Cyber hackers Fancy Bears have done the sporting world a service by opening a conversation on the alarming growth – and secrecy – of the Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) system in elite sport.
Fancy Bears yesterday published a list of Rio Olympic TUE beneficiaries, including tennis’ Williams sisters and gymnast star Simone Biles, after hacking WADA’s medical records files
At its worst, a TUE can constitute a cynical form of doctor approved doping (Droping). Even at its most innocent and justifiable, the process employs a very blunt instrument to address athletes’ medical conditions.
TUE critics claim that its recipients enjoy a vastly unfair advantage over healthy rivals by not only having their symptoms ameliorated, but getting to dope as well.
An enormous range of normally illicit doping agents can be used in the treatment of athlete disorders. Tour de France winner Chris Froome and multiple Olympic track champion Mo Farrah have both been slammed for dubious past use of TUEs.
Faced with rapidly improving anti-doping technology, dopers are increasingly trying to manipulate TUEs to bypass the system. This has the potential to make doping’s new frontier the manipulation of the language of medical diagnosis. Sport should also rise above the truism that medical experts are themselves exempt from moral lapses.
One cautionary example of this sort of complacency is former multiple Australian Commonwealth Games team doctor Tony Millar.
In his days as head of research at the Lewisham Sports Meedicine Clinic, he claimed to have personally administered “thousands of steroid injections” to athletes. He insisted he was guided in this role by a Hippocratic notion of “harm minimisation”, saying most of the injected athletes would otherwise have placed themselves at risk by sourcing steroids on the black market.
In the aftermath of the Australian Anti-Crime Commission’s damning findings into two football codes, domestic TUE applications spiked dramatically.
Even among those who accept a moral justification in properly processed TUEs, there remains a degree of skepticism about the competence of anti doping authorities like WADA to administer the program. Among the banned drugs exempted for Biles was a long term prescription for Focalin, a powerful central nervous stimulant (CNS).
This was in addition to her career long use of Ritalin for ADHD symptoms. Both Focalin and Ritalin assist concentration and explosiveness, ideal attributes for a gymnast.
Former head of the Australian Sport Anti Doping Authority (ASADA) Richard Inge last night hinted at the prevalence of TUE’ in Australian elite sport when he tweeted that the 234 TUEs issued last year represented “nothing new.”
The federal approving panel for Australian TUEs, ASDMAC, has been criticised for its secrecy by academic researchers. One of them, Bradley Partridge, a research fellow at Queensland University, said the panel’s unwillingness to disclose statistics was “likely to raise suspicions.”
The increasingly cosy relationship between sports scientists and coaching staff on national sporting teams should increase the necessity for oversight, not diminish it.
It is a little sad that it has taken a criminal cyber hacking group to prompt a discussion on TUEs, but it is time that TUE defenders rose above a reflexive rhetoric of righteous indignation on behalf of the athletically ill, and invited more transparency into what may potentially become sports biggest moral dilemma.
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