Re: Guardian Armstrong Article

Tom Kunich said:

I think that Lafftery is having an almost continuous orgasm. This is
exactly the sort of thing that he's always wanted.

Too bad that the mere fact that L'Equipe could not only find out about
the test results but also discover the person who donated the test
sample pretty much means that there were enough people with access to
the samples that these tests can't be considered valid.

Tom, have you seen this:

http://www.abc.net.au/sport/content/200508/s1445271.htm

"Australian scientist says Lance tests would be valid"

Here we have some idiot in Australia saying:

"It's the same case in a lot of medical
and pathology testing," he said.
"Samples are quite often frozen and put
away for years and brought out years later, and
new tests [are] applied to the sample, and results
are, like I said, equally valid," he said.

Well yes, there are sample types (say in serum or plasma, or glycerol) that
can survive long storage, and there are compounds or substances that can be
stored for a relatively long time (say insulin or frozen blood samples),
and there are special refrigerators that store biologics for more than 10
years (special minus-80 degree freezers with special alarms and liquid
nitrogen that tops off the evaporation used to store special rare blood
types).

BUT...in this case it was probably a -20C freezer, the substrate was urine,
and the biologic was erythropoietin.

I'd suggest he has -no- experience recovering and assaying EPO in urine
stored at -20, and a quick and friendly call by Armstrong's lawyer trained
in forensics would have him wetting his pants and putting out a retraction.
AND...it wouldn't even be that difficult - 'Oh, I was talking generally and
not about EPO...'

Dumbass. Indeed.

jj