I suppose I ought to try wrapping this up...
--- malmo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Sorry Dan, your response is nonsense. Was Mary Slaney the only woman on
> birth control pills? No. Who else has a false positive, then? No one.
> Has Mary Slaney ever shown that her E/P ratio is elevated because of
> birth control pills? No. Has she ever offered to be tested? The answer
> is no. Why? You know.
>
> Why not? The answer certainly is not money. Much of it was wasted on
> nuisance lawsuits. It would seem that if athletes were being wronged by
> the big, bad IAAF then the cause would be there for an advocate of
> fairness. The reason is simple, when Slaney was busted, she chose to
> drag a lot of well-meaning people into this last, most public tantrum of
> hers.
What Malmo doesn't seem to understand is that whether or not Slaney was/is
guilty is not at all relevant to the validity of the T/E test. US law
doesn't allow you to be found guilty on disallowed grounds...
--- Peter Stuart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Not the best of examples, seeing as how Ben is a more or less admitted
> > doper and Mary isn't. If the test which found her guilty can't be
> > supported (emphasis on "if"), then the whole thing is hogwash.
>
> This argument is always off base. This would only mean that if you lie
> then you are fine, but tell the truth and you are screwed.
No, that's not what I was getting at. My point was that Slaney has not
admitted to any wrong doing and the test that she was found guilty on is
full of holes. If an athlete's reputation can be forever tarnished on
that basis, then the future of the sport is very bleak indeed.
> The test has been supported by the shear lack of other women testing
> positive for the same reason. She is not the only woman to have a
period,
> or to take birth control pills. Why are all the other women not also
> testing positive ? Slaney should have to prove why her situation is so
> vastly different from all these other women. Let her do that and then
> the IAAF would have to justify this test. Until that happens , she is
guilty
> (just as guilty as Ben & the others) .
That's hardly a valid scientific explanation for a test involving rather
complex internal processes. Just because no one else has been tripped up
by the test in exactly the same way as Slaney doesn't mean anything, as
her explanation remains plausible until disproved by the testers. Either
they can do that or they can't. If they can do so, then I see no reason
not to. If they can't, then there's probably a good reason for it.
--- Jason Michael Blank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I am looking for the story I did on this, but as I recall, T/E ratios
> > were based on males. Nobody ever checked to see if T/E ratios
> > fluctuate during a woman's monthly hormonal cycle.
>
> They have now (and found no change in the T/E ratio). I didn't see any
> papers on birth-control pills per se but I didn't look very hard.
That sounds like progress at least, but I still don't see that the matter
has been addressed very directly:
> Title: Urinary profile of androgen metabolites in a population of
> sportswomen during the menstrual cycle.
>
> Abstract: The aim of this investigation was to evaluate the
> urinary profile of androgen metabolites during menstrual cycle in both
> young-trained female athletes, and young sedentary women, not presenting
> any pathological signs.
I'm sure Slaney would love to be young again, but I don't think 40+
counts.
> Title: Effect of ethanol on the ratio between testosterone and
> epitestosterone in urine
>
> Abstract: The testosterone/epitestosterone weight ratio in urine is
> used to detect cases of doping when an athlete has treated himself with
> exogenous testosterone. When this ratio exceeds 6, it is considered
> evidence of testosterone doping. We show here that intake of ethanol can
> affect this ratio. Ingestion of 110-160 g of ethanol, about 2 g per
> kilogram body weight, increased the ratio between testosterone and
> epitestosterone in urine from 1.14 .{+-}. 0.07 to 1.52 .{+-}. 0.09 in
> four healthy male volunteers.
And no, I don't think she counts as a male, healthy or otherwise.
--- Richard McCann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I showed how the test was severely flawed statistically because it used
> the ratio of two extremely small amounts of compounds (which are in even
> smaller quantities in women than men), which in turn leads to huge
> standard error estimates.
>
> I also recall that in fact the original test is no longer is use due to
> the flaws found in the Slaney case. If there is a similar test being
> used, it has substantially different protocols.
>
> Given this situation, the rightful burden falls on the testing agency to
> clearly demonstrate that its tests will NOT produce "false positives"
> (which are MUCH more damaging than "false negatives"), and Slaney has
> done her part to raise sufficient doubt about the validity of the test.
> Until someone does that clearly and convincingly, we must give her the
> benefit of the doubt. It is almost impossible to prove a negative,
> which is why we say "innocent until proven guilty."
Finally, someone making a bit of sense!
Dan
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