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World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)


Self Description

June 2005: "The Olympic Charter speaks of the promotion of "friendship, solidarity and fair play". The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is an independent foundation built upon these important values. It is one of the most recent and impressive examples of collaboration in international sport.

Through a collective initiative led by the International Olympic Committee, WADA was created in November 1999 to support and promote fundamental values in sport. With one historic associative act, sport organizations and governments are now united in their efforts to achieve completely drug free sport. This level of unprecedented solidarity constitutes today our greatest hope of eradicating the improper use of drugs in sport.

2004 represented a crucial year, not just for WADA, but for the entire fight against doping in sport. This was the year when the World Anti-Doping Code was implemented by sports organizations prior to the Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. The Code ensures that, for the first time, the rules and regulations governing anti-doping are the same across all sports and that athletes face a level playing field when it comes to doping."

http://www.wada-ama.org/en/dynamic.ch2?pageCategory_id=1

Third-Party Descriptions

June 2008: "EPO is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, an international group that promotes and coordinates efforts to stop doping in sports and whose program is followed by the International Olympic Committee. The agency defends its EPO test and questioned the latest study."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/sports/olympics/26doping.html

April 2008: "Should athletes give DNA samples for scientists to analyze as genes like the testosterone-metabolizing one are found to be important? Or would another approach, the so-called athlete’s passport, be sufficient? The passport, favored by the World Anti-Doping Agency, is a record of all of an athlete’s screening tests and would detect results that vary from the athlete’s baseline values — but it would not include gene testing and therefore may not detect those athletes lacking this gene."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/sports/30doping.html

October 2007: The World Anti-Doping Agency, which tests Olympic athletes, has a policy that states all athletes must be chaperoned from the time they are told they will be tested until they produce a urine sample. The sample must be produced in a controlled facility and be done within 90 minutes after the athlete has been told about the test.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/sports/baseball/31testing.html

January 2007: With an annual budget of $22 million, WADA oversees the testing done by the world’s sports federations. The agency finances research, credentials a global network of drug-testing laboratories, conducts some of its own drug-testing of athletes and regularly updates its list of banned substances. It puts out a number of publications, among them a magazine called Play True. Its most important accomplishment has been to persuade 191 nations, including the United States, to sign on to its Anti-Doping Code — which prohibits most of the world’s top athletes from taking anything on WADA’s list of banned substances and, in the event of violations, generally blocks them from appealing to the legal systems in their home countries. (Appeals are heard by the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/magazine/07Antidoping.t.html?ex=1182312000&en=139b9747556cf90c&ei=5070

April 2005: "Gary Wadler, an associate professor of clinical medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, said he would like to see the NFL turn its program over to the World Anti-Doping Agency, of which he is a member."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/26/AR2005042601232.html

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Member (past or present) Dr. Gary I. Wadler M.D. Person Apr 9, 2007

Articles and Resources

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
May 18, 2009 What You Don't Know Might Kill You: SUPPLEMENTS Would-be experts and untested products feed a $20 billion obsession with better performance across all levels of sports

QUOTE: Despite the move into the mainstream the [sports-supplement] industry remains fertile ground for kitchen chemists with little or no formal education in science or nutrition—and in some notorious cases former steroid users and dealers...

 Sports Illustrated (SI)
Jun 26, 2008 Study Shows Problems With Olympic-Style Tests

QUOTE: Athletes who want to cheat by injecting themselves with a performance-enhancing drug that boosts their blood cell count can do so with little risk of getting caught, a new study indicates, possibly exposing another flaw in what is regarded as the world’s toughest anti-doping program.

 New York Times
May 29, 2008 Cycling's Drug Test: After Years of Doping Controversies, the Tarnished Sport Knows It Has to Come Clean or Become Obsolete

QUOTE: Today, the entire sport of cycling is where Millar was four years ago. Rocked for decades by drug scandals -- most recently during last year's Tour de France, cycling's marquee event -- the sport has hit rock bottom, according to riders, managers, cycling officials and analysts. And with this year's Tour de France and Summer Olympics approaching, the sport can either come clean and heal itself, or continue to self-destruct.

 Washington Post
May 24, 2008 Web Site Puts Focus on the Fix in Sports Bets

QUOTE: Last Monday, a report commissioned by the major tennis governing bodies recommended that 45 matches played in the last five years be investigated because betting patterns gave a “strong indication” that gamblers were profiting from inside information. And those matches, the report said, may be only the tip of the iceberg.

 New York Times
Apr 30, 2008 Some Athletes’ Genes Help Outwit Doping Test

QUOTE: Researchers have long known that some men, Asians in particular, seemed to be able to take the drugs without getting caught, although no one had identified the cause of the phenomenon. Without gene testing, there is no way to know whether any athletes have exploited this doping loophole, but Dr. Catlin says he suspects some athletes discovered their invulnerability by accident and took advantage of it.

 New York Times
Oct 31, 2007 Baseball’s Drug Testing Lacks Element of Surprise

QUOTE: Drug testers contracted by the league routinely alert team officials a day or more before their arrival at ballparks for what is supposed to be random, unannounced testing of players. By eliminating the surprise factor, the practice undermines the integrity of the testing program, antidoping experts said.

 New York Times
Jul 06, 2007 The Tour de France, It Is a Funny Race: The world’s most famous bicycle race is: A) in the grip of doping, B) completely drug-free or C) somewhere in between and with a lot of explaining to do.

QUOTE: with sponsors threatening to defect to less volatile (if less dramatic) sports, cycling’s governing bodies have been forced to react publicly. And even the most abiding fans have to be asking themselves how much more they can take.

 Newsweek
May 15, 2007 Major Sports Team Up to Battle Drugs: Professional, Amateur Governing Bodies to Tap Federal Resources

QUOTE: The unprecedented collaboration is indicative of an emerging consensus among sports bodies that the use of performance-enhancing substances is a mounting health and legal concern that potentially threatens the multibillion-dollar professional sports industry in the United States.

 Washington Post
Mar 06, 2007 Rx for Trouble: Inside the Steroid Sting: SI's Luis Fernando Llosa and L. Jon Wertheim, on the scene for the Florida raids, continue to report on the ongoing investigation that promises to rock sports

QUOTE: ...investigators contend that the Palm Beach Rejuvenation Center (PBRC) -- and dozens of so-called antiaging or wellness centers like it -- is a vital component in a massive illegal distribution network that enabled customers to place orders over the Internet for performance-enhancing drugs, including steroids and human growth hormone (HGH).

 CNN (Cable News Network)
Jan 07, 2007 The Scold

QUOTE: Dick Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency and global evangelist for the cause of pure sport ... believes deeply in the grandeur of sport, less so in the goodness of athletes .... [Lance] Armstrong says he believes Pound and WADA have run roughshod over his and other athletes’ rights, and he is not alone in that criticism.

 New York Times
May 08, 2006 Chemist's New Product Contains Hidden Substance

QUOTE: Patrick Arnold...runs a company that has been selling the amphetamine-like compound over the Internet in a dietary supplement that describes the substance with the invented trademark name Geranamine...It is illegal to sell dietary supplements without listing the ingredients by their common or usual names...

 Washington Post