Nov '04). If
he really were a chimer and that was the reason for a false positive
test result, he would always be positive.

Patricio, what is your thoughts on the circumstances where Phonak was warned
that they would have positive drug tests, that the implication is that these
guys were "topping up" which would indicate HC's very close to maximum IF
they were doing that (and hence of very little performance gain) and the
fact that we have YET to get some significant information such as if Tyler
and Santi had the same blood type?

I would think that WADA would want to put a lot of public confidence into
these tests and plainly are hiding a whole lot.

Quoted message said:

From the info I have seen, I am guessing that some of the Phonak riders

were having strange fluctuations in their haematocrit levels. As you
have written (I think it was you), there is about a 10% error in most
lab readings like this so it would need to be a substantial variation
eg 42% out of competition and 49.3% in a major race.

If it was differences between, for example, 47 and 48%, that would be
easily explained by lab error or drinking a lot of fluid before the
lower reading, and, as you said, would not lead to a substantial
performance benefit if it was from 'topping up'.

It would be nice to know the blood types of TH & SP. That would only
really show us that, if different, there could not have been a stuff up
by the team medical staff switching autologous blood between those two
riders. If they have the same blood type, we can't say too much either
way but it does raise the question of a team stuff up. Perhaps Phonak
or the riders are choosing to keep that info quiet???

Patricio Carlos said:

It was not a great choice of defence for Tyler given that later tests
on his blood were negative for homologous transfusion (in Nov '04). If
he really were a chimer and that was the reason for a false positive
test result, he would always be positive.

all tyler has is a legal strategy to cast doubt on the test

therefore, whatever is
"beyond reasonable doubt"
at the time
wins

unfortunately time is against
it's a bit like cluedo combined with mastermind I think to get an admission
"Did you blood dope?" No.
"Did you, with the assistance of someone else, blood dope?"
"Did you etc..."

Retiral, rather than retrial, will be the eventual outcome

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"Jonathan v.d. Sluis" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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"Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]> schreef in bericht
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Quoted message said:

One point that is rather stupid is that they don't mention that:

1) The test used never had a study for false positives

I don't think such a test is necessary.

Uh, why would you think that? Would you want to be tested for a serious
disease with a test that hadn't gone through a peer reviewed process?

The test produces a graph that shows if there are multiple types of red
blood cells in the blood. Nobody in Hamilton's case disputed the validity or
reliability of that graph. Such graphs have been used in medical treatments,
so people have already relied on it.

"Patricio Carlos" <[email hidden]> schreef in bericht
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Quoted message said:

It was not a great choice of defence for Tyler given that later tests
on his blood were negative for homologous transfusion (in Nov '04). If
he really were a chimer and that was the reason for a false positive
test result, he would always be positive.

Hamilton never actually claimed to be a chimer(a?). He just wanted to point
out that there are alternatives. I am of the opinion that if he points to
such an alternative, he should at least make it credible that it applies to
him (like also testing positive in repeated tests).

Can we all just leave this thing alone. It has been decided once by
the American court for arbitration and sport, and is now going to be
decided by the international CAS. Let's just let them decide who's
guilty and who's not guilty shall we instead of playing armchair
scientists around here. None of us (well, most of us anyway) probably
know anything about this test, the testing procedure, and or the
science behind it enough to really comment on it. Aside from that,
aren't we all just sick of hearing about this case? It's just a
freakin' bike racer for crying out loud. This ain't life and death.

Tom

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Quoted message said:

Can we all just leave this thing alone. It has been decided once by
the American court for arbitration and sport,

And I think they made a reasonable decision.

and is now going to be

Quoted message said:

decided by the international CAS. Let's just let them decide who's
guilty and who's not guilty shall we instead of playing armchair
scientists around here. None of us (well, most of us anyway) probably
know anything about this test, the testing procedure, and or the
science behind it enough to really comment on it. Aside from that,
aren't we all just sick of hearing about this case? It's just a
freakin' bike racer for crying out loud. This ain't life and death.

I don't see why you would suggest it is life and death to me. What I resent
is that any decision against Hamilton is taken as evidence of authorities
like WADA being corrupt, a viewpoint that is seen in many letters to
cyclingnews.com. Otherwise I felt the case was clear enough for me after I
read the arbitrator's report.

Quoted message said:

Tom

The public disgrace of such a well known and popular rider as TH is
terrible for the sport. Thus it surprises me that so many people feel
that he is being railroaded by WADA. What is the motivation there?

Jeff

Jonathan v.d. Sluis said:

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"Jonathan v.d. Sluis" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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"Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]> schreef in bericht
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>One point that is rather stupid is that they don't mention that:
>
>1) The test used never had a study for false positives

I don't think such a test is necessary.

Uh, why would you think that? Would you want to be tested for a serious
disease with a test that hadn't gone through a peer reviewed process?

The test produces a graph that shows if there are multiple types of red
blood cells in the blood. Nobody in Hamilton's case disputed the validity or
reliability of that graph. Such graphs have been used in medical treatments,
so people have already relied on it.

I don't see how that statement makes any sense.

yes, the test results say that there is a mixed population of cells in
his blood sample.

some researchers claim that the presence of chimera's is much more
common than previously thought, and that as test sensitivity increases,
they find more and more of them.

but without establishing a rate for false positives at a given
sensitivity, there is no way to ascertain how likely it is that an
alternative to doping could explain the results.

the fact that the test has been used before really proves nothing, since
plenty of test fall well short of 100% accurtacy but are considered
useful in medical diagnostics.

and the fact that the test is presumably +/- rather than quantitative (I
guess that's what's meant by the "i know it when i see it standard"😉
isn't convincing either.

karyotyping (ie looking for a Y chromosome) was seen as a clear way to
keep men from posing as women at the olympics- a simple +/- result...
but the test was abandoned after it was found that the false positive
rate was actually high enough to disqualify numerous women from
competition. ie a substantial percentage of women carry a Y chromosome,
so the basis of the test was flawed. they subsequently abandoned doing
the test.

without knowing the error rate in your population of interest, how can
you possibly evaluate how likely a false postive is?

marc

Jeff said:

The public disgrace of such a well known and popular rider as TH is
terrible for the sport. Thus it surprises me that so many people feel
that he is being railroaded by WADA. What is the motivation there?

Jeff

while I hope that TH is innocent, I fear that he isn't. and I have no
reason to think he is being railroaded.

but it's also clear that well meaning people can make mistakes.

I think the example I gave of sex typing at the olympics is
illuminating. at the Atlanta Olympics they tried to improve their test
for cheaters (men passing as women) by using a DNA-based test (PCR I
suppose) to dectect the SRY gene. But even with this suppossedly more
sophisticated test, 8 women were flagged with false positives, and all
were allowed to compete.

so, while I don't think the WADA is trying to target anyone, they may
be unintentionally unfairly damaging athletes by using questionable
methodology.

it seems clear that you need to empirically determine the error rate of
the test, and not rely on the assumption that the test must be 100% (or
insignificantly different from 100%) based on a very small number of tests.

-marc

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

"Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]> schreef in bericht
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Quoted message said:

One point that is rather stupid is that they don't mention that:

1) The test used never had a study for false positives

I don't think such a test is necessary.

Why?
-----------
Alex

Marc said:

so, while I don't think the WADA is trying to target anyone, they

may

Quoted message said:

be unintentionally unfairly damaging athletes by using questionable
methodology.

They may be, but more likely, in every case of a doping positive, it is
a true positive and the cheater will deny it to the grave. After all,
that's what a clean athlete would do if they tested positive.

Marc said:

so, while I don't think the WADA is trying to target anyone, they may
be unintentionally unfairly damaging athletes by using questionable
methodology.

I think WADA did target Hamilton. I also think he did it. But
targeting people is why the process is so important. They made
some major mistakes. Even if he is guilty, making major mistakes
is not a good thing. There is no way the panel of experts that
declared his sample positive should have known it was his. That
is just a basic procedure to avoid the appearance of bias. Not
giving a [censored] about bias is not a good thing.

The USADA targets the [censored] out of people. If they are going
to do that it is essential that the process be unimpeachable.
It isn't currently.

Bob Schwartz
[email hidden]

Quoted message said:

Marc said:

so, while I don't think the WADA is trying to target anyone, they

may

Quoted message said:

be unintentionally unfairly damaging athletes by using questionable
methodology.

They may be, but more likely, in every case of a doping positive, it is
a true positive and the cheater will deny it to the grave. After all,
that's what a clean athlete would do if they tested positive.

i agree there's a dilemma- the guilty do generally have the same set of
excuses.

but all the more reason to make sure you've got a rock-solid battery of
drug tests. that way you can say: 'there's only one chance in a million'
(or whatever) of a false positive, instead of saying: 'no need to
establish an error rate, we're sure it's always right'

we obviously can't generally count on the accused to admit it when 'caught'.

-marc