Drug Testing in Professional Sports

Drug testing bodies criticize UFC claims

ReutersApril 29, 2011

The Ultimate Fighting Championship claims to have the toughest drugtesting in North American sport, but doping officials disagree and have challenged them to get serious about ensuring their sport is clean.
With a record 55,000 mixed martial arts fans expected to pack into the Rogers Centre on Saturday for UFC 129, organizers say every fighter stepping into the cage for a title bout will be tested for performance-enhancing drugs.
But the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) and USADA say they have had no role in the UFC's antidoping efforts and have not tested a single fighter.
Instead, testing has been left to individual state and provincial athletic commissions, which USADA chief Travis Tygart describes as woefully inadequate.
"They want, for public relation and marketing reasons, to say they have something that makes them look better than they truly are," Tygart told Reuters.
"Why don't they have better rules to give athletes and sports fans comfort that there is not a rampant culture of cheating with dangerous drugs going on in their sport?
"They're trying to pull a fast one here." Tom Wright, the UFC's director of Canadian operations, told Reuters that testing at UFC 129 would follow WADA guidelines, but neither WADA nor the CCES will conduct testing.
A WADA spokesperson told Reuters the antidoping agency has had no contact with the UFC while the CCES confirmed it had approached the UFC about the need for testing, but so far has not been involved in any of the UFC's Canadian events.
The Ontario Athletic Commission, which sanctioned the event, told Reuters in an email that it does not test at this time and the commission would only oversee testing if the agreement between the fighter and the promoter required it.
"We would like to work with CCES, but these things take time," Wright said. "But the important thing is it has not changed our philosophy as it relates to drug abuse in our sport."
Wright said that the Quebec Athletic Commission will oversee testing at UFC 129 and that all samples will be analyzed at the WADA accredited laboratory in Montreal.
While the UFC's testing protocols do not meet WADA's stringent standards, the organization has weeded out drug cheats and handed down harsh punishment.
Most recently, light heavyweight Thiago Silva failed a drug test at UFC 125 and has had his licence revoked for a period of one year and fined 25 per cent of his fight purse and win bonus.
"What a lot of people don't realize is we are regulated by the government," UFC president Dana White told Reuters. "The government oversees what we do and the government comes in and drug tests these guys.
"If you get caught using steroids these days you seriously have to be a moron."
In the United States, where the majority of UFC events are staged, it is the state athletic commissions that do testing.
Tygart said not only are the state athlete commissions inadequate, but that lawyers for mixed martial arts argued at a recent Nevada State Athletic Commission hearing against beefing up anti-doping efforts with blood testing.
"Not only are they not WADA Code compliant they have fought tooth and nail not to have any principles of the WADA Code," said Tygart. "It's a joke that they claim they are trying to protect their sport with WADA policies.
"Make no mistake, rules that apply to UFC in the states are horrific in comparison to the WADA Code."

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How was DNA Used to Verify the Identity of Osama bin Laden

How was DNA Used to Verify the Identity of Osama bin Laden


May 1st, 2011 marks the final chapter in a manhunt that has consumed many in the U.S. Intelligence Community



It has been reported that DNA Testing has provided a "99.9% certainty" that the person shot to death in Abbottabad Pakistan was Osama bin Laden. As with any high profile news story, the media has exploded with theories and speculation about the possibility DNA testing is capable of producing definitive results in such a short period of time.

As our laboratory performs the same relationship testing on over 60,000 samples per year, we clearly understand that with proper preparation, DNA identification is possible in a time frame of less than 6 hours.

There is considerable speculation, which has spawned numerous phone calls this week regarding the probable nature of testing. One of the issues other than timing is, "Who did they compare it to?" It has not been disclosed at this point, but considering the result of 99.9% and available relatives, one would assume a siblingship. Osama bin Laden's father had 54 children with 22 wives. Osama was the only child Alia Ghanem had with his father, which rules out full siblingship. However, there is obviously a host of half siblings that could be used to determine half siblings. Osama is also thought to have fathered 26 children.

It has been asked if the Intelligence Community may have had his full profile from a variety of touch DNA samples. If bin Laden's full profile was known, you would have a much higher probability than 99.9%. It is unknown how many siblings or other relatives were used in the family reconstruction. The number needed in order to reach the reported degree of certainty would depend on several factors, most importantly the commonality of any unusual features in bin Laden's genetic makeup. "If he had very rare alleles (gene variants), one family member might be enough to get certainty," John Butler, a leading expert on forensic DNA analysis at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), told Innovation News Daily, "If he has a common genetic profile, you might need more relatives".

The use of Y-STR testing, and comparison with male members of the patrilineal line would be able to tell if the decedent was one of many half brothers, cousins and so on, but would not provide definitive evidence of his identity. It would however, help narrow things down. Y-chromosome testing was used in lineage determinations with cases such as Thomas Jefferson and Saddam Hussein. It has been reported that DNA had been collected from a half sister of Osama bin Laden who had died in Massachusetts. It is likely that DNA has over time been collected from other relatives. Using the same test kits which contain the 13 CODIS STR (Short Tandem Repeats) loci, plus many others, family reconstruction is possible. NIST has developed a long list of discriminating STR loci that can be used to boost the confidence of kinship statistics.

If bin Laden's relatives can be persuaded to provide DNA samples for identification, the kinship probabilities could strengthen from the already highly compelling evidence. ABC News has reported that U.S. Officials had asked bin Laden relatives for DNA samples after they thought he may have been killed in a missile strike last February. If bin Laden's mother, now known as Hamida al-Attas, could be persuaded to provide a DNA sample, the probability of relatedness could improve exponentially. However, combining the existing DNA probabilities with the additional probability of a 6 foot four inch tall Arab man, in a compound in Abbottabad the probability of identification is strong.

Article from Chromosomal Laboratories.