Athletic Doping

Athletic Doping

Athletic Doping Essay

I chose to read the article titled The Science of Doping. This article was written from the opinion of Donald A. Berry. It talks about how the international Court of Arbitration sustained doping charged on the Floyd Landis. He was the winner of the 2006 Tour de France. The majority opinion of a divided three-member American Arbitration Association (AAA) panel along with the court, agreed that the laboratory test results from Landis were positive for synthetic testosterone. This accusation stripped him of his title and suspended him from competition for two years. Landis pleads innocent, but there is no hope for recourse.
Sports doping has been a popular topic of media coverage in this year’s Olympic games. Doping experts have argued that the tests aren’t sensitive enough and let cheaters get by. Another example is US swimmer Jessica Hardy. She was held back from the Olympic team and faces a two year ban from swimming because she tested positive for clenbuterol. China has banned many athletes from sports for life on doping charges. Donald A. Berry believes that there are flaws in the testing practices of doping laboratories. He believes that many cheaters get by and innocent athletes are falsely accused.
One factor that may have contributed to the falsely accused is knows as prosecutor’s fallacy. This is when guilt is concluded on the basis of an observation that would be extremely rare if the person were innocent. In Berry’s opinion, sensitivity and specificity are important measures that need to be estimated with reasonable accuracy before any conclusion of doping can be made. He believes the studies have not been done accurately and thus the criterion for calling a test positive isn’t accurate. The laboratory tests involve a series of highly sophisticated processes that are used to identify the likelihood of abnormal levels of plant based androgen metabolites in a urine sample. The objective is to determine what...