LESS than two years from now, a torch-bearing athlete will ignite the Olympic
flame in Sydney, Australia, signalling the start of the world鈥檚 most prestigious
sports festival. The president of the Australian Olympic Committee, John Coates,
is bravely aspiring to the standards set by this event since its inception in
ancient Greece, declaring that his country 鈥渉as the opportunity to lead the
world鈥� in providing a Games that is free of drugs. But his dream could prove
virtually impossible to realise.
For some time, drugs-taking in athletics and some other sports has been
outstripping officials鈥� ability to test for them. This is despite increasingly
sophisticated tests for certain substances. Artificial anabolic steroids that
increase muscle bulk can reliably be detected in blood or urine, and officials
can now distinguish between natural and artificial testosterone via
isotope-measuring techniques developed by Michel Becchi and colleagues at the
CNRS analytical chemistry laboratories in Vernaison, near Lyon
(see This Week, 13 July 1996, p 6).
Some regulators are hoping that differences in the ratios of carbon-12 and
carbon-13 in natural and artificial types of human growth hormone (HGH),
erythropoietin (EPO)鈥攚hich boosts the number of red blood cells鈥攁nd
insulin-like growth factor, might also lead to reliable tests for these
substances. But Becchi is sceptical. 鈥淭estosterone is a simple molecule with a
molecular weight of less than 300,鈥� he says. 鈥淗GH is a protein with a molecular
weight of many thousands.鈥� In substances with higher molecular weights, the
difference in the ratio of carbon-12 and carbon-13 is harder to distinguish.
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Patrick Schamasch, medical director of the International Olympic Committee
(IOC), says several labs are working on tests that the IOC hopes will be ready
in two to three years. Schamasch admits that if a test is not ready before the
Sydney Games, 鈥渢here will be nothing we can do. We need to provide a test that鈥檚
one hundred per cent reliable. We don鈥檛 want to punish someone who鈥檚 not
驳耻颈濒迟测.鈥�
Indeed, sports authorities cannot afford to use tests until they are
water-tight for fear of litigation. Irish swimmer Michelle de Bruin, who at 26
rose from also-ran to triple gold medal winner at the Atlanta Olympic Games in
1996, is being investigated for allegedly tampering with a urine sample. She has
vowed to take legal action against any sanctions imposed on her. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want
sport full of lawsuits,鈥� says IOC director-general Fran莽ois Carrard.
Most officials argue that drugs should be kept out of athletics because sport
is supposed to be a bastion of clean, fair competition. 鈥淲hat justifies banning
some substances is that they can give an unfair advantage,鈥� says Thomas Murray,
director of the biomedical ethics centre at Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland, Ohio, and a member of the US Olympic Committee鈥檚 anti-doping
board.
Changing the game
But a growing number of people are calling for the goal posts to be moved.
James Waddington, author of Bad to the Bone, a novel about drug use in
the Tour de France, says the time is ripe to discuss whether sportsmen and women
should be allowed to take what they like to create a level playing field. Others
argue that the present system is unfair because it fails to stop a significant
proportion of competitors from gaining an advantage through taking illicit
substances.
John Honour, an endocrinologist at University College London who gave expert
evidence that helped British runner Diane Modahl beat drugs charges wrongly
brought against her at the Commonwealth Games four years ago, points out that
some substances on the IOC鈥檚 blacklist of banned substances鈥攕uch as the
stimulant ephedrine鈥攁re so common in over-the-counter medicines that they
can be difficult to avoid. For this reason codeine, another fairly innocuous
substance, was recently taken off the blacklist. Some observers say the
boundaries are artificial between illicit substances such as ephedrine and legal
ones such as caffeine and the sports supplement creatine.
Some athletes resort to ingenious methods to get round the rules. In this
year鈥檚 Tour de France, the Festina-sponsored team was disqualified for
possessing EPO鈥攍ast week three of them were banned for eight months after
admitting using the drug. But some cyclists are said to have benefited from
other legal, if dubious, performance-enhancing tricks, such as surgery to widen
the iliac artery to boost blood flow to the legs.
The IOC president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, was quoted in the Spanish
news-paper El Mundo in July suggesting that the prime consideration in
regulating the use of performance-enhancing drugs should be safety, and that if
a substance was not harmful to an athlete鈥檚 health it made less sense to ban it.
Opponents of drugs in sport, including some in the IOC, swiftly denounced
Samaranch鈥檚 comments, and Carrard says his colleague鈥檚 thoughts were
misinterpreted. 鈥淭he current list [of banned substances] is absolutely valid and
there will be no change,鈥� he told 快猫短视频. Yet he added that the
list was 鈥渁lways evolving鈥�.
The news that some armed forces are considering trying performance-enhancing
substances has fanned the debate. The Australian government鈥檚 Defence Science
and Technology Organisation in Adelaide says that scientists attached to the
Australian military have recommended the short-term use of ephedrine in
combination with caffeine as a stimulant. The DSTO researchers also recommended
another practice banned by the IOC鈥斺�漛lood loading鈥�, which entails topping
up your blood levels with samples of your own blood taken weeks or months before
to enhance the body`s capacity to carry oxygen.
However, Honour points out a flaw in the argument for allowing drugs so long
as they are safe. 鈥淎 lot of the substances that are currently banned are used by
athletes in the full knowledge that they鈥檙e not good for them. Athletes know
that steroids cause serious damage to the heart, for example, but they still
want to use them.鈥� The results of the forthcoming autopsy on Florence Griffith
Joyner, holder of the 100 and 200-metres world records, may confirm suspicions
that her death this month stemmed from heart problems related to the use of
anabolic steroids.
Officials from the IOC and the International Amateur Athletics Federation
will meet in Switzerland on 2 February to discuss the state of drugs in sport.
High on the agenda will be the wide-ranging disparities between what different
sports consider permissible. At one extreme, American baseball鈥檚 star Mark
McGwire is able to take the testosterone precursor androstenedione quite openly,
while Olympic athletes can find themselves in serious trouble for the
inappropriate use of cough medicines. The meeting will also consider including
athletes in the discussion. 鈥淎t the moment they鈥檙e treated like they don鈥檛 have
minds of their own,鈥� says Waddington.
Carrard argues that the 鈥渧ast majority鈥� of athletes want to compete fairly.
But Murray insists that while things are getting better in some sports, such as
weightlifting, where fewer drugs are being used because of stricter enforcement,
in others unscrupulous participants are only just beginning to explore the
advantages drugs can give them. Authorities will have to decide soon whether
they want to uphold the Olympian ideals and continue pursuing the cheats, or
move the goal posts and play them at their own game.
