IIRC, Travis Auld, who used to work at EFC, was GCS CEO at the time. Now with AFL.
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Why does WADA refuse to release the scientific justification for its decisions to include a substance on the banned list? Could it be that WADA scientific justification might be exposed to peer review in the wider scientific community and found wanting?
An example from the Sakho report, paragraph 30:
- It appears from documents in the case file that WADA has not completed its own internal scientific/procedural analysis of Higenamine and is not certain of its status as a Beta-2 Agonist
WADA then went the quick fix, listing higenamine as a Beta-2 Agonist in the 2017 Code, without providing any scientific explanation. Under WADA rules, an athlete cannot contest the inclusion of a substance of method, on scientific or other grounds. WADA refuses to provide information on the criteria for inclusion.
Questions have been asked in Senate Estimates as to the health and performance enhancing effects of TB-4, not listed in the Code until 2018. To date ASADA has not provided such information.
Question: Can ASADA be held in contempt for refusing to provide such information to Senate Estimates?
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RegeneRX, a biotech company in the US has been dabbling in the potential benefits of TB4 for nearly 20 years. Three potential targets were identified.
- The treatment of heart muscle following heart attack.
- Treatment of Dry Eye (neurotrophic keratopathy).
3.Treatment of skin ulcers (Epidermolysis Bullosa).
The clinical trial of 1. was abandoned.
2. and 3. were not successful to the degree expected but my understanding was that the FDA in negotiation with RegeneRX the drug was given “orphan status”
The preparation used for 2. and 3. was a eye drop solution for the dry eye and a gel for the skin ulcers.
At this stage they are still not registered and certainly are not performance enhancing.
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Believe it or not.
I would add this statement from Olivier Niggli, WADA COO and General Counsel in 2016 which just summarises the arrogance and lack of oversight of WADA.
“The way the Code’s wording has been put is so that we would not have to justify why a substance is on the List. We have experts that look at it, they have three criteria. It has to meet two of the three and we never disclose nor discuss the specifics of a substance, because otherwise, every time you have a positive case, there would be a challenge”
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The 4-5 reviews referred to by ASADA CEO Sharpe in his recent interview are identified in the ASADA 2017-2018 Annual Report:
- 2014 Operating Model Review
- 2016 Post Implementation Review of that Review
- ASADA Funding Model Review
- Intelligence Operating Model Review
In the interview Sharpe also said that ASADA conducts a review of every case. Such reviews don’t get a mention in the report, in fact the Annual Report reference to cases is pretty much confined to the statistical.
External scrutiny during the reporting period was zero, apart from Estimates session listings.
Thanks bigallan,
Given that Sharpe took over during 2017 then the first 2 bullet points don’t apply to him. It may very well be that Sharpe is trying to project himself as a bit of a white knight. Coming after the event, claiming kudos for some yet to be verified improvements in integrity and over all performance, QED.
Any submission to have those reviews made available for review by the Senate would need to specify any reports, audits, investigations, raw data, changes to protocols etc that from which information was gathered to prepare these reviews.
As I see it there are 2 key questions that need to be asked about these mistakes Sharpe refers to:
- Were the mistakes relevant to the Essendon case.
- If they were relevant to the Essendon case, then did they in any way influence the decisions made by ASADA and WADA in bring a biased case against the Essendon players.
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WADA seem to have everything stacked in their favour & be damned to the athlete who is entitled to be able to search on anything & have it come up on the search …not covered in some catch all phrase that would ensure you needed 100 medical degrees to interpret. & they should have provide scientific proof that a substance is capable of being performance enhancing & get rid of that - spirit of sport nonsense that should not even be allowed
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I reckon they’re just interested in getting a specific number of scalps. They don’t care whatsoever whether anyone is guilty or innocent. They way the system is setup seems like it’s more likely that they’ll catch people that:
(a) accidentally took something that as illegal or
(b) deliberately took something that isn’t listed and provides a debatable benefit
So basically they’re largely “catching” innocent athletes
But I reckon the hardcore cheats are probably finding ways to get away with whatever they are doing
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I’m not scrolling through, but has anything actually happened here?
Re point 2; just to clarify that dry eye has a different medical classification from that In parenthesis, which is a rare disease. Dry eye is a common disease and TB4 would not qualify for orphan drug status for that disease ( and therefore not eligible for government assistance in development)
Sit tight. Be confident
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Yes. Not sure how you missed it. 34 players, 2 cub legends and our footy manager were unfairly suspended, fined, fired and had their reputations destroyed by a corrupt system masquerading as anti-doping authorities, journalists and AFL executives. We call it the saga.
Jobe’s bulldog Benson and a few other bloodhounds led by an ex Australian cricketer with a crook back, are digging deep searching for the evidence that will clear them of doping.
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Part of the justification from the Wood Report for a National Sports Tribunal was to secure independence from the national sports federations, with the inference that there is an inherent conflict of interest. That is how it was presented by Colbeck.
But Colbeck was misled by his advisors. .If a sports federation were to opt in to that tribunal, it would still be exposed to CAS arbitration. The IOC owns WADA and also owns CAS.
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Exclusive: World Anti-Doping Agency hope to use AI to target drugs cheats within two years
- Tim Wigmore
- Ben Rumsby, in katowice
5 NOVEMBER 2019 • 6:26PM
The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) hope to roll out artificial intelligence (AI) technology to help catch drugs cheats within two years, Telegraph Sport can reveal.
Wada believe that using AI technology - computer systems that conduct tasks normally requiring human intelligence - could help target tests far more effectively and ultimately catch more cheats. Over 300,000 samples a year are analysed worldwide, but there remain huge concerns about the efficacy of testing.
Artificial intelligence could be crucial in analysing data more effectively, leading to quicker identification of suspicious patterns and therefore better-targeted testing.
The Russian doping scandal, and the recent case of US world champion sprinter Christian Coleman - who committed three whereabouts violations in the space of 12 months but was cleared on a technicality - have highlighted concerns with the current anti-doping system. The prominent anti-doping scientist Don Catlin has said that under 10 per cent of dopers today are ever caught.
“Artificial intelligence offers you one big benefit - it’s really using a big batch of data that the human brain cannot process because it’s too much data for human capacity,” Dr Olivier Rabin, Wada’s director of science, told Telegraph Sport . “The human brain cannot cope with it.
“We want to use artificial intelligence for improving our targeting capacity. It’s really identifying suspicious correlations that could be an indication of doped athletes.
“If it’s as promising as in other fields then we’ve got something that is probably going to have a very positive impact on the way that we coordinate and conduct our tests in the fight against doping in sport."
Last month, Wada announced that it was funding three projects to explore the use of AI in doping, all undertaken by independent researchers. This is viewed as a potentially crucial step by Wada, given the constant advancements made by dopers themselves.
“Athletes are smart in how they dope, you need to be smart in how you apply the anti-doping tests," Rabin said. “Artificial intelligence will help us in the recommendation to test this particular athlete at this particular time to attempt to reveal doping." Should the research projects prove as successful as hoped, Rabin says AI could be used within 18-24 months. “It’s going to help us focus on the suspicious data and the suspicious athletes’ profiles," he added.
It is well established that targeted testing is far more effective than random tests. But Wada still believe that not enough tests are genuinely targeted. Using AI could help them spot new patterns typical of dopers, assisting their investigations.
“We want to see the correlations that are unknown to us that may come out of this work," Rabin said. "There is a correlation that we could find between some of the aspects of the suspicious profile and between the population of some of the athletes that we could identify as being doped, and we could not find in the population that you identify as being clean.
“Revealing those new correlations with AI is something that we would like to automatically apply in our system once validated." Patterns typical of dopers could be revealed by AI being able to analyse large sets of data far quicker than human beings are capable of, Rabin said.
“You are going to take different sets of data. You’re going to look at the blood profile of the athletes over the past four, five years. You’re going to look at the whereabouts, you’re going to see whether the athlete has made a habit of changing his or her whereabouts just a few minutes before doping tests or shortly before the mandatory hour for testing - those kinds of developments. There are different sets of data you can combine and correlate to identify suspicious profiles.
“Maybe artificial intelligence is going to identify a correlation between biological variables of athletes who have doped and that we could identify more discretely in athletes who are suspicious. For example, they change their whereabouts usually two hours before the window. So if you have a strong correlation revealed by AI, then all the athletes who have those patterns in their profile, you should aim at testing them two hours before the mandatory window.”
Rather than using AI as sufficient proof to catch dopers, it would more likely be used to focus drug-testing on suspicious athletes at the times they were most likely to dope. This would build on work done by the athlete biological passport, which was first introduced a decade ago.
“We are already using computational power to do what we’re doing, we just want to take it to a higher scale,” Rabin said. “We want to use additional computational power, with much more advanced algorithms.
“It’s how to apply some mathematical tools to sets of biological data and see what it can reveal. We want to integrate what science can do and advance science can do in the fight against doping and see if we can improve the finesse with which we test athletes and when we test them.”
Clean athletes “have nothing to worry about because they are clean,” Rabin said. “Those who dope and try and fly below the radar - this is the population of athlete that is of interest to us."
Fixed for accuracy.
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The claim by RegeneRx is that the Phase 111 clinical trial relates to dry eye syndrome and neurotrophic keratopathy. My understanding is that RegeneRx has a US patent on the IP. The orphan drug status was granted by the FDA for the later, rarer condition, yes.
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This is frightening. IT specialists might be able to help me here but I think the term is GIGO (carbage in, carbage out). Hope it’s not like the Check your Substances database used by ASADA up until 2016.
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My wife has been to a few talks related to AI through her work and while it’s not her area by any means, the general message seems to have been that it’s only as good as what you put in and that the biases of those creating it are learnt (and sometimes built upon) by the machine.
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Getting a bit off topic here, but it appears that recognition of orphan drug status may have been part of the IP/pharmaceutical deals in the Australia/US FTA…
Medicines Australia has advocated for comparable arrangements in the projected Australia/EU FTA, on the grounds that it would encourage investment in Australia as a destination for clinical trials. Medicines Australia 2018 submission is up on the DFAT website.
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Tim Watson has just reported that 4 clubs, including Caaarlton, Richmond, Bulldogs & Demons have each been fined $10,000 by ASADA. These clubs failed to provide an updated list of locations for where there players are…on holidays, anywhere in the world. Ludicrous.
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