Followup? - Top lab official wonders if delayed testing is possible

[wineandkeyz]

I keep wondering why we haven't seen any followup interviews with this person, who heads the top testing lab in Canada:

Top lab official wonders if delayed testing is possible
We are not that lucky here, says Canada's Christiane Ayotte
By Charles Pelkey
This report filed August 23, 2005

The director of Canada's top anti-doping laboratory on Tuesday said she was "very surprised" over doping allegations raised in a four-page story in the French sports daily L'Equipe.

Doctor Christiane Ayotte, director of the Doping Control Laboratory at Montreal's Institut National de la Recherché Scientifique, said that the L'Equipe story, outlining charges that seven-time Tour de France winner had used EPO at the 1999 edition of the race, raised several important scientific and ethical questions, beginning with the assertion that France's anti-doping lab had tested frozen urine samples five years after the fact.

"We are extremely surprised that urine samples could have been tested in 2004 and have revealed the presence of EPO," Ayotte said in an interview with VeloNews on Tuesday. "EPO - in its natural state or the synthesized version - is not stable in urine, even if stored at minus 20 degrees."

Are we to believe that the French lab is that much more adept than its Canadian counterpart? Or perhaps EPO is more stable in Europe when stored in France than it is in Canada?

The full article is here: http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/8746.0.html

 

[wineandkeyz]

I guess Turenne can't explain why EPO is unstable in Canada, yet stable in France?

 

[Turenne]

Here is the FULL sentence by Mme Ayotte:

“The stablity of EPO in urine isn’t as long as five years according to our testing here in Montreal. It’s more a matter of months,” stressed Ayotte, whose testing centre is accredited to WADA, the world’s anti-doping agency. “If the lab in Paris claims to have identified categorically the presence of erythropoetin in this urine then I have no doubt that the identification’s adequate.”

You can hear the whole interview here:

http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/maisonneuve/24082005/63069.shtml

 

[wineandkeyz]

Here is the FULL sentence by Mme Ayotte:

“The stablity of EPO in urine isn’t as long as five years according to our testing here in Montreal. It’s more a matter of months,” stressed Ayotte, whose testing centre is accredited to WADA, the world’s anti-doping agency. “If the lab in Paris claims to have identified categorically the presence of erythropoetin in this urine then I have no doubt that the identification’s adequate.”

You can hear the whole interview here:

http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/maisonneuve/24082005/63069.shtml

So you CAN'T answer my question. You continually ignore the fact that Ayotte says that EPO breaks down in urine in "a matter of months" -- EVEN WHEN FROZEN. So an objective observer would wonder how it could show up five years later.

 

[squidwranglr]

Here is the FULL sentence by Mme Ayotte:

“The stablity of EPO in urine isn’t as long as five years according to our testing here in Montreal. It’s more a matter of months,” stressed Ayotte, whose testing centre is accredited to WADA, the world’s anti-doping agency. “If the lab in Paris claims to have identified categorically the presence of erythropoetin in this urine then I have no doubt that the identification’s adequate.”

I think there is a bit of mutual "out of context" quoting going on here.

What Dr. Ayotte says is pretty clear, if one reads the entire article. She believes, to the point of saying "[size=-1]...otherwise, I've been a liar all these years. I have been instructing everyone at all of the organizations not to expect to reproduce an EPO adverse finding if more that two or three months has elapsed since the sample was originally taken," that she is incredulous that testing of Armstrong's urine from 1999, frozen until recently, yielded EPO, purportedly from back then. What she suggests, being a bit diplomatic I think, is that the only scenario she finds believable is that the urine may have been retested much further back and only that the results reinterpreted recently, taking advantage of newer models: [/size][size=-1]"My interpretation is that retesting itself must have been conducted in 2000 or in 2001, but the results were reviewed using the new mathematical model that is now being developed in Paris." This reinterpretation scenario is not what has been reported in L'Equipe, so I think it's fair to say that Dr. Ayotte does cast a shadow over exactly what transpired with respect to the retesting of the urine.

What she's saying is that she does not doubt the positive EPO results, if the lab is merely applying newly developed quantiative models to data from old tests. Otherwise, her disbelief that EPO that's five years old has been detected in urine is pretty clear: "[/size][size=-1]Suggesting a more recent test, she said, "really makes me wonder." "[/size][size=-1]EPO is a protein hormone and it is not stable in urine, even when kept frozen," she said. "This has long had implications for any plan we've had to keep samples and specimens for long periods of time with the hope that we might, some day, retest those samples for a new substance.""

Berend

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[size=-1][/size]

 

[Turenne]

So you CAN'T answer my question. You continually ignore the fact that Ayotte says that EPO breaks down in urine in "a matter of months" -- EVEN WHEN FROZEN. So an objective observer would wonder how it could show up five years later.

EPO may break down in urine in a matter of months. You try to invent a so-called diplomatic language from Ms Ayotte towards the Châtenay-Malabry lab. You simply can't admit she accepted the results...
However, apart Ms Ayotte, you seem to kindly forget that other doping specialists recently spoke about LA's dopping case. There is a debate, but the huge majorty of scientists and doping specialists support the french lab's results; some even go further... Here are some examples to refresh your memory...


The testing of the LNDD involved three parameters: (A) visual interpretation, (B) percentage of isoforms (indicating EPO use when present in values greater than 80 percent, with a margin of 5 percent) and (C) mathematical modelling. Only the samples positive in each of the three parameters were interpreted as positive, with a number of other samples found inconclusive. The urine samples had been frozen at -20° Celsius, making them resistant to molecular transformations which could lead to false positive testing, according to Prof. Michel Audran, member of Science and Industry Against Blood Doping (SIAB), quoted in the paper.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2005/aug05/aug23news3


The director of the LNDD, Jacques De Ceaurriz, maintains that the results of the latest study are unequivocal: there is no doubt in his mind that the EPO test will work on samples that have been frozen for six years at -20 degrees celsius. Thus, according to his results, Armstrong and up to six others were positive for EPO in 1999.
On the other hand, there is a divided opinion among anti-doping experts about the LNDD's latest results, especially as they come from samples that were almost six years old. "Can one be certain that in samples deep-frozen for years, there were no biological changes, no aging processes that could falsify the result?" said German National Anti-Doping Agency chief Dr. Roland Augustin to sid. "That has not been sufficiently determined scientifically." However, Wilhelm Schänzer, head of the IOC doping lab in Cologne, supports the findings of the LNDD. "Urine samples can be kept in storage temperatures of between -20 and -40 degrees for years," he said. "The results are scientifically valid for me. If Mr. Ceaurriz says they are positive, then you can be assured that it's right."

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2005/aug05/aug24news2

Alessandro Donati, former head of the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) medical commission and an outspoken critic of Dr Michele Ferrari, has told German weekly Die Zeit that he believed Lance Armstrong used not just EPO as alleged by L'Equipe one week ago, but a range of substances."No one could achieve what Armstrong has achieved taking EPO on its own," said Donati. "EPO improves your breathing capacity. But you also need other substances, such as anabolics, testosterone and a lot of others."He added: "A lot of riders take whatever they can get their hands on, I mean everything, to go faster than the next guy. Cycling is still a victim of widespread doping. It is caught in the jaws of doping because tactics in cycling plays a very minor role. What you need absolutely most of all is sheer physical strength."Donati also gave a serving to L'Equipe and his own Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport, stating: "newspapers who report on cycling shouldn't be organising races"; L'Equipe is owned by Tour de France organiser A.S.O., while the Italian sports daily La Gazzetta is owned by R.C.S., organisers of the Giro d'Italia.Although raising conflict of interest issues when both organiser and primary media outlet are under one roof, Donati believed L'Equipe's findings to be sound to the point of being 'unquestionable'."During the past few years there have been clear indications as to how Armstrong has been so successful. The documents printed by L'Equipe are very damaging but also unquestionable," he said.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2005/sep05/sep01news2