J'accuse !
by
Ilan Vardi
Version française de cet article
The accusations brought
against Lance Armstrong in L'Equipe on August 23, 2005, have no scientific or
legal merit. In particular, The protocol of anonymity of samples and the
requirement to test an A and B sample was designed to
·
Maintain
scientific correctness
·
Protect
the rights of athletes
In this case, the protocol
was not followed which means that the test reported by L'Equipe has no
scientific validity and that the disclosure of the results violates the rights
of the athlete in question. Everyone agrees with this, since it has been
acknowledged that no legal or sporting sanction can be pursued. Therefore, the
L'Equipe article and its general acceptance in the French press is simply a
precedent for disregarding scientific principles as well as disregarding
athletes' rights. An in depth look at the ethical consequences of this incident
is given in this article by Tim Maloney. Therefore, there are
no facts to discuss here, only illegal methods used to tarnish the reputation
of the most dominant Tour de France rider of all time.
Since no charges can be
brought against Armstrong, it is clear that he has no need to defend himself
against these spurious accusations. However, one can surely believe in his
complete innocence. For example, it would be very risky to use EPO during the
post Festina Affair Tour de France, when police raids were considered
inevitable, as was expressed by his team mate Jonathan Vaughters. As he has shown
in his Tour de France victories, Lance Armstrong has left very little to
chance. Another reason was given by Armstrong himself: After beating cancer and
making cancer research and recovery his number one goal in life, it would be
ridiculous to once again put his health in danger.
If one does believe in
Armstrong's innocence, then what is one to make of the positive EPO tests
reported in L'Equipe? After some thought, the O.J. Simpson case comes to mind,
in which the possibility of tampering with evidence was a key point leading to
acquittal. However, in the O.J. Simpson case, there was so much evidence that a
large number of otherwise trustworthy individuals would have had to
independently decide to frame O.J. Simpson. In this case, the number of people
required to tamper with the evidence is much smaller, and the possibility of
wrong doing much greater, since the procedure by which L'Equipe obtained their
evidence was itself fraudulent. In particular, the informant who gave them the
correspondence between anonymous samples at the Chatenay Malabry laboratory is
already guilty of serious breach of ethics, as is the person who allowed them
to examine the Chatenay Malabry documentation, which was guaranteed anonymity
for all scientific and legal purposes. Therefore, there are two people who are
already guilty of serious misconduct and either one could have easily tampered
with evidence in order to frame Lance Armstrong.
My suspicions about
tampering in order to frame Armstrong were first raised by purely
phenomenological issues: The L'Equipe article was immediately accepted as fact
by the French media, indicating to me that the climate was ripe for this
information to be believed without further scrutiny. As every forger knows, one
sells fakes to people who desperately want to believe them real. The second
element is that the revelations happened just after Armstrong's retirement,
considerably decreasing the possibility of legal action on his part or by other
organisations finding fault with the articles. Finally, the publication of the
articles just a month after Armstrong's retirement assured that the object of
the attack would not be a faded memory. In other words, the article came at a
time when it would get the most attention with the least amount of formal
scrutiny.
Since the testing protocol
involving A and B samples and anonymity was designed to eliminate the
possibility of tampering, one can no longer exclude tampering in this case,
where the protocol was not followed. Moreover, tampering with a cyclist's drug
sample is a distinct possibility given the fact that it has recently occured in
France. In 2004, French cyclist Cedric Vasseur proved that his positive test
for cocaine performed at the request of the French police was false and that
his signature on a police report while in custody was forged by the police.
If one believes that
tampering occurred then the natural question is the identity of the perpetrator
or perpetrators. In my opinion, there is one outstanding candidate, the person
who has shown the least amount of professional ethics in a profession requiring
the highest standard of ethics, that is, Jacques de Ceaurriz, director of the
Anti Doping laboratory of Chatenay Malabry. Indeed, he has never expressed any
objection that confidential research material from his institute was
surreptitiously examined by newspaper reporters. Nor has he brought up any
objection that the scientific and legal protocol for proving a doping offence,
in which his institute plays the central role, was totally violated. On the
contrary, he provided a statement to L'Equipe that was published alongside
their original articles, confirming their findings. Even this statement runs
contrary to scientific ethics -- he gives a subjective opinion about the
validity of the institute's EPO test on frozen samples, without having any
scientific basis (no study of the validity of EPO testing on long term frozen
samples exists) and without qualifying his opinion as being devoid of empirical
basis. Such qualification is important in order to maintain a scientific
standard of rigour and also to communicate uncertainty to laymen who might
otherwise take a scientist's word as fact. However, any such qualification
would completely negate the impact of his assertion that his EPO test is 100%
reliable even on long frozen samples. This assertion of perfection is itself
ludicrous, since it contradicts the use of a protocol involving multiple
samples established exactly for the purposes of minimising the inevitable
possibility of false results. Note that a scientist can be reasonably expected
to give his opinion on matters which he does not fully understand, if the
issues are innocuous, but not when his opinion directly harms a public
personality and is stated as if it had full scientific value.
As the previous paragraph
shows, Jacques de Ceaurriz has validated a newspaper article which violates the
very principles on which the institute's research is based and has passed off
his personal opinion as scientific fact. Therefore, I do not find it such a
stretch of the imagination that he was somehow involved in tampering with
samples. At the very least, I now believe it quite likely that he gave personal
permission to the L'Equipe reporters to examine the privileged documents
belonging to his institute. Already, this would be such a breach of ethics that
it would require his immediate dismissal as director (I believe that his lack
of interest in the misconduct that has occurred at his laboratory should already
be grounds for disciplinary action against him). It also seems possible that he
is aware of the person who gave the correspondence between the anonymous sample
numbers and the athletes, probably someone at the French Cycling Federation,
which is one of the only places where the correspondence between the anonymous
samples and the athletes could be known.
If any one of the above
conjectures is correct, then one must wonder how the director of a respected
institute could get involved in such mischief. I believe that the answer, as
usual, comes down to human weakness, and that the director fell victim to
exactly the same temptations as the dopers he has made his living trying to
catch. In particular, the director of a French research institute makes
somewhere in the vicinity of $100,000 a year, a paltry figure compared to his
American counterparts who make ten times as much, and laughable compared to
Lance Armstrong who makes on the order of one hundred times as much. Surely
this difference in finances can bear heavily on someone coming close to
retirement and an investigation into his private life might provide some
surprises and clues. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the Institute's
EPO test has been his life's work, even though he himself did not do the
research, and his laboratory gained world wide notoriety with the acceptance of
its test as the standard for finding EPO doping as these articles attest
However, even here his
ethical standards are found wanting. Indeed, another laboratory in Lyon has
accused Jacques de Ceaurriz and his laboratory of illegally appropriating the
EPO test for themselves. The research leading to the EPO test was done by
Francoise Lasne first at the
Hopitaux de Lyon and then at the
Chatenay Malabry laboratory. However, the Lyon laboratory applied for a patent
in 1998 and Christian Collombel, the director of the Laboratoire des Hospice
Civils de Lyon, has accused Jacques de Ceaurriz of appropriating the test for
himself by manipulating the media. A full article is given here. Manipulation of the media in order to steal
an EPO test along with the his unethical stance in the L'Equipe affair (and
subsequent media attention) certainly opens the door to even more serious
misconduct.
I hope that Jacques de
Ceaurriz reads this article. I am certain that his reaction would be outrage at
being accused without there being any tangible proof. At the very least, if he
is innocent of the more serious charges I bring up, he would realise the
difficult position Armstrong has been put in as a result of the L'Equipe
articles, which de Ceaurriz has supported against all the principles of his
profession. Moreover, he would
realise that any defence he brings up could be used to defend Lance Armstrong,
since any procedural gaps in my accusations are already present in the L’Equipe
articles which he supports.
When I first saw the
L'Equipe article, my reaction was that France had found a new Dreyfus.
Indeed, over a century ago, France was not ready to believe that a Jew
could have a successful and honest military career, and in 2005 France cannot
accept an American with a successful and honest Tour de France career. Even when he was completely disgraced,
Dreyfus still declared “Vive la France !” just as Armstrong himself, in
response to his media critics, declared “Vive le Tour !” just one month ago.
No, what France needs now is a new Zola.
Version française de cet article
