When therapeutic use exemption (TUE) beneficiaries compete, their medical complaints are alleviated. And they get to dope.
This idea of a TUE as a double whammy bonus may be a tad simplistic, but it shows how TUE users might be increasingly privileged over healthy sportsmen.
TUE defenders insist that doping drugs are prescribed only as a last resort when non- ergogenic prescriptions are judged inadequate. But how can the public be sure?
Yes, there are properly appointed panels to assess and review TUE applications in secret, but how do we know their judgements are not clouded by expedient athletic norms, rather than lay norms? Why are all panel members experts in sports medicine, without even a token lay GP for balance?
And what if the applicant’s ailment typically flares only under the intense stresses of a savage training block or competition cycle? In other words, if those recipients are normally healthy individuals who otherwise rarely require medication?
If the above instance is legitimate, surely healthy athletes with temporarily constricted airways from pre race jitters should be eligible for treatment to restore their bronchi to normal function. Are those pre-race nerves a medical condition?
The fact that some TUE recommendations are knocked back by WADA also indicates a degree of disagreement on the appropriateness of many exemptions.
The TUE pathway to doping is now the preferred way to attempt to cheat, since it is legal. No shame, no sanctions, because you never get caught. Even when “outed” by illegal cyber hackers like Fancy Bears, you can tell the world on Facebook that you are perfectly happy to have your “battle” with illness exposed, even though you seem to belong to the most vital cohort of your species on the planet.
The TUE route to medical redress is a very, very, blunt instrument. It is as coarse in its response as the blades Oscar Pistorius wore in the London Olympics against able bodied opponents. For every engineer who claimed his blades were perfectly tuned to a neutral performance benefit, there were many others who insisted this was impossible to measure.
While the sentiment of allowing a disabled athlete the opportunity to compete fairly against able bodied counterparts was admirable, it was deeply flawed in practice. The whole exercise was arguably demeaning to both Pistorius and the noble aspirations of the paralympic movement.
Both the use of blades (against able bodied runners) and TUEs are nothing less than attempts to ‘re-narratise’ athlete’s lives into ideal circumstances. But sport is all about dealing with the hand you are dealt, and fiddling with chemical or mechanical means of redress unfairly complicates that ideal.
When fair sport proponents argue for the publication of TUE details, the counter argument usually cites doctor- patient confidentiality. But the point is that they are not asking for an entire medical history to be disclosed to the world, merely those prescriptions relating to sporting performances.
With TUE publication, the choice of prescription would receive scrutiny from a wide range of medical experts, not just those paid by the taxpayer to minister to the needs of National sports programs.
This would encourage debate on alternative non-ergogenic prescription options, and also on the longer term effects of the elite pharma-athletic lifestyle.
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