DR RICHARD BUDGETT AND DR ARNE LJUNGQVIST

29 NOVEMBER 2006

  Q280  Chairman: That is the key point.

  Dr Ljungqvist: Yes.

  Q281  Chairman: You would support that.

  Dr Ljungqvist: Yes. Sure

  Q282  Chairman: I was just trying to get that on the record.

  Dr Ljungqvist: Okay. I may have expressed myself unclearly, but of course that is the ideal.

  Chairman: It is me who had understood unclearly.

  Q283  Mr Flello: Dr Budgett, is there anything you would like to add to that?

  Dr Budgett: No, I think that is quite clear.

  Q284  Mr Flello: In terms of the anti-doping organisations, do you think it is important to have international accreditation of the anti-doping organisations?

  Dr Ljungqvist: Yes. It would be preferable. Certainly the accreditation that exists today has to be in compliance with the WADA code.

  Q285  Mr Flello: You just say it would be preferable. There is no strength of feeling behind that at all.

  Dr Ljungqvist: No.

  Dr Budgett: They have to be in compliance with the WADA code but I do not know that anyone is going around measuring how compliant they are with the WADA code. The ultimate sanction is a very big one, is it not, for the Olympic sports anyway?

  Q286  Mr Flello: I think UK Sport is one of the few organisations that has an ISO accreditation for its process. Is that sort of accreditation preferable or something that should be much more strongly sought?

  Dr Budgett: Yes.

  Q287  Dr Iddon: As I understand it, the sample taken from the athlete is split into an A and B sample. Do you have any statistics on how many false positives you get on testing the A sample? How many proceed to the B sample? Does WADA keep statistics or do we keep statistics in this country on those matters?

  Dr Budgett: Yes, there are statistics.

  Dr Ljungqvist: There are statistics, sure. I do not have the figures in my head but they are officially available, for sure.

  Dr Budgett: It is extraordinarily rare.

  Dr Ljungqvist: It is very rare. The problem, you see, is that if you have a positive A and a negative B, you do not know whether it is a positive or negative case.

  Q288  Dr Iddon: What would you do in that case?

  Dr Ljungqvist: If the B does not confirm the A, the case is closed as negative.

  Dr Budgett: There was one recent case, was there not?

  Dr Ljungqvist: Yes.

  Q289  Dr Iddon: Are false positives a problem in the analytical laboratory or not?

  Dr Ljungqvist: Not.

  Dr Iddon: Good.

  Q290  Chairman: If you do the A test, which is negative, you do not bother doing the B test.

  Dr Ljungqvist: No, that is right.

  Q291  Dr Turner: Could we come back to looking for new techniques of cheating. You have referred already to gene doping, which is a popular concept, but gene therapy is not really a realistic proposition in legitimate medicine yet. How likely do you think it is actually to come to pass as a technique for human enhancement in athletics? If so, how soon?

  Dr Ljungqvist: My belief is that, from the scientific point of view, gene therapy will come into the hands of routine medicine within a future which is difficult to predict. It has been a promising field for many years already. There have been clinical trials, as you know, with some accidents even, that made the development stop quite considerably and then it has moved on again. But it surely is a technique that will come for use in medicine, and then, we know by experience, athletes and their entourage will be knocking on the door asking for its use for their purpose, their illegitimate purpose. There are examples of it already. There is a team which is associated with WADA in Philadelphia. The head of the laboratory is a member of the gene doping panel of WADA and he reported to us already, two years ago, that in his investigation for the purpose of improving people with muscular dystrophy by gene therapy, to promote the muscle growth, he has already been approached by coaches who have asked for his assistance and how he can make use of the progress in his research field for the purpose of making their athletes stronger. It is a true report—which is sort of worrying.

  Q292  Dr Turner: Quite disturbing, yes.

  Dr Ljungqvist: Yes.

  Q293  Dr Turner: How systematic is WADA and is the IOC in looking for new emerging cheating techniques, techniques like the use of growth hormones and possibly cytoplasm for enhancement. Do you have a systematic scanning and research programme in place to deal with this?

  Dr Ljungqvist: I would not say that we have a systematic programme in place but certainly our laboratories around the world are all alerted to keep their eyes open if they make sort of suspicious or mysterious findings, because they can establish the substances that are on the list but they can also record during their analytical procedure whether something pops up that seems abnormal. That is one aspect of it. The other is that, nowadays, through WADA, we are keeping in steady contact with central representatives of the pharmaceutical industry to be updated as to what is going on in terms of the introduction of new substances and new methods for the medical profession. One example was the Salt Lake City incident, where we found three athletes doped with a substance that had been on the market for only a few months. Certainly those athletes did not believe that we had a method in place for their analysis, but together with the producer of the substance we had already developed the analytical method.

  Q294  Dr Turner: When we visited Australia, we met research groups in Sydney who were working on growth hormone measurements and they were largely WADA funded. It made us think that maybe they were part of a systematic worldwide approach. Do you think that maybe you should be doing this on a systematic worldwide scale?

  Dr Ljungqvist: In an indirect way, we are, through WADA, in two respects. One is through the knowledge and input from the members of our Health Medical Research Committee, who are knowledgeable in this field and are in the frontline of science in their respective areas and they report back to us. That is one aspect of it. The other is the research grants that WADA is issuing, as you have said, where we invite people from all over the world to come to us for funding. It is interesting and very encouraging that at the last Health Medical Research Committee meeting in September when we allocated the coming year's research funds, two-thirds of those went to research laboratories which were not doping laboratories but research centres totally outside sport. We are at the frontline, I would say, in accumulating knowledge in the usual scientific way.

  Q295  Dr Turner: You presumably have a systematic internal process of informing all of you laboratories of things that are up and coming.

  Dr Ljungqvist: Sure.

  Q296  Chairman: Dr Budgett, is that the case in the UK as well? Do we have that horizon scanning? Do we have that linked in with the Medical Research Council?

  Dr Budgett: There is some very active research but I do not think it is systematic.

  Q297  Chairman: Do you think it should be?

  Dr Budgett: There is a danger you would be re-inventing the wheel, of course, because it is an international effort. Professor Sampson is one example, leading growth hormone 2000, who has done a lot of work on that, and we do have two anti-doping laboratories which have done a lot of work.

  Q298  Chairman: I am thinking of areas, for instance, like stem cell technologies, which would be fantastic for repairing Achilles heel injuries very, very quickly and things like that. People would be able, in theory, to deal very quickly with torn muscles. What sort of contact do we have with the major research bodies?

  Dr Budgett: You are absolutely right. As far as I know, there is no systematic contact.

  Q299  Chairman: Do you think that would be a good idea?

  Dr Budgett: It would be a good idea. From the therapeutic point of view it would be a good idea.

  Chairman: It does not cost much, in fact.