// BEGIN editorial data var i = 0; var Health_EvadeDoping = new Array(); Health_EvadeDoping.ID = "Health_EvadeDoping"; Health_EvadeDoping.ID_WB = 11226369; Health_EvadeDoping.sPubDate = "2/8/2006 12:46:33 AM GMT"; Health_EvadeDoping.navsectionID = "3034510" Health_EvadeDoping.appFmt = 2; Health_EvadeDoping.itemsPerPage = 1; Health_EvadeDoping.appWidth = 460; Health_EvadeDoping.appHeader = "How athletes evade the doping police"; Health_EvadeDoping.appDeck = "Athletes have been using drugs to enhance their performance since the ancient Olympics, and trying to evade detection for just as long. Here are some of the most common methods used to fool modern drug testing:"; Health_EvadeDoping.appFooter = "Source: Brian Alexander; MSNBC research"; Health_EvadeDoping.appNavStyle = 3; Health_EvadeDoping.appLayout = 3; Health_EvadeDoping.copyHeight = 267; Health_EvadeDoping.copyWidth = 330; Health_EvadeDoping.copyMargin = 9; Health_EvadeDoping[i++] = new Array("","Urine substitution","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); Health_EvadeDoping[i-1].body = "Athlete’s can’t be shy. When an Olympic athlete provides a urine sample, he or she must pull their pants down and raise their shirts so specimen collectors can fully observe urination. The reason? Athletes have been known to push containers of clean urine into their rectums, then run tiny tubes under their penises. Some simply palm a small vial of clean urine in one hand and dribble it into the collection cup.

Some have even voided, then used a catheter to insert another person’s clean urine into their own bladders. To combat this, collectors at competitions demand that athletes provide a sample immediately after their event with no stops to the bathroom."; Health_EvadeDoping[i++] = new Array("","Urine adulteration","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); Health_EvadeDoping[i-1].body = "“This is the introduction of a substance into the sample to really foul up the drug test,” explains Frank Uryasz, the president of the National Center for Drug Free Sport, a private company contracted to handle anti-doping programs for the NCAA, minor league baseball and other organizations.

Everything from bleach to complicated compounds have been tried, though once collectors began watching more closely, athletes resorted to coating their fingers with an adulterant, then urinating over their fingers so the chemical wound up in the sample. Sports authorities say Irish Olympic swimmer Michelle Smith, who won three gold medals in the 1996 Atlanta games, may have used a container inserted into her vagina for a 1998 test. Her urine turned out to contain a percentage of whiskey so high it would have killed her. She maintained her innocence."; Health_EvadeDoping[i++] = new Array("","Hyperhydration and diuretics","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); Health_EvadeDoping[i-1].body = "Drinking huge amounts of fluids and/or using diuretic drugs to speed the elimination of fluids from the body can so dilute the amount of drug in the urine as to make doping undetectable. Diuretics, often used by high blood pressure patients, are banned and testers check for their presence, but athletes still sometimes manage to cheat the tests."; Health_EvadeDoping[i++] = new Array("","Masking agents","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); Health_EvadeDoping[i-1].body = "Some drugs mask the presence of other, performance-enhancing drugs. Epitestosterone is the most famous. It was contained in “The Cream,” the substance sold by the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative, or BALCO, and used by athletes like Barry Bonds. Because testosterone occurs naturally in the body, finding its drug form can be difficult. So testers measure a ratio of testosterone to a related form, epitestosterone. If the ratio is more than 4:1, the athlete falls under suspicion of doping. But by adding epitestosterone to testosterone, as in “The Cream,” athletes can keep that ratio under 4:1 and still gain the benefit of extra testosterone."; Health_EvadeDoping[i++] = new Array("","Designer drugs","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); Health_EvadeDoping[i-1].body = "The other famous drug to emerge from the BALCO scandal was “The Clear.” This turned out to be an anabolic steroid that had been custom-made to avoid detection by doping labs. Since the labs set analyzing machines to look for known doping substances on the list of banned products, unknown molecules can slip through. Elite athletes using “The Clear” escaped detection for several years. Scientists say there may be thousands of potential combinations chemists could use to create such drugs. "; Health_EvadeDoping[i++] = new Array("","Doping regimens ","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); Health_EvadeDoping[i-1].body = "Elite athletes have access to the most sophisticated experts in the doping underground and to commercial analytical labs. So they can dope with fast-acting steroids, test their own urine to find out how long the drug takes to clear the system, and then create a doping and training schedule designed to maximize their chances of escaping detection.

This is especially effective for the hormone drugs like the red-blood-cell booster erythropoietin (EPO), human growth hormone and insulin growth factor 1. All are used for doping. But all are also naturally occurring in the body and have a tiny window of detectability measured in days, or even hours. (Despite a decade of trying, there is still no validated test for growth hormone or IGF-1). In the event of a surprise test at the wrong moment, Uryasz says, athletes can resort to an old fashioned, but effective technique: be somewhere the collector isn’t, or simply don’t answer the door."; // END editorial data