German scientist criticizes Danish study that criticizes EPO urine tests

Those rascally scientists...always making life difficult.  Probably all they want is more government grant money.

Wilhelm Schanzer, director of the Laboratory for Doping Analysis in Cologne, Germany, says that the EPO study released last week in the Journal of Applied Physiology goofed up: "It's absolutely non-scientific"

Dang.  The International Herald Tribune carries the bad news.

A scientist involved in a study questioning the validity of testing for the performance-enhancing drug EPO called the research "factually wrong" and is calling for the paper to be retracted.

"It's absolutely non-scientific," said Wilhelm Schanzer, director of the Laboratory for Doping Analysis in Cologne, Germany. The lab is accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency and regularly tests samples of professional athletes.

The study was published last week in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Carsten Lundby and colleagues of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Center in Denmark gave the oxygen-boosting hormone EPO to eight college students who were not athletes. They collected samples which were tested by two labs accredited by WADA, including the German lab.

The Danes are taking this stance:

Lundby and colleagues concluded that the two labs studied had contradictory results, and that athletes could theoretically take EPO without being caught.

"The test does not work as it should," Lundby said.

Their study was funded largely by Denmark's anti-doping agency.

The Germans counter:

Schanzer said on Tuesday the Danish authors misinterpreted his results, and that because his lab and the other lab used different reporting criteria, their results could not be compared.

What the other lab reported as a positive result, Schanzer's lab reported as "suspicious." Schanzer said that because this was a research project, they did not do all the confirmatory tests that would have been done under normal testing guidelines.

"It's not true that you could take EPO and not be detected," Schanzer said. The study's main finding, that labs cannot accurately identify EPO, is "outright false," he said.

None of this explains anything.  Hopefully Schanzer will document what he means.  The situation appears clear as cholesterol right now.

Lundby stood by his findings and said the test was flawed.

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