Sorry, the lab is not trustworthy
RonSonic
This is from my Sunday paper's printing of an AP piece:
"Jacques De Ceaurriz, the Chatenay-Malabry chief said the synthetic testosterone
was found in isotope testing.
'It's foolproof. This analysis tells the difference between endogenous and
exogenous,' he said. 'no error is possible in isotopic readings.'"
Do you really trust a medical test in the hands of someone like that? "No error
is possible."
Error is always possible and if you don't think so then you are not taking
adequate precautions to prevent error.
Buncha pseudoscientific witch hunting buffoons with funny accents.
Where's monty python when you need them most.
Ron
trg
khked2te7esus876d...@4ax.com...
Moved to the South of France like the rest of the English. Now go away or I
shall taunt you a second time.
Sandy
Ray_...@hotmail.com
I agree entirely, but what to do?
This is the sort of trash talk you note is enabled by the UCI's
secrecy. Recall, the UCI certification process requires the labs be
sent blind samples for testing. That is, a number of urine samples,
some of which have exogenous T, are sent to their labs, such as
Chatenay-Malabry for testing. Chatenay-Malabry would test the urine
and send their test results back to the UCI where the results are
compared with the known contents. The error percent established. A
report would prepared and their would be comparison of
Chatenay-Malabry's performance with that of other labs The results
and the reports should be available to the public and to the athletes
so that they can independently evaluate the certification process and
analyze the results. However, the UCI prevents the releases of these
reports, hiding behind a wall of secrecy. Behind wall
Chatenay-Malabry can with impunity make over the top claims that "they
never made an error." Let them prove it. Let Chatenay-Malabry
prove they are not cheating. Release all certification test results.
The UCI secrecy permits the illusion of invincibility desired by
dictators and repressive regimes. At a minimum the UCI should be
required release the certification results for all of its certified
labs for public review and comment.
Curtis L. Russell
>
>The UCI secrecy permits the illusion of invincibility desired by
>dictators and repressive regimes. At a minimum the UCI should be
>required release the certification results for all of its certified
>labs for public review and comment.
The only testing that they are doing in that area is for the UCI? I
would be surprised if they weren't performing very similar tests for
other customers as well, and any mistakes are probably documented. I
would also guess that they are being certified for related testing.
Further, any lab of size would have internal QA processes that should
convince any spokesperson not to use words like 'never'. If it never
happens, then they probably need to improve their QA reporting and
testing.
OTOH, if you want open communication and compliance with the
certifying bodies, then it usually works best if the process and
results are highly confidential. As long as you trust the certifying
body and they are, in turn, reviewed, then it would be enough that the
lab is certified.
I guess you are not happy with the certifying body in this case, being
the UCI. I'm shocked, shocked that you would question their
performance in matters involving certification.
Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...
Montesquiou
"RonSonic" <rons...@tampabay.rr.com> a écrit dans le message de news:
khked2te7esus876d...@4ax.com...
Doctor Jack TheCeaurriz to Miss RonSonic « Madame, I am glad to inform you
that you are pregnant"
"Are you sure ? " Monsieur RonSonic asked
"Of course no" the Doctor answered.
"Error is always possible; The two arms and two foots we can see on the
sonography must be fake. Sometime I am not taking adequate precautions to
prevent error. "
"Thank you Doctor" RonSonic said with relief..
Montesquiou
"Curtis L. Russell" <cur...@md-bicycling.org> a écrit dans le message de
news: iaoed2h0mr8ovqe9i...@4ax.com...
Montesquiou
"Curtis L. Russell" <cur...@md-bicycling.org> a écrit dans le message de
news: iaoed2h0mr8ovqe9i...@4ax.com...
I read somewhere that - time to time - they send to the all the Lab similar
surines sample in order to check if the results are the same.
Ernst Noch
Or you had Barbie for breakfast.
Ray_...@hotmail.com
Yes, the internal QA would be significant. Focusing on the UCI
certification reports seemed more particle as they are in the hands of
a quasi-governmental agency which has not only the Chatenay-Malabry
lab data but also data for the other thirty labs for comparison
purposes. Release one, release all.
You may be interested in an article appearing in the Wall Street
Journal which is set out below since it is a fee site. Therein the
tech rep for a mass-spectrometer manufacturer states isotope tests
quite regularly produce errors. This stands in marked contrast with
Chatenay-Malabry's claim to having never made an error. Cheaters
should be caught, especially when they do work for quasi-governmental
agencies.
Floyd Landis's Alcohol Defense
August 2, 2006
One evening nearly two decades ago, four Swedish men in their
mid-thirties gathered to quaff about 10 alcoholic drinks over six
hours. Two weeks ago, American cyclist Floyd Landis says he drank two
beers and "at least" four shots of whiskey after the worst day of his
professional career.
Besides a taste for the bottle, these five men have something in
common: The day after drinking, their urine showed an elevated "T/E
ratio" of testosterone to epitestosterone, hormones that occur
naturally in the body.
For Mr. Landis, the test result was bad news: It may cost him the Tour
de France title, as the elevated ratio is indicative of the use of
banned performance-enhancing substances that raise testosterone levels.
On the other hand, that Swedish night on the town -- part of a body of
research on alcohol's effect on testosterone levels -- might help him
clear his name.
Testosterone and epitestosterone generally are in balance in the body,
but some athletes inject steroids or other substances to artificially
raise their testosterone levels, which can help long-term muscle
building. (Though it generally takes more than a single day for any
muscle-building effect to appear.) The day after his drunken night, Mr.
Landis's T/E ratio was found to be 11-to-1, well above the 4-to-1 limit
set by international cycling. But athletes' testosterone levels vary
widely; for example, a test of saliva in Canadian university students
this year found an eight-fold range of the hormone. If Mr. Landis's T/E
ratio is normally toward the high end, a night of drinking could have
raised it dramatically, putting him above cycling's limit.
That's the theory, anyway.
While Mr. Landis wanted to forget a rough day at the office, the Swedes
were drinking at the behest of researchers in the department of
clinical chemistry at Huddinge Hospital -- researchers investigating
the case of a Swedish athlete whose T/E ratio had ebbed and flowed with
his alcohol intake. In the study, the T/E ratio increased among the
four male volunteers by a factor of 10% to 50%.
"Our interest here was just to demonstrate that we would see an
effect," said Ingemar Bjorkhem, a co-author of the study and now a
professor of clinical chemistry at Karolinska University Hospital in
Stockholm. "We expected to see an effect."
The study was published in the journal Clinical Chemistry. As Dr.
Bjorkhem recalls, he was one of the four study participants, though
when asked if it was hard to find volunteers, he replied, "maybe not."
It's also, as far as he remembers, his only opportunity to drink
alcohol for a research study.
A handful of other studies conducted in Europe have confirmed this
effect, but they've generally been limited to just a few participants,
and they've found differing results. A 1996 study by researchers at the
German Sport University in Cologne found an average increase in T/E
ratio of 300% to 400% among six female volunteers and an average
increase of 50% to 100% among five males. (The men's results were all
over the place, ranging from a decrease of 40% to an increase of 300%).
"The influence was statistically significant," Mario Thevis, professor
for preventive doping research at German Sport University, told me. (I
wasn't able to read the study myself, as it's not available online.)
Dr. Bjorkhem said that the late German drug-testing expert Manfred
Donike also confirmed the result several times, but didn't publish all
of these findings.
A 2001 review of the literature conducted by Simon Davis, then a
postdoctoral student at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in
Berkeley, Calif., found alcohol-induced increases in the T/E ratio
ranging from 30% to 277%. Excerpts from Dr. Davis's report, which was
prepared confidentially on behalf of a U.K. athlete accused of doping
and wasn't peer-reviewed, surfaced online last week (see it at Dirt Rag
Forums) and was cited by Bloomberg. "I'm surprised it got out, really,"
Dr. Davis told me. "It was an internal document about the doping case."
(He declined to identify the athlete who'd been under suspicion.)
This is one case where several studies don't necessarily yield a
reliable conclusion, however.
"The literature isn't completely clear," Richard Hellman,
president-elect of the American Association of Clinical
Endocrinologists, told me, adding that the studies tested "just a few
people" and found "so much variance" in the change in T/E ratio.
"The information is suggestive, but it's not certain," Dr. Hellman
said.
Cycling union doctor Mario Zorzoli told me by telephone that Mr.
Landis's test was the only positive one on the tour, out of six to
eight tests for each stage, and at least five other tests for Mr.
Landis on the days he was the overall race leader. That suggests that
only once during the race, out of at least six tests, was Mr. Landis's
T/E ratio 4/1 or higher.
The alcohol studies have been referred to in the press and cited by Mr.
Landis's doctor, Brent Kay, since the T/E test result became public
last week. When CNN's Larry King asked him about it last week, Dr. Kay
said that "there are, in fact, a number of studies that show that
alcohol definitely can have an effect on this ... we're not speculating
that that was the cause, but certainly there's documentation in the
scientific literature." In a press conference, Dr. Kay put the number
of scientific studies at five, according to NPR. The possible linkage
of alcohol to elevated T/E ratios was also reported by the print
Journal, Time, the Boston Globe, the New York Times and the Associated
Press.
A colleague of Dr. Kay's at O.U.C.H. Medical Center (O.U.C.H. stands
for Occupational Urgent Care Health/Sports), a group of sports medicine
specialists in Temecula, Calif., told me Monday that Dr. Kay was no
longer answering press calls about the test result, and was now
focusing on Mr. Landis's planned surgery to replace his degenerative
right hip.
Doctors and drug-testing specialists say the possibility that alcohol
may profoundly affect the T/E ratio is one of several drawbacks with
the test that's caused Mr. Landis so much trouble. "Not only is the
analytical validity of the test in question, but the premise that a
ratio of 6/1 infers a doping offence is also unsafe," Dr. Davis wrote
in 2001. (Since then, cycling officials have lowered the threshold for
test failure to 4/1.)
Dr. Hellman said blood should be tested as well as urine, because urine
contains only the waste products of the hormones, rather than the
hormones themselves. (Gary Wadler, a member of the World Anti-Doping
Agency and an associate professor at New York University School of
Medicine, told me he disagreed, because levels fluctuate more widely in
blood.) Dr. Hellman also suggested more-frequent testing of athletes,
including before events, to establish baselines, since T/E ratios vary
so widely among different people.
"If someone's career is hanging in the balance, you don't want to say,
'There's an 85% chance that this test is right,' " Dr. Hellman told me.
Mr. Landis's situation is further clouded by a dearth of numbers from
the tight-lipped International Cycling Union, which hasn't officially
released Mr. Landis's test results -- so it's not known whether his
testosterone level was elevated, or epitestosterone suppressed, or
both.
A new wrinkle: The New York Times, citing an unnamed person at the
cycling union, reported Monday night that a follow-up test confirmed
Mr. Landis's urine contained some testosterone not produced naturally
by his system. This result would have been determined by analyzing the
atomic makeup of the testosterone molecule, via a technique called mass
spectrometry. (Read more about this on Wikipedia.)
Such an analysis is based on the phenomenon that atoms of a given
element, such as carbon, can have differing weights, depending on which
subatomic particles make them up. The Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry
reportedly used on Mr. Landis's urine would measure the ratio of
Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 in his testosterone, and compare that to the
ratio in his cholesterol. Natural testosterone in the body is derived
from cholesterol, and so it should have the same ratio of C-13/C-12,
but synthetic testosterone would have a different profile.
Dr. Thevis, from the Cologne sports lab, told me this method is
reliable: "There have been a lot of studies showing that
differentiation is absolutely reliable and reproducible." Dr. Zorzoli
declined to confirm the Times report, but, speaking generally, said,
"If the case is on the evidence of exogenous testosterone, alcohol
intake doesn't create exogeneous testosterone in body."
But a more-cautious note was sounded by Dr. Davis, who is now the
technical director for Mass Spec Solutions Ltd., a Wythenshawe, U.K.,
maker of mass-spectrometry devices. "Quite regularly there are errors
in the isotope tests," he said. "It's a very difficult analytical
technique."
In response to the report, Dr. Kay told the Times the test may have
been inaccurate, adding that a wide range of factors, including alcohol
consumption, may have been responsible for the test result.
The apparent sensitivity of the testosterone test's numbers to alcohol
consumption, and the announcement of partial test results without full
disclosure by the cycling union, has created a milieu for cyclists that
is "almost Kafka-esque," Dr. Davis said. "The phrase often bandied
about is 'chemical McCarthyism'."
* * *
Tom Kunich
news:44d76406$0$874$ba4a...@news.orange.fr...
>
> I read somewhere that - time to time - they send to the all the Lab
> similar surines sample in order to check if the results are the same.
"Read somewhere"? I would like to know the validation procedures. Especially
for something as complicated as detection of exogenous testosterone.
Curtis L. Russell
>Or you had Barbie for breakfast.
Rather well developed to be mistaken for a baby. Any ugly amorphous
hairless rodent like creature for breakfast could be easily mistaken
for a newborn. Babies are ugly and the attraction women have for
newborns must be chemically induced.
I'm guessing that as many divorces begin with the words, "he looks
just like his father" spoken too early, in the truly ugly stages, as
the words, "he looks just like (fill in the blank for
other-than-the-father)" spoken later when the baby is an identifiable
human being.
Not that I have anything against babies in theory. Its just the
reality of them that makes me happy that I am simply too damn old to
have to worry. Kind of like the draft...
Steven Bornfeld
Ernst Noch wrote:
>
> Or you had Barbie for breakfast.
>
LOL!
Steve
Steven Bornfeld
Curtis L. Russell wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:06:07 +0200, Ernst Noch <en...@gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Or you had Barbie for breakfast.
>
>
> Rather well developed to be mistaken for a baby. Any ugly amorphous
> hairless rodent like creature for breakfast could be easily mistaken
> for a newborn. Babies are ugly and the attraction women have for
> newborns must be chemically induced.
Wasn't there once a headline on the Weekly World News "Ten-year old
girl gives birth to 15-year old boy"?
>
> I'm guessing that as many divorces begin with the words, "he looks
> just like his father" spoken too early, in the truly ugly stages, as
> the words, "he looks just like (fill in the blank for
> other-than-the-father)" spoken later when the baby is an identifiable
> human being.
>
> Not that I have anything against babies in theory.
What is a baby in theory?
Steve
joseph.sa...@gmail.com
How do you get that job? The control-urine supplier job?
Joseph
Curtis L. Russell
<dentalt...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>What is a baby in theory?
The typical response of an rbr poster somewhere in the conversation
after his girlfriend tells him she has missed her last two periods.
Its best to depersonalize that coversation as soon as possible. This
is all from long ago memory...
joseph.sa...@gmail.com
Too much secrecy and buffoonery at the UCI. In the interest of
transparency and competence, I suggest that the UN take over.
Joseph
Ernst Noch
> On Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:06:07 +0200, Ernst Noch <en...@gmx.net> wrote:
>
>> Or you had Barbie for breakfast.
>
> Rather well developed to be mistaken for a baby.
I was assuming the digestive system would do it's work before, though it
might be that barbies are resistant to gastric acid. Maybe the 80% rbr
population of aspiring physiologists could elaborate if the body
metabolizes barbies as fast as testosterone.
Bob Martin
Perhaps your time would be better spent questioning the methods used by your
government to determine if a country has weapons of mass destruction.
SocSecTr...@earthlink.net
Curtis L. Russell wrote:
> On 7 Aug 2006 08:40:20 -0700, Ray_...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> >
> >The UCI secrecy permits the illusion of invincibility desired by
> >dictators and repressive regimes. At a minimum the UCI should be
> >required release the certification results for all of its certified
> >labs for public review and comment.
>
> The only testing that they are doing in that area is for the UCI? I
> would be surprised if they weren't performing very similar tests for
> other customers as well, and any mistakes are probably documented.
It would appear that by not admitting the possibility of error, there
are no errors. If the UCI treats their results as foolproof, then they
are foolproof. With the way the testing is conducted, with no cross-lab
validation, no release of certification test results, there is no way
for an athlete to show that there may have been an error. It seems that
the UCI has accepted that there will be a certain number of false
positives (the 4:1 ratio causes a 5% error rate that will affect both A
and B samples) but at the very least puts the burden on the cyclists to
prove their innocence, and with a good chance that false positives
athletes will be sanctioned or ruined.
> Further, any lab of size would have internal QA processes that should
> convince any spokesperson not to use words like 'never'. If it never
> happens, then they probably need to improve their QA reporting and
> testing.
They say it is "never" and refuse to release any data or perform any
tests that would show otherwise. The head of the lab is a liar, plain
and simple. A statement like he made is not a mistake, it is not an
exaggeration, it is a lie- further evidence of the corruption of the
lab.
I would be interested to know whether the CIR was run against any other
of Landis's B samples. If not, they should have been. The UCI and the
lab should have truth as their paramount objective, and should use
whatever tools they have at their disposal to arrive at the nearest
thing possible to the truth. When you have the head of the lab stating
that error was impossible in the isotope test, you know that truth is
secondary to maintaining their reputation and having a consistent
storyline.
Does anyone know if the isotope test was repeated on the B sample? I
have not read any confirmation that it was.
Tony S.
<Ray_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1154967348.7...@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Donald Munro
> Perhaps your time would be better spent questioning the methods used by your
> government to determine if a country has weapons of mass destruction.
They used a WADA approved test.
Michael Press
<1154972552.8...@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
joseph.sa...@gmail.com wrote:
> Too much secrecy and buffoonery at the UCI. In the interest of
> transparency and competence, I suggest that the UN take over.
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Michael Press