I work in a research lab with far more financial resources than any lab that Armstrong’s samples could have possibly been in. I’ve worked in about ten labs, and it’s the same anywhere. Open the freezer and there will be thousands of unmarked, or poorly marked tubes.
Unless you’re prepared to put your money where your mouth is and actually name the institution where you work, along with your Employee ID # to verify same, my money’s definitely on the side of French Laboratoire national de dépistage du dopage de Châtenay-Malabry (LNDD) - and here’s why… have you ever seen photos of the LNDD institution? It’s Europes’s 3rd largest research facility… it’s a bold claim you’re making their son.
So if it were blinded, how did they know it was Lance’s samples?
Listen, I made the statement to present the fact that laboratory samples are not stored like you see on CSI.
I’ll tell you that you’ve doubtlessly heard of the company that I work for, and our market cap is, well, sizable. You can believe that or not, and in likelihood you won’t. But, it is the truth.
Well, it seems that the LNDD labs broke a cardinal rule of basic theoretical research… namely, when they made their results public ostensibly to herald their claims that they had perfected a new retrospective 2D Blotting EPO test, they foolishly made public the sample numbers which tipped their 3-pronged parameters - and then, after those results were made public, L’Equipe joined the dots as to whose samples belonged to whom.
Now, in the interests of fairness, I have to say that there’s still a fair bit of grey area involved here on the part of L’Equipe. On the one hand, I’m hearing reports that the only reason they knew Armstrong’s 1999 Doping Control numbers is because Armstrong CHOSE to make them public years ago. On the other hand, I’m also hearing reports that L’EQuipe joined the dots by obtaining the official Doping Control reports from the UCI from the 1999 Tour de France. If the latter is true, then it galls me that the names of the other 6 rders haven’t been released. Which leads me to believe that it’s the former which is true, actually. I can’t imagine a situation where L’Equipe would hold back the names of other guilty riders if they also had them. That would be foolish to the point of extreme.
Also, if you’re going to try to be condescending, it’s Dr. Son to you.
Not to nitpick, but if you’re going to make a bold condescending throwdown, check your spelling.
Blah Blah Blah… whatever… as I said, anonymous claims on the internet are a dime a dozen. Doctor this. Pastor that. I could claim to be an astronaut if I wanted.
What I know is this… I’ve read the detailed LNDD reports on their latest 2D blotting tests. It’s very impressive stuff. They’ve provided shitloads more data and information than you have, accordingly, you remain in my estimation where you were 2 days ago… a guy on a messagebaord making claims which he’s not prepared to back up.
So, just to get this straight, your only problem is with believing that I am who I say I am? Like I said, that’s fair and probably wise, and I’m not going to spoil the freedom to be anonymous here to prove it. But, I’m pretty sure of who I am. So, again, just posting to posit that the tubes could possibly have not been what they were labeled as six years ago.
Wanna read my thesis? Real page turner.
Actually, my mom only got to page five before she lost interest.
A couple of things jumped out at me from the link that Ganster Octopus posted back on page one.
What?
Wait let’s look at that again
So that is one hell of a test those French developed, it can detect something that isn’t even there! Damn those guys are good. :rolleyes:
Furthermore
Last time I checked my calendar 2004 was more that 90 days after the 1999 tour.
About the “new” mathmatical model. this sounds like what we used to joke about in Chemistry lab. It is a lot easier to draw the curve you want and then plot your data to match. If I get to draw the curve, I could probably “prove” that Mother Theresa used EPO.
When come back, bring proof.
Now this I’m happy to concentrate on… it’s incredibly important to note that the LNDD labs were jointly responsible for the original linear 1-D electrophoresis EPO tests used in the 2000 Sydney Olympics (an Australian research team claimed the other 50% credit on that technology).
In this this article, the same Australian Research Lab outlines the patented 2-D electrophoresis EPO test that they’ve once again jointly pioneered with the LNDD labs. The LNDD people have been storing Tour de France back-dated samples since 1997 - and their storage databasing is waaaaaaaaaaaay more sophisticated than just a shitload of fridges. They’re currently averaging 9,000 separate Doping COntrol batches per annum. They’re an official Olympic and WADA Research and Testing facility - it’s their job to correctly store tests in batches from a truckload of sporting contests and doping controls, and most importantly, not to fuck up their coolant integrity.
There are some research facilities whose storage and ID integrity are open to question - but not the LNDD. They’ve long been the premier institution in sport, along with the Olympic labs in Lausanne.
I never thought of that. Hmmm…
I’m not making an extraordinary claim. My only claim is this, labs (pretty much universally) have quite a few tubes that no one would be able to identify the contents. I’m sure there are other lab rats here, and if they would like to chime in, that would be fine. Not saying that was what happened with LA, but I can envision more than one possible scenarios (scenarii?) that could end up with six year old tubes testing positive.
By the way, I think that he is doped, but I use the word “think” because the evidence is not convincing. It’s wrong for the tour head to act like the evidence is a slam dunk.
Also, 2D gels have been around for quite some time (certainly before 1999), so don’t think that this is such “cutting edge” tech.
Oh, I left his out in my last post…
It seems to me that it’s wholly inappropriate to target the talent of the LNDD people. Those guys are professional, and utterly unbiased. The mistake they made was uploading sample ID numbers to WADA, who then inappropriately made those ID numbers public. It was a series of oversights which had absolutely nothing sinister attached to their motives.
Nonetheless, these new tests are still in their proto-type phase - in particular, there’s a huge debate on how to standardise the gels being used. The problem is that it’s damn hard to generate perfectly reproducible pH gradients time after time in the testing gels, because of the way that the ampholytes generate the pH gradient. Basically, it means that the EPO protein doesn’t migrate to the same place along the gel each time. This is a big problem at the moment because separate Labs can’t produce identical results - however, within a lab, the gel batches will be consistent I understand.
Even if their “coolant integrity” was perfectly fine, -20 [sup]O[/sup]C is an inappropriate temperature to maintain erythropoietin integrity in urine. For five years, the only storage I’d trust at that temperature is at high concentration, in buffered solution containing glycerol, kept at stable temp. in a in a cryocooler like I linked to above, similar to typical lstorage for restriction enzymes. Even then, five years is really pushing it. And nobody goes through so many thousands of samples taking those kinds of precautions. It’s just not practically feasible. Apparently, as in Rick’s link above, others share a degree of skepticism about sample stability.
Seriously, what the hell is going on here? They dig up twelve samples, supposedly at random, and half of them just happen to belong to the most famous cyclist ever. They’re five years old. They publish damning results, needlessly revealing sample ID numbers which can be easily “unblinded”, and which cannot be defended against because they will not, and likely cannot, be repeated. If all they wanted was to validate an assay, why the hell stir up so much shit? And in such a dubious manner? I really, really don’t think it’s unreasonable to take the position that all of this strains credibility. I don’t care who’s doing the analysis, or what techniques they’ve got. There are serious procedural and ethical questions here, and, quite simply, some basic questions about protein chemistry and the limits of inappropriate cryostorage.
Poppy-cock. 2D gels are available in kits tjat a well educated monkey could use and are perfectly reproducible:
Also, that monkey could spell “that”. So there.
Fair enough… I’ve read the same reports regarding the same cynicism. Certainly, I’m not about to profess to be an authority on the timeline degradation of glycoproteins in urine frozen at -20C as compared to -80C. That’s a level of expertise I’m happy to concede that I don’t profess. Still, my understanding is that the new LNDD tests involve retrospective testing for the presence of the EPO protein, and then, if the EPO was present in a given sample, they would then check for the presence of recombinant EPO versus endogynous EPO, and then, if they could establish that charge differences existed regarding the attachment of sugar molecules to said EPO proteins - then they announced a positive finding.
Hence, there were a substantial number of positive EPO tests - far more than 12 - but they were unable to retrspectively prove the recombinant EPO was present as averse to endogynous EPO. And then, there were another large number of samples where EPO wasn’t present at all.
The issue here is glycoprotein degradation - and I’m not about to speculate on how that works. Nonetheless, as the head of the LNDD labs noted… if there was EPO in the urine, “we were able to test it for whether it was fake, or human.” And I personally don’t have a problem with that claim.
No… that’s far from the case. I’ve read that another 110 samples also showed traces of EPO but they were unable to convince themselves beyond doubt that rHuEPO was present, as averse to endogynous HuEPO.
I agree and disagree. My understanding is that regardless of age, if the EPO glycoprotein is present, it can be tested. THat’s the breakthrough here. As for the ethics involved? Clearly the LNDD people stuffed up by uploading their ID numbers. Big Boo Boo. But I still don’t think they acted sinisterly. But I do hold L’Equipe guilty of that, clearly.
There is NO breakthrough here. Here is a paper from 1985 that uses 2D gels, and this is far from the first paper to do so:
I think that the comments of Christiane Ayotte of INRS mean that while EPO shouldn’t be found in urine after five years (it should all have degraded), if EPO is still detectable, it means it was there in the first place and the people of LNDD were lucky.
Of course, the samples were supposed to be used for research purposes only and shouldn’t have been matched with riders. I blame L’Équipe for this, but then again, they know that this is how they’ll sell papers. I don’t know the extent of their opposition to Armstrong, but I’ll believe the people here who say they were looking to expose him for cheating for a long time.
What I believe is that Armstrong probably did take drugs some time ago. I guess that when he got more known and when the testing procedures got better, he stopped, since he knew he would be caught. I’m pretty sure that he’s not alone in this, though. Doping is a serious problem in sports in general. Doped or not, he was still the best.
And I see that most (though not all) posters in this thread have refrained from turning this into yet another America v. France thread. I applaud this. Sure, there may be French people who hate Armstrong because he’s from the States and he’s good, and there may be Americans who love Armstrong because, even though they don’t care about cycling, he’s showing the world how great they and their way of life are, and especially, he’s pwning the frogs on their own ground, but I sure hope that this is not the majority of people.