The investigative report in the Los Angeles Times from Sunday, December 10, 2006, by Michael A. Hiltzik, Times Staff Writer, titled “Athletes Unbeatable Foe” is a must-read for all of you - click on the Link below. It’s a long article - and dare I hope, the beginning of a long overdue exposé on the cesspool of WADA. The absolute, biased and blind power that WADA holds over cycling athletes. Can it be that some of the media is finally getting off the Guilt bandwagon and actually taking a look at the outrageous WADA flawed practices and procedures? Well, this article will surely make you stop and think, I hope...

Here is a quote from the first paragraph of the article, ”The worldwide sports anti-doping program, created to fight performance enhancing drug use in international athletics, imposes severe punishments for accidental or technical infractions, relies at times on disputed scientific evidence and resists outside scrutiny, a Times investigation has found.”

And further in the article: “You have a closed system where very few people in the world know what the science is, and the system has a vested interest to make sure its findings are confirmed," says David L. Black, president and chief executive of Nashville-based Aegis Sciences Corp., a large independent doping lab unaffiliated with WADA. "The lab should just be a fact-gatherer, but the WADA system is designed in a way that the labs are not just objective fact gatherers, but part of the body of prosecution," Black said.

Today’s article in the LA Times, which I haven’t read yet, is titled Appeals are Costly and Usually Fruitless. This ties in with Floyd Landis’ latest statement that his defense will cost at least $500,000, and that he basically can’t afford to continue to fight. Athletes like Floyd and Tyler Hamilton do not have the resources to fight doping organizations with unlimited power and resources. Yet the hatefully biased, rigidly right regime of Dick Pound continues on, unchecked, unstoppable.

Please note on page 3 in this Times article, where it says ”the UCLA Olympic Laboratory is the domain of Don H. Catlin, a professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at UCLA Medical School who has made the fight against sports doping his life's work. For all his expertise, however, Catlin is forbidden by WADA rules from testifying in defense of an athlete in a doping case. He and the lab's more than 40 employees are prevented by WADA rules from engaging in "testing or expert testimony that would call into question … the scientific validity of work performed in the anti-doping program."

Despite WADA's claims of "public transparency and accountability," it operates largely as a hermetically sealed scientific community with minimal public oversight.

WADA pays labs, usually one of those in its network, to develop tests for banned substances. It then is the sole arbiter of the test's scientific validity.”

The more we learn, the more the WADA cesspool stinks....