Welcome back to this installment of Science Behind the
Headlines. Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we're talking drugs in sport and to help me through
the science and the media around this topic, we've assembled a wonderful panel of Jason Mazanov,
Robert Roebergs and Anna Kadeen. Can we get another round of applause for those, please?
Don't forget to clap just because you're watching online doesn't mean that we don't
appreciate the applause. And we'd also like to remind you that this conversation is going out
on Twitter and please use the hashtags RIOs and Drugs in Sport. RIOs, by the way, is A-U-S,
R-I-A-U-S. And apparently we have a rather lively Twitter stream happening tonight as we'll find
out when we get to the questions. I actually want to turn to Annika to kick this half off,
as involved in the media to service the media with science stories and observing the way
that the media behaves. What's your take home message on the way, the role that the media has
played with the whole coverage of drugs in sport? Well, it's a very interesting topic because you
basically combine science which struggles to get into the media, that is, you know, one of our
greatest aims and sport which doesn't struggle, even on a slow day you've got sport. It doesn't
matter what's happened, something's written something about what's coming up in three weeks
time. So this is the first time that you almost, well not really the first, but one of the biggest
times that it's been combined and you've had to combine talking about Essendon and Lance Armstrong
and things like that in conjunction with talking about peptides and human growth hormones and
other scientific aspects where in half the stories they're being written by sports reporters versus
science reporters which don't really exist in today's tabloid newspapers or health reporters,
they do exist thankfully. So it created this interesting sort of scenario where it wasn't,
it was still good coverage though. The biggest issue we had was the crime commission report
mentioned peptides and they took that word on and used it in their reporting. While it wasn't
incorrect, it doesn't exactly explain peptides. I'm a journalist by training, not a scientist, so
those guys would probably do a better job at explaining it, but they're also, peptides are
naturally occurring just as they are, can be added to the body and you know, induce the growth of
human hormones. So we sort of had to put out and say, you know, wait a second, when you're constantly
talking about peptides, maybe mention that there are also peptides in milk and that kind of thing
is important because you can't come out and say we need to ban peptides because you can't till an
hour for a footballer, don't have milk on your cereal in the morning, you can't work. So you have
to be careful about that language, but that in the sense wasn't really the journalist's fault,
wasn't really the crime commission's fault either, they're not exactly going to make sure that they've
got that aspect of it right. But once you come out with something, it's very hard for the media to
turn around and correct themselves, just because once something's taken on, it's a lot easier to
keep going down the path you started on. So that was sort of the only, the biggest thing we had,
we just sort of had to come out and it sort of highlighted that aspect of, as I said, there's
no science reporters in the papers anymore. So the sports reporter can't turn around and ask the
science reporter, quick lesson, tell me in a sentence what a peptide is. They have health
reporters, but in the case of News Limited, the biggest health reporter is Sue Dunleavy who works
in the network news desk. So say in Adelaide, you know, they could call her up, but they're
not just right behind them, they're not in the same office, it's harder to communicate with
the reporters when they're based in one city and someone in another city is trying to write the
story. And that brings in this idea of, you know, the reporting nowadays is just so different. A
lot of people are general news reporters and it's just harder for people to stay in and report
accurately. It's not their fault, it's the way the news has become, but it just highlights that it is
really important to represent the science. Something that I found disturbing, particularly in the
Australian Crime Commission's report coverage, was the emergence of the sports scientist. I didn't
realise that teams had their own sports scientists and to a large extent they were cast as these are
the evil drug pushers that are employed by football teams to, you know, our innocent football teams
to pump them full of drugs. Exactly, and we actually had on the Friday when it all sort of
blew up and, you know, you saw the headlines, darkest days in sport and all that kind of thing,
we actually had a call from a media officer at, I think it was Griffith University in Queensland,
who said, I've got a sports scientist here who really wants to come out and say we're not all
evil. Like, stop using this term to describe half the people that they were describing as sports
scientists aren't sports scientists. I can't tell you what they're actually trained in doing, but
they're certainly not entitled to that label. And the sports scientist sort of, we had a couple
that just wanted to come out and say, you know, we're not there just to pump drugs into footballers
or swimmers, we're, you know, legitimate scientists. But in the case of those that, you know,
it's like Steve and Dank, I don't actually know what his qualifications were. But, you know,
there were people using the title that shouldn't have. And the media really caught on to that term.
And, you know, once they take something, they really run with it. But it did sort of create
this example of, you know, watch what you call someone. Well, as sports scientists, you do,
I mean, well, you're obviously evil, Jason, but moving on to Robert, how did you feel about that
turn in the reportage of the whole affair where there was the demonizing of the sports scientists?
Yeah, it was very unfair. I mean, I think the HCC report in hindsight could have been written
slightly differently. And the comment is very correct. The established sports scientists
really weren't identified in the report. And Steve and Dank, you know, he's completing his PhD at
the University of Sydney. He's not really recognized as a sports scientist, but he chooses to use the
label because sports science is not a controlled regulated industry. So anybody can predominantly
use that label that the parent body of our field, which is exercise and sports science Australia,
is trying to to establish control in this arena. And they have the accredited sports scientist
of which Steven isn't one. And there are several accredited sports scientists who work for football
league teams who do a tremendous job, and none of them have been targeted. So, you know, we've got
a bit of a broadside in that report based on the sports scientist, but it brings up another issue
that I just want to tag on to this. And that is, whose responsibility is it to check credentials
of who they employ to handle professional athletes. And I just have a lot of discomfort about the
club scenario in professional sport, where they could probably hire some of these people without
really caring much about their credentials. And these things can happen. So I'm kind of paying
attention to the media because I think there's going to be a lot coming out over the next months
that are really club based. And to see who takes ownership of some of these decisions.
Jason, did you feel dirty? Oh, I'm a psychologist. So, one of the things that was fascinating for
me about watching what was happening is that have you ever noticed how it's always a few
rogues? And they bring it down for everyone. It's always, you know, I remember in high school,
the principal stood up and said, there's a few people out there ruining it for everybody.
And it's seriously, the sports managers, the top of these sports clubs like, come on,
have you ever noticed how it's never their fault? Okay, I mean, here we are, like,
oh, it's rogue operators, but we have this massive army of support personnel to engage.
I mean, Stephen Danky claims he's doing a PhD in biochemistry, right? You need a PhD in biochemistry
to manage a supplements program now? Seriously? This is the level that sports reached. Okay,
but what we see here is scapegoating. Whenever an athlete behaves badly, it's the athlete's fault.
Okay? The entire anti-doping system is set up to blame the athlete. Okay? If the athlete is,
it's a strict liability offense, there are drugs in your system, you did it, you're out. Okay?
Even though we know, most athletes, and I apologize to the athletes out there, but athletes need,
you need a PhD in biochemistry to manage a supplement program, and we're expecting athletes
to manage their own supplement program, know what's going into their body. Most of the time,
they don't even know what's in the supplements because they're contaminated. They have all sorts
of things in them because it's not a regulated industry. So we're scapegoating them. We're
scapegoating sports scientists. The attention has just shifted from athletes now to sports
scientists, but who are the people in the background who are actually running this stuff?
Okay? So I want, what I really want to see, I want to see, to make sure you step up,
take responsibility. I want to see the guys at the top of sports step up and say,
this is how we have made our sports complicit in this. This is what we're doing to try and fix
the problem. Instead of just pointing the finger and saying, you're a rogue operator,
you're the problem. I was on a TV program that was aired a couple of weeks ago,
and the whole program appeared to be around exonerating the AFL because of a few rogue
elements that were making it bad for everybody else. Now seriously, it just doesn't work like that.
Sorry, rant over. No, no, we should have bought the soapbox out tonight. Another aspect though,
the whole reporting of particularly the ACC report, but also in Lion's Armstrong,
was the role that the media, they seem to have appointed themselves policemen in the whole role.
The media as a whole have gone beyond simply reporting what's going on. I feel like that's
not new for the media though. No, but in this situation, have they overstepped the mark? Are
they doing more than they really ought to be doing? I've almost want to be an advocate for
them in the sense that the ACC came out with a report and said, we've got this X number of
teams in the NRL. We've got this X number of teams in the AFL. You've got 18 teams in the AFL.
I don't follow the NRLs. I'm not entirely sure how many there are on that side, but there's,
I don't know, let's say 15. It's almost like saying, I'm just going to come out and say, one
person in this room has done something illegal. I'm not going to tell you which one, but you can
all now report on that little sentence that I've just, you create this air of the entire,
like, and as Jason's pointed out, it probably is most of the AFL that is engaging in these
activities, but they were just so sketchy about it in the sense that the media didn't have a lot
to go on, but they still wanted to report everything that they possibly could, which the
media always does. They want to get, you know, what they think out there. So I don't know. I
just have to, it started with the ACC, so I always just want to go back to that report, and I know
why they came out and released the report, because they then began more in their investigations,
but they almost came at it halfway, and the media's not very good at halfway points. They want
end points. The good news is there is some science, well, sociology, so I don't know if we can call
it science. There is some science around this. There's a fellow, Safira Fahler from the US,
who actually seconded themselves to be a sports journalist for a little while and found out just
the sports journalists don't have time to write anything because they're chasing copy all the
time, and as a result, they actually can't get into any of the detail, any of the depths,
and that's why they rely very heavily on the water press releases and the assata press releases,
and they'll just churn them forward, like, hey, because it's easy copy, I can get it out, and so
when something like this comes up, the journalists actually have to sort of, okay, I now actually
have to get in my head into this, and when I talk to journalists, sort of one of the things I say
to them, do you understand what a drug test is in sport, and they look at me and, what? In a drug
test is you are stripped from the nipple to the knee, and someone watches urine come out of your
body. Now they have to do that to make sure that you haven't got a bladder shoved up your anus,
okay, or you haven't got a prosthetic penis or something like that. Now add to this a layer of
complication, and this is happening to a colleague of mine at work. Imagine you've got a 12 year
old girl who is now forced to go through this for the sake of drug-free sport. Now when you say
that to a journalist, pretty much the reaction is like, what? I didn't realise that's the price
of drug-free sport, and they start reassessing. It doesn't usually come out in the copy because
it's sort of, it's a bit too perhaps contentious for their editors. But when the journalists don't
understand what the process is, it's hard for everyone else to understand what's going on.
Our last event here was a book launch for Fred Watson's Stargazing book, and I was hoping we
could get through tonight without mentioning Uranus, but you know... Something else that was
telling too was that Lance Armstrong, when he went to make his confession, went to Oprah Winfrey
rather than to, what's it called, David Walsh, who's a reporter who actually understands the issues.
Tyler Hamilton went on to the 730 report, you know what I mean? These don't seem to be the best
platforms to explain the nuts and bolts of what you're doing. They seem to be platforms
where you can get the most exposure and popularity. And with Oprah, it was also a case of she's kind
and friendly. She's, you know, I'm sure she can get out and be mean if she wants to be, but when
you watch her interview, she's there to be warm and friendly and coach you into revealing your
deepest dark secrets. So you think it's sugarcoating the fact that she's cheating and bullying...
Exactly, you don't put him in front of a reporter who, you know, breaks down,
investigates hard-hitting news. You want the nice fluffy Oprah who can...
But didn't that also speak, though, to the circus of the whole thing?
Oh, exactly.
Rather than...
Yeah.
...to straight reporters.
It was his, like, he controlled the situation. It wasn't that someone suddenly knocked him up
at his front door and made him reveal all. His people put it all together, and they chose
Oprah for a specific reason.
Well, yeah, and don't forget that Oprah was one of Lance's main supporters during Lance's rehab
from drugs, I mean, from his testicular cancer, which also involved drugs.
But, so Oprah's had a vested interest in Lance for a long time, and she really pushed the
Livestrong movement. So, you know, she's a kind of a friend. So, yeah, it just adds to the lack
of clarity as to, yeah, that connection.
All right, it's time to go to audience questions. If you have a question, please raise your hand.
We'll get a microphone over to you. Whilst the microphone's on its way, I'll throw a question
into the mix that's come in on Twitter, and that was concerning drugs are a factor separating
some amateur athletes from the elite level. How far are we seeing drugs bleeding down into
the amateur levels? I mean, you know, we all see the guys who are obviously not professional,
but are obviously pumped up to the eyeballs on roid rage coming out of the gym. Are we
seeing drug abuse in amateur sport? We'd love to be able to answer that question,
but no one will fund the research. What we know anecdotally is, for example,
you'll see a lot of boys going for rugby union, for example. You hear our anecdotal stories,
these guys loading up on protein, getting to ridiculous weights for their age
in the hope that they'll get in. I've heard stories in the local AFL, you know, guys will run
onto the field with a handful of caffeine tablets, wash it down with a high-energy caffeine drink
and then play, and they're so wired on caffeine they can't catch the ball. I hope they've got
some vodka mixed in with that one. No, no, that would impair their performance. The one which
terrifies me the most, though, is the stories I've heard, one which really knocked me for six,
was the under-12 netball team where the coach was making sure that the girls had their beta
agonist, their inhaler, asthma inhaler before the game. So to suggest that this is a men's only
issue and to suggest that this is an elite-only issue is naive. It's happening at all levels of
sport. Australia, like most societies around the world, is a pill-popping performance-enhancing
culture. I mean, it's what we do. We take pills for all sorts of things to feel better from colds.
Most people consume caffeine to get them going in the morning and so on. So there is a strong
element of that, I think, in Australian culture. You filming was such joy. Yeah, here's another
more sad tale to tell. I was involved in a similar show in the US several years ago and it was about
a high school student who was taking testosterone supplementation and one of the side effects of
testosterone abuse is aggression as well as depression and he committed suicide and there's
a growing number of high school aged children both in the US and probably Australia who are taking
steroids, not for a sports-related issue, but to make themselves look better in a world where
looks apparently is more important than what you think. And so that's a whole other dimension of
this abuse problem. And yeah, in this circumstance it was an incredibly sad end result.
Tragic. We do have a question from the floor.
Speaking of women, do we benefit more from anabolic steroids and testosterone and all
of those things because we have such tiny amounts in our bodies and do you recommend it
to heal from all sorts of injuries but not to build your muscles just to heal quicker?
We were talking about a similar topic to this during break and there are certainly medical
uses for steroid supplementation and that's pretty well established. But I'm not qualified
to talk about that. I mean, you need to talk to a physician and probably an endocrinologist
about those details, but certainly those prescription modalities exist for certain individuals.
Now females, I mean, yes, you do have a small amount of testosterone just like we men have a
small amount of estrogen and women certainly benefit in terms of quote-unquote benefit from
muscle mass perspective if they take anabolic steroids. Whether that's recommended for a
normal woman to do that is a whole other thing. My bias would be to certainly say no, but there are
women bodybuilders who do it and abuse it and we see the end results in the commercial bodybuilding
circuits. So, yeah, hard to give you and a definitive is there from my perspective and
qualifications. It also raises a really good point which I'm very passionate about is that
we talk about doping in the master's games and when you've got people on rejuvenation therapy
in the master's games they're taking, EPO, human growth hormone and anabolic steroids,
probably supervised by their physician. Is that considered cheating? And they do have
anti-doping at the master's games, so it does raise a whole other kettle of fish when you
start talking about that this is not an elite sport problem, but it's not elite, it's masters,
it's semi-professional and so on. Question down the front.
Bring the break. Some of us are talking about the dream and how we seem to live in a world
where everything's got to be just this wonderful dream way. We have, you know, enhanced sports
people. We sack coaches because their team's not top. Well, unfortunately not every team
can be top and there seems to be this lack of reality. We have, you know, models who are
made airbrushed and have ribs removed and so on. And what you've talked about in terms of this is
more a nightmare for those involved and I'm just wondering if there is any hope. Is this, has it
got to the stage where it has become so unreal where the public is expected far too much
and lost all touch with the reality and that we need to go right back to square one and I'm just
wondering if you want your son to have his heroes sporting people or whether you'd rather have them
as scientists and get on with a real life. Who do I want my son's heroes to be? Well,
I mean, that's ultimately for him, I hope. The question of role modelling is a difficult one,
but I mean, we don't demand the same behavioural standards of our politicians and arguably they're
stronger role models in our society. I hope not. Yeah, well, but do we expect perfection? Look,
I think that one of my catchphrases on this topic is that we have a two-dimensional sanitised view
of sport. When you pull back the veil and you look at sports production, wow, this is what it
really is. I think the public's expectations are unrealistic in the sense that they don't get what
actually goes on. Now, once we see it, we have a choice. We can stop consuming these versions of
sport or we can keep going because if we consume it, we watch it, we buy it, then they're going to
keep producing it. So, you know, here is the reality writ large right in front of us. What are we
going to do as a society about this? And at the moment, it's anti-doping. I'd like to cease move
to a more humane model, if I can call it that way, a model which is based on science, something
which actually says the evidence points to this approach being better than that approach. Unfortunately,
with anti-doping, we have never been allowed to find out what any alternative approach might look
like because with me saying things against anti-doping, I actually risk being sanctioned and
not being able to go to sport because I am contradicting the goals of anti-doping. It is written
into the code. Can you foresee the same way that in food production, we now have organic
and locally grown lines, that we actually have, you know, the drug-free league? But then you'd
have a drug league. Yeah, but then you've got the dope league. But let's learn from that, shall we?
Right? So, let's talk about organic farming and let's talk about cage-free eggs, right? This is
really not really going off the plot here, right? Cage-free eggs have now become, right, which the
chicken has maybe four inches more room than maybe in a cage. You know, that's now cage-free. They're
not in a cage where they're still cramped. You know, organic farming has become not what it was
30 years ago because of all these commercial pressures. So, if our so-called improved agriculture
has succumbed to all the forces of economics about farming, you know, the same thing is just
happening to sport. So, you know, whatever you want to label the better practice, it's going to be
morphed to be profitable. And that to me is a problem, as we've talked about before. If you
go to a laissez-faire model, the economics will tell you what will emerge. And when I've run the
thought experiment, no matter what happens in sport, you always end up with drugs in it.
You can't get away from it. So, what you have to do then is find out the right way to regulate it,
because it has to be controlled for the reasons I articulated earlier. So, you know, this idea of a
drug-free, like, you know, it's a panacea. It doesn't exist. We had an entertaining little
thought experiment just before coming on this evening of, let's just name a couple of sports,
and you guys can tell me what drugs are likely to be being used there. And the one that springs
to mind straight off the cuff is dressage. When I bought it up, they said that they probably
are drugs. And what were they? Beta blockers. Beta blockers. Why would you have beta blockers?
Would you give them to the rider or the horse? The rider, probably. Maybe the audience.
Well, maybe they might need stimulants in the audience. But, yeah, just to calm the rider down.
So, in archery, I mean, they've been queried about using beta blockers to calm the athlete down. So,
I mean, there are horses for courses and there are drugs for different sports. And, yeah,
in some sports they'll need a stimulant. Other sports would need a depressant or a calming agent.
You're even saying that in golf, Tiger Woods and some others have had eye surgery to improve their
eyesight. Well, I was saying earlier that if I was to pick one sport that has been a holy grail of
no one would ever think there could be supplement abuse in it. It would now be golf because
the golfer has become more of an athlete than they were 20 years ago. So, and where there's money,
there's the incentive to perhaps get stronger. And now golf has become a more athletic game than it
was 20 or 30 years ago. And they're training more. They're lifting weights. So it wouldn't
surprise me. You're still have to walk in between holes. So, what about chess? What are they taking
there? Okay, let me, let me, chess has. Viagra. No, it has an anti-doping code because they wanted
to legitimate themselves as a sport. This is one of the ways that chess is. That was the way they
went about it. Yes, it's one of the ways that they've gone about it. And they do comply with the world
anti-doping code. One of the, so some of the drugs that you might use there. Excuse me, Mr. Kasparov,
can you pee in this please? Methylphenidate medaffinil are two drugs. So, narcolepsy and
attention deficit disorder drugs that increase focus and concentration. So, and they are actually
banned under the world anti-doping code for all sports in competition, I think, isn't it?
I've strayed into dangerous grounds, gentlemen. Please, sir, could you help me out with your question?
The Americans took a few years of gathering research against Lance Armstrong and brought
in all these people. ACC seems to be trying to do the same trick, but yet the media just says,
why are you saying all of Australian sports terrible and they're just following that
type of example? Then we've got, they came out the other day, we've got 180 million of government
funding. If you don't improve your sports results, we'll be reducing your budget by 20%,
which is sort of saying going to Tyler Hamilton, but to be competitive, you have to take drugs.
And then going on what Tyler said, that if you weren't, if you wanted to be in the top half
of the pack, you had to be on drugs, but we've only had two people from the elite cycling who
were coaches come out and say that they were on drugs and resign. Now, surely there's more
investigations to go, so covers media, psychology and physiology. You skipped the paleontology,
but that was probably wise. I'm sure we can get down, isn't there, John?
So, yeah, and the refrain this evening has been that you'd like to do more research,
but you're not allowed to do it, but surely more investigations need to be done.
John Fay, President of the World Anti-Doking Agency and the guy who brought us the Sydney
Olympics, has said the war on drugs and sport cannot be won. You cannot win it and you cannot
win it with drug testing. Drug testing manifestly has failed. In Australia, the prevalence rate
according to the drug testing is about a half a percent of all tests. Problem is, is that we
don't know, when I asked WADA, how many people have you tested? And they said, we don't know.
They can tell us how many tests they've conducted, but they can't tell us how many people
that they've tested. The best estimates that we see, like, so the anecdotal estimates range
from 2%, which is the WADA official rate, to 95%, which basically means we have no idea.
There is no reliable epidemiology. We can't get a reliable epidemiology. The best estimates I've
seen put it at somewhere between 5% and 10%, probably 8%, who are using the top end of drugs.
But as I've said before, that doesn't capture anybody else in the non-elite masters or anything
else. So realistically, we actually have no idea how many people are using. We never will
know. We can't win the war. So you've got to ask the question, like you say. I mean, you know,
we're forcing people to try and get performance, but we're denying them certain things and we
want them to do this. And there seems to be an awful lot of contradiction in there.
And that's where I'd like to see us go back and rethink sport. So we had the Crawford review of
the AIS, I saw sport in Australia, which said, you know, abandon the top model, stop funding the
elite, go for participatory sport, and you'll have a much better outcome from it. And then John
Coates came in and convinced the government to give even more money to the Olympics. So there's
lots of vested interests at play here, and they're not necessarily acting in the interests of public
health, of what we should be doing to make sport drug-free, et cetera, et cetera. So I mean,
really, there is a lot going on as you've identified. Another question in here from Twitter
is the AFL's drugs three strike policy ineffective, shouldn't players have repercussions after one
positive test? It's funny they should ask that because I literally asked Jason that before we
started tonight's presentation. From my perspective as an observer, I found it strange, but Jason,
go on because after you told me, I was actually quite understanding of it. The AFL illicit drug
policy is about treatment. Okay, let's prioritize athlete health and welfare. From my point of
view, it's actually progressive. It's actually what the evidence says. Medical evidence says
harm minimization approaches where you get an athlete and you treat them is a good thing.
So let's take the archetypal case, Ben Cousins. If you take Ben Cousins away from the AFL,
away from all the support he's ever known, the only life he's ever known, and he's trying to
recover from drugs and he's having a hard time of it, what do you think is going to happen to the
guy? He's going to bomb out, pretty big. So what you need to do is keep him in the fold to help
him get over it. The AFL has a responsibility and took that responsibility to help Ben Cousins get
through that part of his life. He came back, he played a few more seasons, he finished, what
happens after that is up to Ben. He's a smart guy, I mean he'll figure it out. But the key here is
that the AFL policy actually does follow best medical practice and they're required to do
something else for all the other drugs because of the anti-doping code. So high minimization
as practiced by the AFL from my point of view is a great thing and we should look from my,
one of the things I say they probably could tweak, if you take drugs then you are suspended from
playing until you can prove to us that you are not taking drugs and do it that way instead of
banning people for two years, cutting them off from their funding, cutting them off from the
people that they know and love. So I mean they can probably tweak the policy but I think it's
the right way to go about doing it. There's another discussion we had earlier that I'm actually dying
to unwrap because you asked me to bring it up here and that is why are we testing for marijuana
as a performance enhancing drugs when I shouldn't say from personal experience but I can't imagine
that after pulling a few bongs that you'd want to go out and even play a game of football let alone
that it would make it play better. Do you want to talk about marijuana?
It's more rough. I'll just give you a break and the audience will break from you.
That was a positive statement. All right so where were we? Marijuana. Just remember that the history
of testing for drugs in sport began with a very altruistic positive rationale in that we were
trying to protect the athlete from potential harm from these drugs. So the history I think back to
marijuana is kind of simple as that well it's something that they shouldn't be taking anyway
and that's obviously debatable depending upon where you come from what your beliefs are
but there's potential harm and so a lot of the testing is based upon the mindset that
what's potentially harmful we also need to test. It's not just about performance improvement
there's a historical development in drug testing that is also about protecting the athlete.
And this goes to the very essential point which should this be about drugs or should it be about
performance enhancement? So if it's about drugs there is a legitimate case to be made for banning
marijuana and a colleague of mine Rich Hildebrand has written on this and we've also got a special
issue of my journal coming out looking at this particular point. One of the things that surprised
me about Rich's argument was he said you know if you've got a gymnast smokes a bit of dope literally
dope before they go out on the bars and then they lack of coordination marijuana affects
coordination they wrap their their neck on the bar because they smoke marijuana. Now I as a manager
have a responsibility to my employee to make sure that they have as safer workplaces I can make.
So that legitimates why we might ban marijuana. Now some of my more experienced colleagues
in other parts of the anti-doping world the anti-doping research world assure me that marijuana
can be performance enhancing especially with snowboarding and mountain biking. So they argue
that that it's essential actually to perform in those two spaces. So it what it does it just goes
show how vapid the line about what is considered performance enhancing has become. Marijuana
is performance enhancing guys you watch it. I think we'll go to another question from the floor.
Up the back there. All right so this is sort of bouncing off of two things that were said number
one that it can't be beat. Number two in that if you don't take these you might come out of the sport
a wreck and not be able to walk properly anymore right. So we are going more for just a mindset
change or like an exclusion change in that the public might have to turn around and go okay well
if I want my son to grow up to be that or if I myself want to grow up to be that then I might
have to accept that I might have to push my body further than it's naturally made to go.
And it might take away a little bit of the romanticism or a little bit of like oh little
Timmy is going to grow up to be an AFL pro. But at the same point in time like isn't that
the number one step that would number one that they would make this
I don't know make us be able to accept this and also make it come out in the open so it could be
regulated and the athletes can be safe and we could take better care of them. Yes.
This actually touches on something that in my time at the ABC as a science reporter we
did the various drugs in sport stories. I met a number of high performance athletes in a number
of different codes and one way or another if you ask them the question if you could get away with it
would you take X they would say yes. There was no hesitation there was no thought they would take
anything. So why don't we just open it let them go. You've got to set a limit though well not a
limit but this is my question because I have no idea where it would end up. If you did regulate it
you would you not have to set at a certain point okay we'll regulate it because we'll allow you to
take X amount of X but then there's still a level in which to push past. So how do you actually
my honest question is how do you regulate it do you allow them to take a certain amount do you
just let it free for all and say do whatever you like and we'll just know that it's happening or
like where does the regulation come about. Well I want to address the part of the question that's
about recovery and the issue about protecting the athlete I mean and the best example of this
strength in the area in my mind is that the state of origin games in the rugby league
and last year we had some players playing you know three games in a week and a half
and some of them were able to do it and some of those players are now on a suspicion of taking
anabolic peptides primarily because they improved recovery. So this is just really interesting
because we're talking about perhaps supplementation on a performance side and then there's also the
recovery and the athletic or the athlete will be inside that just it makes the line more gray
and more broad and it's difficult and it's difficult. I mean it comes back to that very
important question about you're still constructing this as a performance enhancement issue what I
would love to see is this I think the notion of performance enhancement is just the wrong way to
think about the role of drugs in sport we need to rethink the role of drugs in sport so that it's
not about who's cheating and how much did you take and how much performance enhancing effect
it's like no you misuse you abuse this drug it'll kill you and that's the threshold we're going to
use we've talked about what safe levels of hematocrit are for a long time now we fairly much
have a good idea about at this point your blood becomes too thick and you're at risk of having
a heart attack in your sleep and dying so we've got some good sensitive information around this
we can use that and I think that if we changed it to health we'd actually have a lot more compliance
I'm pretty sure athletes and say I'm interested in making sure I don't die because of my drug use
really take a blood sample take a urine sample I'm happy to be part of this so that's part of I guess
the way I see it we have another question down the front here just a comment and a question a quick
comment we mentioned earlier something about intravenous rehydration of of athletes not banned
under the water code interestingly enough the AFL actually banned it because they deemed it not a
good look amongst their players so there's one but my question is more about we've put Lance
Armstrong up a fair bit tonight he's a what we would call a fallen hero what impact do you think
this is having on people's thoughts about their past heroes because at the moment we're talking about
athletes that have excelled at their sports and suddenly suspicion about their performance
and yet we look at past heroes like the Miguel Ingerain in cycling the Sergo bookers of this
world what impact do you think it's having on people's thoughts on those people in the past
yeah what was Dom Bradman on yeah it's a good point well clearly it wasn't enough otherwise he
would have made that final 100 but the because you raised a point earlier on that you you twig
that there was something going on with Armstrong because of his performance but how far back do
you have to go before performances weren't that unusual to raise suspicion so that we're talking
about a time when there wasn't how long have we known about human growth hormones and all that
stuff couldn't you go from that point obviously someone has to know about it to know that it's
going to help the athlete well they're a point at which we didn't have anything I mean if you want
to blame if you want to blame a sociological shift it's all about bodybuilding right I mean
bodybuilding started the whole movement about changing the function and look of the human body
but but to me the question is more sociological and it really suits James but I mean the issue is
why do we always have our heroes be sportsmen and women in Australia we have that sociological
trait where we do that and I just want to make one comment here I mean every year and it's only
once a year we have the Australian of the year and you'll you learn about Australians who do
amazing things far more amazing than sportsmen and women do and as an exercise physiologist
that's a major statement for me to make but why don't we have an Australian of the year every
week or every month right why do we just wait once a year to tell Australia what other people
are doing that impacts so many more people in so many more positive ways and so you know sociologically
yeah let's just have a look at who we put up on our on our idol fridge or idol mantle and it really
forces us to take a look at ourselves I think well we do and I guess the question that I'm asking
is why do we keep doing that when there are so many more Australians who do far more meaningful
things and we just don't get exposed to that and of course I mean I hate to say but it comes back
to money doesn't it the money is driving the sports industry and there's a lot of money in
putting people up there on those pedestals and the other people who get the commercial contracts
and you know why can't a noble laureate sell Wheaties and Wheat Bicks and Vegmite I mean I'll
give Brian Schmidt of course I'm sure that what he needs is a sponsorship from Kellogg's
so you like that look ladies and gentlemen we're flush out of time it's been a fascinating
discussion before we go any further let's have a big round of applause and join it at home
