 Thank you everyone, it's great to be here as we say. We had two fairly miserable weeks during Charlie� excuse me. I've been reporting on England at the European Championship so it's good to be back. I had a day at Wimbledon today which was a sort of nice pallete cleanser before tonight. Nothing ever changes at Wimbledon. The rest of the world is falling apart trying to stay in style, it's OK. We got a really esteemed panel here tonight to talk about doppling in sport. Y cyfnod i chi wedi ein sefydliad, yna dwynton, fel y gallai'n ystafell y gwaith a'r diddoriaeth i'r dweud, ac yna o'r cyfnod, fel eich gemu i'r ysgol ymddangos ei wneud y bydd erbyn gydych chi'n gweithio y bod hoffio arherwydd ond mae'r haf, nad oedd ymy du'daeth cael y llehau eich glas neu ond, i wefio fel mae'r leiafau ysgol nhw'n gyda'r newid yng Nghymru i gael'r cyflwyno a'r gwleidio'n cymryd yn y cwmgylch. Rydym yn cael ei gael ad Ribs, ac byddwn i'r cyflwyno'n cyhoedd. Yn y gyflwyno'n cyflwyno, roedd yn ddiddordeb i gael y gwir yw'r gwleidio. Mae'r gyflwyno'r gwir i'n debyg a'n mynd i ddodol i'r ddodol. Mae'r cwmhysgwyr yw'r dweud. Felly, yw'r cyfrifysgwyr yw'r profesi Cres Cooper, profesi bychgyrchu at Y University of Essex. Mae'r gwneud ymddangosol yn gwasanaeth bwysigol ar gyfer y meddwl. Mae'r cyfrifysgwyr yn cyfrifysgwyr. Mae'r cwmhysgwyr yw'r cyfrifysgwyr yn gyfrifysgwyr. Mae'r cyfrifysgwyr yn cyfrifysgwyr, felly rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio. Mae'r cyfrifysgwyr yn cyfrifysgwyr. Dyma'n y�fyn, a aeddwn i os er porτιwakaethaf packet ac attiwch. Mae'r cyfrifysgwyr yn cyfrifysgwyr Dar smellshor raining, Cyfnodol o'r olym ni. Rydyn ni'n gynhyrch drwyddo ni. Nicol Sacbaredd, ystod gyfarchiad NG unrhyw gyntaf ynghyd a'r ereddei'r cysylltu arwr i'w'r dyfodol. Mae'r byw'r cyfryd yn 2015 ddylai'r technion yw Andy Parkinson, a wnaethwn ni'n gwybodaeth o'r pryd neu eisiau ymddangos. Rwy'n ddod pan fydd yw i'r cyfarchiad nesaf i ddefnyddiant i'r cymodd yn 2009. Rydynau ymgyrch yn ymgyrch i Gymryd Nol, ..gwyddoch chi'n gwrthod y cyfrifol yma yn 2009... ..y hwnnw'r Llywodraeth. Felly, rydyn nhw'n cael ei wneud i'r cyfrifol... ..y lluniaeth ti'n wneud. Yn cael ei cherddur i'r syniad. Mae'r gyflawni ddiwedd yn gwneud o ysgolion... ..ryddo'r hyn sydd o fflawni'r cyfrifol yn gweithio. Mae'n meddwl am wneud y dyfodol... ..y'n cyfrifol fydd yn y cyfrifol... ..dych chi'n wych yn ddechrau y ddiwedd... Rydyn ni'n bwysig yn ddal y warthog arno iddyn ni, ychydig i ddweud y grinken o'r sang? Waith y pethau'r ffroffiwyr sy'n drwy'r gwrs gwaith ond, arwna, Ond, mae'n anhygoel ar y cynnig, rhwng yn lle, un o'r operated, ymryd, le'r arniwch gyffredin yn cael arno i'r ystafell. Ieithi sut y gallu amlaen nhw, ond mae'n cymddi'r pamethau, nid yw'r bethau hyfryd yn gofyni'n gwirio ac rydym ni'n ddiddorol eich gwirio i wneud. I will do my best I can and I will try and talk to you about what I know and what is out there. I was an symmetry teacher. I am going to start with blood. This kind of thing, blood transfusions, as has been used in sports since the 1970s, to improve the amount of oxygen you can deliver to your muscles. Long distance aerobic sports, long distance cycling. Originally it was not banned, then it became banned. ac mae yna ddweud, mae yna'n ymwneud a'r rhai adroddau o'r cyffredin yn ystyrnau'n ymwneud. Felly yr adroddau o'r cyffredin yn ystyrnau'r adroddau o'r cyffredin yn ystyrnau'n ymwneud. Yr eich cynnig, rwy'n gwybod a'i hynny i gyd yn gweithio yn ein anambolyg o'r anobolyg, ond ymwneud yn ddwy'n anambolyg o'r anobolyg o'r anobolyg. Ac ydych chi'n gwybod yw amser oes yn fawr o'r holl yn bwysig o'r holl. Mae'r holl yn ymwysig yma, yw'r rhan o'r ffordd o'r drwg yn 1950, yn ymgyrch ar yr adroddau y 1960 o 1970, ydych yn ei ddifelwch ar gweithio, ac mae'r hynny'n ddysgu'r cyffredinol cyfnod o'r holl yn bwysigol. Felly, rydyn ni'n gwybod yw'r holl yn bwysig o'r holl yn bwysigol, o'r holl yn bwysigol, o'r holl yn bwysigol. First, there's really two reasons, I would say, scientists disagree about a lot of things, but I would say, it'd be hard to find a scientist who didn't think that a blood transfusion would improve a long-distance event, and it's hard to find a scientist who wouldn't think that anabolic steroids, especially in female athletes, would not be performance enhancing. And equally, those two kinds of drugs had the potential to be harmful to your health. So they hit that area, so we can talk about what that means, but they hit that area. I would say that different people are limited by different things in sport. So if you created a sport where these things were fine, and it may talk about that later on, there's no problem with them, you would probably get a different winner from a sport where those weren't available, because different people are limited by different things in sport. So it wouldn't be in a sense, it wouldn't be the same sport. So those are clear-cut situations. I'm now going to pop down to the pharmacist and pick up this, which is a boots superfed. Other brands are available. It's a de-congestant. I use it for your money. I use it frequently, I get lots of colds and coughs. It's an alpha blocker, our afroagonist, and it's a stimulant, and it increases your heart rate, and potentially, therefore, has a performance enhancing effect. It was banned in sport, and then it was un-banned in sport for a while, and then when people realised it was being used more, it was banned again. So it gives you another example of what happens in sport. Is it performance enhancing or what? I've done a detailed analysis recently about the literature, and if there is an effect, it's very small. Is it bad for your health? Probably not, but there you are. That's an example of something that is currently banned in sport. It's a different kind of compound. Another compound that's relevant, and it's all on the same sort of lines. Again, I didn't bother to go, and it's quite a bit harder to get now than it used to be. It's not that I tried to get it before. That's Meldonium. It's got a picture of Maria here. So this is a drug that probably increases blood flow in sport. Clearly, it's a similar thing. It wasn't banned. It was monitored. It was clear that it was massively being used by athletes where it was readily available in Eastern Europe, and it was banned. You'll know from the news what happened after that. Does it work? Does it have an effect? I would say there's very little scientific literature out there at all. There's a feasible mechanism why it would have a performance enhancing effect. However, it's entirely possible that coaches and scientists have used it on their elite athletes and have checked what the effect is there. But we as an academic from the outside don't know. So there's a lot of hidden data. So we get another difficult field to get into if you're a scientist, because there may well be a reason. Sometimes coaches, if one coach uses something, everyone else uses it, even if it's not necessarily performance enhancing. There's sort of a herd mentality with coaching. It's not quite science, a bit of an art, but we don't really know. Is it harmful? It's a medicine. It's not clear. There are defined doses. Probably not that harmful if used, as it says on the tin. So those two have given examples of things that are less performance enhancing, probably, and it's less clear what the health issues are. So just to give you a sort of scientific background to where you are going. And finally, I'm going to enter with another performance enhancing drug. Here we are, here. This is a major Olympic sponsor. Other carbonated beverages are available. This is obviously Coca-Cola and the caffeine in here is undoubtedly a performance enhancing. It's definitely a drug and it's undoubtedly performance enhancing. Loads and loads of studies on it, because we can do it and put it in sports science students ethically. So tons and tons of work on it and work on it with elite athletes. Probably very limited health problems taking caffeine, though there is always a concern when people start taking a drug like caffeine, as opposed to in Coke or in a cappuccino or in a espresso, taking it in a pill and occasionally anti-glob pHs get concerned. And then they think it's a pill. It must be bad for you. So there is an issue around caffeine and of course it was banned for a while and it's not been banned. So it's un-banned. So performance enhancing drug banned, un-banned, probably no health benefits. There's a whole range of issues around things. I won't have time to go into science and detection, but we scientists are clever people, while not me other people are, and everything is detectable. The problem is some things are difficult to detect and difficult to create a test that is fair and will not catch people who haven't been cheating in the net. But in principle, it's all possible. But there is a lot less money in sport than people think compared to in medicine and healthcare. So it's difficult, but it's all possible. I'm just going to end by talking briefly about cheating. What is cheating? I have to get a very pragmatic and simple view of this. This is not really a science thing. It's just my simple view is that there are rules. They're published. If you break the rules, you're cheating. That's very simple. And it helps me understand what's going on. And the question then, of course, is why the punishments so extreme. They are extreme. So I'm going to give you an example of outright cheating. I was watching the France and the public of Ireland match at the football. And I was wanting Ireland to win for two reasons. One, it was against France, but that's my prejudice. But secondly, because I remember well, Thierry Orie handling the ball and stopping Ireland by blatant cheating, stopping Ireland getting into a tournament. Not only did that cheating affect dramatically the sporting event, more so than doping probably, but it also went unpunished. Everyone saw it completely unpunished. It also had economic impacts in the Irish economy. So this is a big bit of cheating, completely unpunished and really unrepentant. And if you look around here about a couple of miles away from here, you'll find a statue of Thierry Orie outside the Emirate Stadium. And even worse in effect, if you hate cheats, there was a jovial discussion between Alan Shearer, Gary Llymig and Thierry Orie during the France-Ireland game, saying, joking really about his cheating. So why is Thierry Orie a hero still and Justin Gatlin an anti-hero, evil? I mean, I think you can probably address that more. There are two reasons I can think of. The simple reason, the one that is straightforward to understand, is that doping is hidden cheating. So in that sense, it cheats both the spectator and the rival confederate. You don't know someone's cheating. So you know Thierry Orie, what Thierry Orie Orie's done. And you know if someone dives in football, you think you know. And you can see that and it's a light part of the sport. You could have a villain and you can see them. You don't know it's open. So there is a genuine, what you're seeing is not what you expect to see. And that's why the only other area where there are similar calls for life bans and where there are life bans sometimes is match fixing. Because again, the event is not what you see. So that's the simple reason why there are longer bans. There is a more complex reason, which I won't have time to go into when we should talk about. And that is tied in to society's view of drugs as being bad. And that sportsmen are role models of a healthy and natural lifestyle. And therefore, you know, they should be seen to be not using these things called drugs. And I guess the apiote, apiote, I can't even say that. The apotheosis of that is UK anti-doping 100% me campaign. So that's important. This is pure, this is natural. And that's another reason, in my opinion, that we can debate that why doping is seen as being as being exceptionally bad. That, I think, I will leave it. I think it's really interesting. And also, I suppose there's something else we can maybe come on to the second half, but kind of the fact that a lot of elite athletes, they take all sorts of supplements certainly, certainly orally, but also take lots of injections and all sorts, which are obviously legal, aren't banned. And yet, so again, go against that idea slightly of, you know, kind of it is a healthy, natural sport. Well, elite sport is not. I mean, so physical activity is really, really good for you, right? So any kind of physical activity is really good for you. I wouldn't say elite sport is healthy. Elite rugby is not healthy for your head. So I think that's, but that, but so there is, so the healthy argument is a, is a complicated one. Excellent. We'll come back to all that. But for now, over to you, Andy. Okay. Thanks, Owen. So the British Library said this was an informal event. This feels quite formal. FYI. But I thought I would do something I don't tend to do, which is talk a bit about my entry point into this world and what's happened over the 15 years or so that I have been within it. And in so doing, hopefully give you a sense of how I arrive at my position, which I guess about eight years ago, around just before the Beijing Games, Nature published an article which quoted me as arguing on behalf of a world pro-doping agency. Not one of those situations where I can claim they misquoted me, by the way. But, but the point of which I arrived at this proposition that we need a world pro-doping agency, came out of my entry point into the subject. So I did an undergraduate degree in sports science, within which we had one of the few degrees in the UK that had a lot in philosophy and ethics and sociology. And all of those subjects are informed my approach to sport. Had very good friends that were elite athletes, working on trying to improve their performances using technology and spent the end part of my degree thinking about the technological continuum that operates within sports. That led into a PhD. And bear in mind, this is about 1996. The cloning of Dolly the Sheep was happening. The Human Genome Project was getting up some pace. And by the time I started my PhD and started working with the British Olympic Association and other organisations, there was already a sense in which our perception and the reality of what was possible in terms of performance enhancement was on the verge of changing dramatically. One of the first articles I read on the subject of gene doping was an article by Andy Coglund for new scientists who published a piece talking about a performance gene. So I was fascinated by the possibility that this predicament that sports have faced for arguably forever that some people use things to enhance their performances was going to become exponentially more challenging. And informed by the kind of complexity of that ethical dilemma. So athletes in ancient Olympia, rubbing their bodies in olive oil to protect it against dehydration or using weights to propel themselves further as they did a standing jump. All seemed part of this continuum. And it didn't seem obvious to me that anti-doping had a mandate. Now, of course, over the last century, we have seen that mandate grow off the back of a broader political war on drugs, which, depending on which literature you read, will express that war in very different ways. On one hand, it's about protecting young people in sports and protecting young people in society. On the other hand, it's about controlling a range of political discourses that allow people in positions of power to manage their assets, their resources, to govern more effectively. Now, at this time, around about 99, 2000, the International Olympic Committee was suddenly becoming aware of the possibility of using genetic technology for enhancing performance. In 2002, when WADA had its first gene-doping symposium, there were scientists standing up saying that they were being contacted by athletes and coaches wanting to get them enrolled into their gene therapy programmes with the possibility of enhancing their performances. At the same time, the United States President's Council on Bioethics had started and was debating the possibility that we are becoming a culture that is much more predisposed to body modification and human enhancement. The prospect of designer babies, the prospect of doing all kinds of things to tamper with their biology was becoming a reality. So it didn't seem clear to me, and it still doesn't seem clear to me, that sport has a mandate in this area. It is, of course, as Chris has mentioned, concerned about the protection of fairness within sport. So this title, Fair Game. Yes, if we agree the rules and those rules are broken, you're cheating and should be punished for it, completely agree with that. The point where I have challenges around what the rules should be in the first place and I think they are widely off the mark with regard to doping. I don't think that athletes are best protected by anti-doping. I don't think the playing field is fairer by the existence of anti-doping. And I think that people are becoming much less concerned about many of these substances or even don't even engage with them in any meaningful way. Back in 2006, I was involved with, informally, one world anti-doping agency inquiry into the use of hypoxic chambers. This was a technology and this is a technology that allows you to simulate different densities of oxygen within the air. It's effectively replicating going to different attitudes and training which can bring a performance enhancement. The world anti-doping agency considered whether it should be banned or not. And at this point, it was a bit like the caffeine that Chris mentioned, at this point, there was a real sense in which people didn't know whether to see this as a bad thing or a good thing. And many of the athletes that were using this couldn't see any problem with it whatsoever. Now had hypoxic chambers been banned at that point, which was the proposition at the time, everyone then would have condemned their use and we would have said how immoral they are and we shouldn't use them so on. But they weren't and people now use them and have no problem with it whatsoever. So the moral context of the anti-doping debate in my mind is completely arbitrary. And for that reason, we should do more to encourage the safe development of performance and housing technologies, whether it's drugs or something else, to allow athletes a more open culture of use, a more medically supervised culture of use to avoid the situation where people are in as we now know still these incredibly vulnerable positions where they are abused by people around them and misled and where we have this black market economy of substance trafficking that underpins the possibility of doping. So that nature article about eight years ago in which I made the claim for a world pro-doping agency was a positive case for trying to ensure that athletes are using the safest performance of performance enhancement recognising that there is no safe form of performance enhancement but they can be more safe by monitoring their use. And that for me is where we need to be in sports and I think is where I'll close, but I think that's also where we will have a much fairer competition and avoid these situations where we no longer know really who's won any race that's taken place anywhere in the world. Thank you. I think it's interesting and also I'm really interested as well in this something I've written about is this sort of line between marginal gains which is this thing that's really celebrated in sport at the moment and we've lauded up which is cycling team and so on for getting every inch of advantage within the rules and where that blurs into things that may be outside the rules as they currently stand and that sort of plays into the same debate I think about kind of where do we arbitrarily draw the line almost. I think that the obvious thing that maybe we would come on to again in the second half that people would say against your argument is where then where does it stop? Where do you kind of to end up with 7 year old footballers being pumped full of drugs because you want the best? Well at the moment we have a situation where young kids are already being tested for drugs in their sporting performances so I think this is a symptom of the problem. It's not a good situation to be in but I think that at the moment most athletes are ill informed about the risks of doing most of what they're doing if they're doping and that's the worst situation to be in if we allowed them to be more informed if they were conversation and all we hear about is these kind of ways in which doctors will take advantage of athletes and I think that's you know that's a situation that really needs to change dramatically and it's not being enabled by the current system. So from pro-doping to anti-doping come to you, come to a good order here I think but you can give the alternative case presumably. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about what an eco-anti-doping does. We're charged by government, organisation charged by government to protect clean sport and clean athletes and we do that by enforcing and monitoring what's called the world anti-doping code set of rules which are adopted worldwide to ensure there's a harmonised approach to anti-doping and I guess right from the start our position at eco-anti-doping is that doping in sport is fundamentally wrong as it is for anybody to help an athlete in that regard as well and the way we try and tackle the issue of doping in sport is in a number of ways the most obvious one by testing athletes in and out of competition with no notice and that enables us not only to detect those that are choosing to dope but also to deter those who are thinking of doping or thinking that they are getting away with it. Our education plays a fundamental role in what we do and our starting point is to deliver values-based education because our premise is that you've got to get into an individual when they're really young to try and influence their values. We've all got values, they're all different they're probably some consistency amongst us but we'll all have values which we've acquired from a very, very early age and if we can try and instill some values in children about why doping and cheating generally in sport is wrong then I think it gives anti-doping organisations like us a good start or a good platform. So we have education, we have things called the Athletic Biological Passport, we're able to store samples for up to 10 years. I'm sure some of you will have read recently about the fact that the International Olympic Committee went back and tested samples that they'd collected at Beijing and in Sochi and found a number of athletes who'd managed to evade the likes of organisations like us. They've managed to reveal positive tests and then we have things like intelligence and investigations which helps us to utilise other tools such as links with law enforcement to try and get to not just the doping athletes but those around them, their entourage, whether that's a coach, whether that's a medic. We have in fact prosecuted a father in the past because he played a fundamental role in how he supported his daughter who was an athlete at the time. Having heard Chris and Andy speak for me, it's pretty simple. It boils down to, for me, sport is about watching the pleasure of sport and it's watching people use their natural talent using their athleticism, whether it's skill, whether it's human feats of endurance or strength to achieve phenomenal results and outcomes. I wonder how those of us who love sport and follow sport would feel if we opened that door to say, you know what, you can take what you want. Take what you want, let it have any effect on you and would we all rush to watch it? I went to the hygienist not so long ago. You can all admire me later. It was just a throw away comment. She said, what do you do? I don't really like to talk about what I do. So I gave her a very abridged version of what I do. I'm not sure I'm ever going to watch the Olympics again. I mean, she doesn't know me. She's got no reason to voice that comment. I'm never going to watch the Olympics again. It just, I don't believe in the performances that I'm seeing. She said, you hear so much scandal, so much cynicism. She just said, I'm not sure I ever want to watch it again. I just thought that was a really sad indictment of where sport might have got to. In terms of what's prohibited in sport, when the World Antidoping Agency on an annual basis produced what's called the prohibited list, what goes on the list is determined by fulfilling two out of three criteria, whether it's performance enhancing, whether it's contrary to the spirit of sport, or it's detrimental to health. And they have a list to expert groups. So every year they come together, a group of experts, worldwide experts come together. Antidoping organisations like ourselves are able to feed into the process. And then it gets signed off by, I think it's a health ethics and something else committee. But there is a process. And you're right, Chris is absolutely right. Things go on and off the list, depending on the research and what there's an organisation are seeing become very prevalent within the world of sport. I was asked to mention how big an issue I think this is in sport and I just have no idea. Statistically, it's about 2%, which isn't very much at all. But that's a worldwide average statistic. And you have got to remember that there are countries out there which don't have organisations like UK Antidoping. They aren't as well resourced as us. They don't have, I guess, the longevity of experience that we do. And when you break it down into the number of positive tests or anti-doping rule violations there are around the world, you do get into certainly some countries having a far greater or higher rate than some other countries do. I think what we're seeing is that, unfortunately, the world that we live in, the societal world we're living in, is seeing steroid use at younger levels within sport. And that's because I would say particularly in young boys, they're seeing steroid use as a means by which they can acquire the body beautiful. For so long we used to hear about women and whether it's anorexia or bulimia or women fighting for the body beautiful. I think we've all forgotten there's men out there, boys, and they also are fighting for the body beautiful. They're looking for a washboard stomach, they're looking for quick gains, they're looking to look good in front of whatever gender they're attracted to. And so we're seeing that and it's filtering down into amateur levels of sport as well and that's because they don't think they're going to get caught, they don't think the rules apply to them, they don't think they're going to be tested. And you just have to pick up a paper in one minute, it's high protein diet, then it's like no carbs, there's no wheat. And you just go into any Holland and Barrett, any gym, and it's supplement, supplement, supplement. And nobody knows what's in them really. I mean, I would ask any of you, put your hands up, if you work out at the gym and you take a supplement, you take a shake or some sort of additional supplement. And if you do, whether you check it out, whether you do do diligence to see whether you really know that what's in that product is what's in that product. Because often we're testing them in no way, they're contaminated and they're not actually serving you any benefit. So this isn't just about the elite end of sport, this is about sport and entirety, and how it feels it can gain an advantage, whether it's because they want to win surprise money, win in terms of medal or podium placing, whether it's to win a contract, make it onto a team, there are all sorts of motivations. But fundamentally, as both these gentlemen have said, anti-doping rules are just a spasset of the rules to a sport. And I do, I think it would be a grave shame if we open the door to let people take what they want. And then to say on your cynicism point, I mean, I think it's interesting, I went to the World Athletics Championships in China last year, and that was just the point of which not only of the ruling body for the sport being accused of huge corruption and covering up dope tests and all the rest of it, but there was also new evidence of the sort of extent of doping within that sport and it felt like those two things together just did create this sort of perfect storm of cynicism where people are literally sitting there and think, and the moment they say, I'm not sure I can believe this in any sense, is when I think psychologically they start to turn off. But I do think it's also more complicated than that because you've got a sport like football, which for all that FIFA is a kind of, you know, a cesspit of kind of corruption is still the world's most popular and biggest commercial sport. And kind of I think people just have a different attitude to doping within it. I mean, kind of, you know, we all know there probably is a problem there and yet the kind of the appetite to find out and actually the appetite on behalf of the public to get to the bottom of it doesn't seem to be in there in the same way as it is for other sport. So I think it's sort of, I'm slightly agreeing with both of you here, but you know, kind of the, I do think that there's something to be said for the argument that, you know, we can't always be completely black and white and prescriptive about what, you know, what it means to, what it will do to people's faith in sport in each individual sport. There's no doubt that for a lot of people, if they can't believe what is in front of their eyes, then it ceases to matter as a spectator, I think. Well, wrestling does okay. I mean, it is about... Is wrestling a sport? Is WWF a sport? Is entertainment? I think that there is a point at which elite sports are very much about spectacle and entertainment and suspense and drama and the thrill. And I'm not sure I agree that we watch sports for the joy of it. I mean, my son's 60-year-old playing sports. I watch him for the joy of it and I, you know, get much out of that. And there is a certain sense of, of that aspiration for modern sport still within, I think, contemporary life, but it's a long time since sports have been that kind of thing. They are incredibly serious, incredibly political, incredibly imbued with finance. I think that, you know, most athletes would reject the idea that what they're doing is playful or even about just fun enjoyment. But again, where's the line? If your son was picked up by a Premier League Academy and all of a sudden it becomes very serious, a 7-8? Yeah, which, you know, again, this is where sports federations need to challenge this. I mean, one example, 10 years ago, nearly, the world's first genetic test for an athletic gene came out, complete nonsense scientifically. But at the time, you know, there was a brochure. I've still got the brochure, which allows you to take a mouth swab from your child and detect whether they're more likely to be power-based or endurance-based athletes. This was $100 on the internet, of course. But at the time, various sports organisations were thinking about using this as a basis for talent identification. Now, the kids on this brochure were about eight or nine years old and that particular test and the wider debate about whether gene IDs should be used as a basis of selection led to Wyden making its Stockholm declaration that said we shouldn't allow this. We shouldn't allow anyone to use genetic tests for talent ID. But we remain in the situation where, by the way, they also argued that kids shouldn't specialise before the age of 10. And yet we are within this culture of encouraging kids into competition at the age, you know, kids in Ethan's class, like six years old, are in their training academies already. So I think that the world of sport needs to push back on this in a much stronger way. If it's really committed to these ideas, then it needs to push back much further. It doesn't. Why not? Because I don't think there is a serious anxiety about that, that is born out in terms of policy, but also in terms of funding. As Chris said, the funding underpinning anti-doping is just a drop in the ocean. Can I just pick up your question about football where you think people don't really care? That's because there hasn't really been a big doping scandal in football. I think it's best to look across the pond, not the European pond, because we don't talk about Europe anymore, but across the US pond. You win the prize. You win the prize. You win the prize, the first one, yes. What was the word? American football baseball. No, baseball. So no, but look at baseball. American football, let's not talk about American football, but baseball. A major league baseball has clearly had a doping, a major doping scandal, and there was a perception that actually the fans just wanted to see the home runs and didn't really care how the sausages were made, how they looked in the old joke. But actually what's happened is there's been a change, I've been sitting down and his opinion about this, where the fans did start to roll against this in a sense, and certainly organisation did, and now it's not part of the world, but now it's got a very aggressive andy doping, in part I think driven by the people revolting against this. So I think a similar thing might happen in football, and it was an interesting question, because I thought for a while major league baseball would be exactly the kind of andy sport where they didn't really care, because there was a clear spectacle difference, number of home runs, so you could clearly see it was part of the power game, and it has been a bit of a move back, and I don't know what the sociology reason for that is, but I suspect if people saw spectacular things going on in football that needed drugs, what would happen? And I think that's an interesting point. That's clear cut, isn't it? I suppose it's part of the power game. And NFL is the other side of the club, where it is very much still feels like a jealous royal. I think it's a separate issue. I mean, I'm not an expert at baseball, I would say that baseball is much more part of the political economy of America, and the American elite then perhaps football is here, I think that it's a, so the point is that baseball became part of that wider political war, which you think about Barry Bonds, all these people became part of a wider discourse that I don't think here really happens. Baseball is the US equivalent of cricket, so it does have this thing that it should be fair, I suspect that maybe where it's come about. You both said that antidoping funding is a drop in the ocean, and that's certainly true. If you look at the huge amounts of money in sport and the amount that's given to both sport itself and government give to WADA, which is the international antidoping agency, and then you can have the same argument on a national level with organisations like UCAL, it's clear to most people that they're woefully underfunded if you look at the scale of what it is they're trying to do. If there was a lot more money, because you think it would be a lot more effective in terms of catching people. For us, I have to say yes. It's not just about just throwing money at it, and it's not just about testing anymore. We've so moved on from where we were 10 years ago, because at the end of the day, unless you're stupid and you get to court, if you're intelligent and a doping athlete, you'll be doing all sorts of things which require, as Chris said, some really good science behind it to pick up the micro dosing. And there are 10 violations under the World Antidoping Code. Three of them relate to testing. You can't, as an organisation, sit there and go, right, we're just going to test and educate. This is about the trafficking, the aiding, the betting, the administration, getting to all of the people around an athlete. Yes, of course, there are some athletes who make that sole decision all by themselves to do it. But I can't for one minute think that they are vast in number. They've got people around them, entirages, I think the wealthier the sport or the wealthier the athlete, the more likely there are a whole network of individuals helping them. In some ways, part of the problem is, historically, the athletes tended to carry the cat and while the network moves on to... I mean, you can't doping. If you're talking about resources and diverting resources to where you think you'll get the best gain, if we had some intelligence to say that there was a coach who coached a number of athletes administering or helping them to dope, we'll go after the coach rather than the athlete, for sure, every time, because that individual is having a far greater detrimental impact than the one doping athlete. Chris, you mentioned sort of the arbitrary nature of the wider ban list, in a sense. In a sense that the oxygen and x-axe example is a good one. Do you think that is the best way? If we decide, if a sport decides this is something that wants to pursue, is this the best way? So there are lots of arbitrary rules in sport and I don't have a problem with why I happen to devise a rule somewhere. My rule would be a little bit different. I probably wouldn't answer the referendum, but this is in the noise of the debate. You might decide where you go. So I don't think... If you're going to have a situation, not the Andy's situation, then you have to have rules and that has to be part of the rules. So I think there are issues, though I do think I'd take... I've had this debate four years ago probably, that if you let everything happen, what would the sport look like? I always go back to the sort of cheap argument. We've seen it, it looks like he's Germany, and female sport would be fundamentally different. There's absolutely no doubt that if you... If you could not have that, because if they say anabolic steroids, they'll get bigger and they'll be faster and they will dominate the sport, absolutely no doubt about that. So then you've got to say, should we just go up to a certain level of anabolic steroids? And then you have to have testing. If you have completely open, you will get female athletes who look like they're male, because they are, not a male, but they have... With associated health risks, because they win, they'll win. If you believe in elite sport and you believe that it doesn't matter how you do it, there is no doubt that they will win. And therefore, you have to say, for the health benefits, I would suggest if you do it healthily, you'll have to dope less. But then some people will try and dope more. And you have to create a rule. So you cannot do this. It has to be part of the rule if you want a sport that does not look like a sport like that. So I don't mind if you have a sport that looks like that, if that's what you want to see. But the rules are there and it's life. I mean, it's like... You do get stuck in the same arguments about drugs and stuff, so do you make everything completely... And they're not completely linked, but actually there are links in those arguments. Again, to go back to the first point I made about the technological continuum within sports, and the fact that modern sport grew alongside the growth of the emergence of sport science, which is in the business of performance enhancement. And I've met over this 15 years numerous people working with athletes who are allowing them to use forms of performance enhancement that are, I think, as worrisome to water as the things they ban, but they're not on the list. I mean, if you want to Google one, you can Google the glove from Stanford University, which is effectively a system that allows you to reduce your core body temperature significantly, which of course is one of the big factors in fatigue and degradation of performance, if you can lower the core temperature you can do much better. And this particular technology does that incredibly well. So there are a whole range of technologies that athletes can use that may be alternatives to the things that are currently banned. I think that synthetic substances generally are inherently problematic because they are not attuned to our biochemistry. They're not things that we can predict in terms of side effects. And so in some respects, for me the genomic era was a way of making things that were more tailored to our own physiology and that's where the investment should be. So, it's a solution for the world of sports to invest into safe performance performance enhancement and reduce these risks. Can I just probably break for a drink and then bring you all of you in. Can I just ask you to pick up on the question again that Chris raised really around meldonium and pseudo-fed and so on, which is kind of where's the line with things that do can have a medical use but clearly are not being used for medical reasons. I mean, if you read through the Maria Sharap over decision you'll see that she was taking 30, 40 different medications at any one time which can't possibly have been for ailments but clearly it must have had a performance-artic effect. Is it clearly, it must be an ethical to do that but how do we necessarily police that because again, you sort of you're resting the jelly a little bit on it. Thanks for that question. Just a light one before we break for a drink. I think it is really difficult to please. I really do. You hear arguments about somebody who wants to take something because for example somebody who's got a low testosterone level wanting to take testosterone to get themselves up to a level that is equivalent to for example Chris and Andy's level well is that performance enhancing or is that just getting them up to a point where actually they are on a level playing field to compete with them. It's so difficult and I'm so not a science person but I I mean clearly there are, the problem is that you've got a range of substances that benefit different athletes depending on what their sport, depending on what their discipline is. I remember when we were, I don't know if it was through one of the iterations of the world anti-derping code it was a prohibited list and we were talking about EPO and the wider technical document for sport specific analysis and this is a requirement on organisations like ourselves to do a minimum level of things like EPO human growth hormone insulin testing etc across certain sports within certain sports and there was a discussion about whether EPO, you do not test for EPO in all sports, you just don't because you do not think for example that a table tennis player is going to be taking EPO and there were some extraordinary responses from the international federations of no better intelligence is telling us that EPO would be used and so it's God knows what drives people to take this stuff and I mean I would take that if I thought I was going to lose some weight but to somebody else it might be that it might be a stimulant Sudafed doesn't make you lose weight does anyone in the audience think it does to somebody else it might be a diaretic everybody's motivation behind taking something is completely different but you also get this chicken and egg don't you wear again on no scientist but among long distance runners there's higher prevalence of asthma or thyroid complaints and it gets a bit chicken and egg about whether you know kind of there's no getting away from that you have to get into the science you can't get away and there will be difficulty there is a continuum but most things are likely to continue it doesn't mean you can't work out the extremes and the extremes could be wrong there is a feeling I don't think about it in my book antidote because it's got a thing against biochemists doesn't mind about physiologists doesn't mind so much about technologists but it's got a thing against biochemists and that's because it was historically came out with medics not liking drugs that should help people being used to sport that's the historical reason and why the mildonium highlights that and indirectly the pseudofed as well there are other reasons about pseudofed so there is an issue that they don't like something that is designed to get sick people better be used to get better people even better and that may be a good reason but there is a cultural reason that's why if you look at the openness that's how it was brought up I don't have a problem with that historically and that feeds exactly into the hypoxic tent argument which is not biochemistry it's very hard to do a hypoxic tent to raise your red blood cell levels enough to be remotely dangerous so that's another reason why but elite athletes do very difficult weird things to their body they're not healthy for what they do with the training there is this distinction and Nicole was very clear about normal health or physical activity at the top end it's not necessarily the normal healthy thing for getting a bad drug you do strange things even in physiology so it's a different kind of fish just to bring it back to one thing doping in sport is fundamentally wrong switch that word doping for something else cheating in sport is fundamentally wrong or look at the three ticks for wider performance enhancing in sport is fundamentally wrong probably not things that are against the spirit of sport are fundamentally wrong yeah probably it's tautological isn't it but what is that spirit of sport I think it is a spirit that is about I mean this came up in the hypoxic the hypoxic chambers test in 2006 was the first occasion when the world anti doping agencies newly formed ethical issues review panel considered a case they concluded that sport is fundamentally wrong they concluded that sport is about the virtuous perfection of natural talents which by the way didn't win the argument to prohibit hypoxic chambers but the point is that those virtues are not undermined by performance enhancing drugs in many respects they can allow you to be more of an athlete by allowing you to train harder that's what anabolic steroids allow you to do is to recover faster train harder and achieve your gain on the basis of that somebody else gave me this argument and it's not right so anabolic steroids don't just work by neighbouring to train harder so if I did nothing and took anabolic steroids I would be more powerful right and certainly if I did that and trained I would be much more powerful so there's a synergy effect but I just want to get this yes but it's not just it's not just about oh yes they make you train harder the benefit is the pathway to synergistic so there's a pathway that steroid fits into and a pathway the training fits into so you do both you get the double enhancement but they don't enable you to train faster so there is a biochemist sometimes science is I accept that but athletes are not taking them and sitting on their back sides doing that no but they're not just enabling them to train harder they are doing something else on that note and we can all get it on the drink and hopefully you've all thought of some fantastic questions during that first half and where we can lean about 5 or 10 minutes pretty much so please feel free to throw her away put your hand up and wait for one of the people with the mic to get to you and if you just say who you are and what you do and then who you'd like to ask your question off and we'll get underway yes one here just to introduce myself I'm Neha I'm a PhD student looking at performance announcing drug use in the gym getting population I'm also a competitive power lifter so I'm kind of down both sides of the coin as it were just to ask you just a quick question Nicole you said earlier and I quote would people rush to see doped sports in my sport as a power lifter you get tested and untested federations and I can tell you that untested federations or not only in power lifting also in strongman and also in bodybuilding people will rush to see those bodybuilders on stage they get paid hundreds of thousands and millions and millions of dollars in endorsements every year paid for by the gym going population people want to see they don't want to see the average man on the street going up and doing something they want to see somebody who's done everything they can to get to that stage so I just wanted to see what your thoughts were on when you said that people don't want to see dopes but one is clearly very very popular in for many people so if you're talking about bodybuilding is that what you're talking about bodybuilding power lifting bodybuilding generally has a bad history behind it because a lot of what you're seeing in terms of the physique of the individual is can only have been attained through chemical means but what I will say is that some of the sports that you're talking about aren't compliant with the world anti-doping code and I think that speaks volumes because you've got some sports who are clearly saying I have no wish to be recognised as a code compliant sport bodybuilding isn't I said some of the sports I didn't say all of the sports I said some of the sports I think any sport that is compliant well then my message to them is I hear what you're saying that people are rushing to see doping in those sports but if they're compliant with the world anti-doping code they are therefore open to being tested and they are also open to being found to be breaching the rules and to be caught and sanctioned so I mean you're right some people might rush to watch sports where there's doping but my question to you or my response to you would be that those sports who take it seriously will have a position on it and will take it seriously and sanction those who choose to do it so read into that what you will Is there not also a sort of slightly wider question though again it's one we've talked a lot about in recent years which is that sort of clash between the commercial considerations of a sport and its determination to catch dopers because inevitably people want to see records broken and they want to see someone climb the Vaun too fast and they did last year so even though there might not be a direct mandate to dope your athletes actually by omission you're guilty of doing the same thing do you think that's changing or do you think that's still no I think so I think it's particularly in the light of things like the scandal within athletics I think sponsors as well are picking up on the fact that maybe these are sports where they want to see some kind of commitment from the the international federation or the governing bodies to anti-doping I think sponsors have been pretty quiet today but I mean if you're a big sponsor of an event and you have a major crisis it's not looking particularly good for you as a sponsor so I think things I think a couple of the crises that we've seen within sport are definitely moving the tide on a slightly different tact I'm Jackie Johnston now I'm Bruce Vaughan you've talked about the history of doping and you've talked about what we're seeing in doping at the moment what about the future, do you have a vision of what the trends in doping look like because can we get ahead of the game if we know what it's starting to move into then we can sort of work more intelligently to prevent it from happening it's come to the scientists first oh, Andy Andy seems to think scientists could do everything that is this perfect gene doping that will work and we can't even get gene therapy to work so can just about so I think there is there are ways of enhancing sport so the big thing is it was 10 years ago 50 years ago when Andy was was gene doping, let's do gene doping and that will create this big difference and the reality is it's very difficult to do and to get it to work so I think that became a big issue it wasn't really practical at that time could still be poor practical now and what surprised me actually in terms of the history is how Russia situation how much it was back to the future I mean the doping that they yes they had what they were doing was KGB basically infiltrating and cheating there's a whole system in the first place so you don't get caught and you have women athletes taking anabolic steroids and men athletes, male athletes and women athletes and that they're effective so in that sense we know we know in that in sport what's effective we know in rowing what would work and if you're clever it's very difficult to detect it so why bother going if you would be that we're a long way away from even the current situation so I think there are ways forward I mean I think Andy's got this I like Andy's idea about there are other whole areas this technology and doping and there are obviously the motorized bikes which I think is a bit of a side issue motorized bikes or not motorized bikes so I think there is conceivable and it really depends a little better so I do agree with some of what Andy's said before about if society accepts gene doping so it might well be that if you can get a gene doping that will enable you to see better or to do something in it and when it becomes like botox then there will be a move towards those things happening in sport and it will be hard to then have sport where people are less good so it's tied in with culture where the future goes but you're asking about how do you get ahead of the game and that really a lot of that is about intelligence not about science, it's about knowing what people might be doing and it's noticeable that as Nicole says that a lot of you can do it but it's not about what you think it's about just doing drug tests and it's a lot more about intelligence than about that so she's probably better at answering this question than I am because she knows what people are trying to do so I just guess from the sidelines I think this actually relates to the previous question a bit as well because in order to answer the question you have to step back and think about what sports will look like in 30 years from now what sorts of things people will be doing we had a little conversation about esports earlier we can come to that if you like but my view is that if the Olympic Games was created today women and men would complete alongside each other Olympic and Paralympic would compete alongside each other and you only have to look at what's happened from 2012 to 2016 with the inclusion of Paralympians with prosthetic limbs 2012, Oscar Pistorius who we don't talk about much anymore was part of the Olympic Games the first athlete with a prosthetic limb to take part in the Games not terribly competitive four years later we have Marcus Rem who's vying to compete as a long jumper at the Rio Olympic Games and is a medal contender so athletes with I can be bionic limbs or prosthetic limbs are becoming more capable than those with biological limbs after 2012 we saw an incredible turnaround in terms of the attention to the Paralympic Games remarkable and I think that with the growth of this we would see an increase and an interest in that kind of sport and a loss of interest in what we currently see as Olympic sport but they will migrate and converge and become objects of fascination in the way that I think a previous question alluded to that our interest in what is elite and extraordinary underpins elite sports I think it's a red herring I'm sorry we already know wheelchair athletes beat normal athletes in the marathon right? sorry we know that and the Oscar Pistorius thing with the whole debate about Oscar Pistorius and about does this limb put you on exactly the same plane if it's going to be better then it's a different kind of sport it's the motorbike and that's completely fine it's just a different sport so I don't buy that you can throw all this together it's the same about the women in testosterone argument natural testosterone my point wasn't about comparing performances my point was that public fascination for prosthetically enhanced performances will grow significantly and the Olympics may find itself trying to catch up but then if you look at what's happened to Paralympic Sports in 2012 there was this great flowery of interest but has that been sustained the investment's not been and that goes back to my point about women in sport the investment just isn't there to enable the level of interest that would underpin that kind of investment the historical reason for why each of these communities groupings doesn't attract the same level of attention is to do with investment into the sports plain and simple it's not about biological capability can I feel like I'm a science question right so there are biological differences between males and females that will implement and there are massive cultural differences but doesn't matter how much because we have societies even the East German don't female athletes where there was massive cultural phenomenon in fact there were more female athletes in the world because they knew they could handle better with drugs wouldn't beat their male athletes sometimes you can't break the rules of science females it's not just a cultural reason why males are faster than females it's a biological reason as to why they're separated historically sports can be arranged in all kinds of ways in many sports men and women do compete alongside each other so there are ways in which sport can adapt to accommodate the values of the society that it interests clearly the case they can do will be a very very different kind of sport well a different value system how fast can you run 100 meters well it might not be no and that's not been around for very long either no no no problem with it talking change people trying to run faster but in order to answer your question you need to know what sport will look like and I think those things are fundamentally possible to disturb that we hear a lot about the arms race as people in labs now who are creating new things that are going to outwit the testers is that a realistic portrayal is it more to Chris's point that he's the same old technique because you just have to be more clever at using them I think Chris said earlier that the way that this all originated the prohibited list was because you have pharmaceutical companies that are producing products which are for the treatment of therapeutic conditions for genuine conditions and then people manipulate them and abuse them to gain an unfair advantage over and above for the purposes for which they were they were brought into the market and so the world anti-doping agency has made this big deal about collaborating with the pharmaceutical industry to say look if you're bringing a new product to the market give us the heads up help us to understand what it could be used for what it's composition is and whether somebody could use it to gain an unfair advantage so there's that a particular sort of something human growth hormone seems to be a thing for a while and then is there anything coming down the track that you're particularly worried about no I mean just generally I think we're always worried about the ability to engineer or change the composition of something and I mean if you look at somebody like Dwayne Chambers the whole reason he was caught in the first place was because somebody gave a vial to the laboratory in America to say look there's something in here I think you guys need to be having a look at it they looked at it did some tests and there was born a test for THG so we are reliant on individuals out there in the sporting community and beyond to feed us the intelligence that helps us to identify where that next threat might be questions this is a question for Dr Mia I'm a law student and earlier you made a very impressive sociological and philosophical argument about drug taking basically what I wanted to say if for example someone is already born with a certain gene and you do not possess that gene but both of you take the same drug the person who is born with the more superior gene will still be let's say more faster and the person that has got a slower gene by birth so that kills that argument and the only way for that person to then be on the same level playing field they would have to cheat so they would have to get a drug that is better than that drug that that person is using my second question to you Dr Mia is do you think that this argument is unbalanced and dangerous considering there are lots of videos on YouTube of people dying from the abuse of steroids use so to the first question there would still be this imbalance that's your concern is that despite having this rule that allows people to use it the inherent or the presumed inherent genetic predisposition is still to this unfair or unlevel playing field is that your point I think that the response to that is to think about a range of performance enhancers not just the drug and to recognise that the science of what makes something works best for you may be different for what works best for somebody else let's take altitude training for example you might be perfectly optimised for your sport by using a hypoxic chamber that might be the best way to get the performance enhancement for you the person next to you may get the best out of themselves by going to a mountain and running within that environment so I think there is much more variance in what allows any given performance enhancement to be optimal for any specific athlete and the position is to allow athletes to use a range of these things and discover what works best for them and the science behind most of those is I think more nuanced than just one hit for everybody that takes it and I think the advantage that you would get in a situation where your peers will doing it as well is in that science that underpins it related specifically to both your own particular circumstances and what makes you run faster the argument about is it a dangerous position I mean videos online and encouraging certain behaviours and my concern about the anti-doping situation today I mean those videos are within the context of the present system would athletes be safer I mean the question is whether they would be safer in the system I describe I think they would because I think you would have medical professionals giving more meaningful useful advice about those risks associated with the enhancements and allowing athletes to take responsibility for those risks but without any monitoring you would have those lethal consequences to those videos perhaps that you describe so I think that it's not irresponsible I think the present systems are responsible I don't think it protects the health athletes and I don't think it protects the level playing field Is that even the case I mean to keep bringing the kids into this is that even the case of sort of 14 15 year old of years old would you have sport scientists coming in and saying here's the best way for you to inject steroids that's the point I mean that's where the world pro-daping agency is in the business of supporting safer performance enhancement and at the moment the situation is that athletes do things behind closed doors and take additional risks because of that cultural secrecy I think that's a sub-optimal system there is no completely safe system I completely accept that but I think the present system which is behind closed doors illegally trafficked drugs which is 99% of the ones that athletes use my son when he enters elite sport if he chooses to do so was in a system where he can make informed choices about what he's doing rather than just be encouraged by people that want to exploit him and whom he trusts thousands of people dying every year from cigarettes yes and your point my point is even if you should have monitoring of the the steroids or any enhancing drug that is used people will still take risk and people will still abuse it absolutely but the point is that the present system undermines your ability to make an informed choice the system I describe enhances that and yes people still take risks sports are inherently about risk of taking and people say that the risks of rugby of tackling somebody and the possible injury you may suffer is a relevant risk because it's part of the sport and what makes it possible is that there are drugs to track from that they are essential to the skills of the sport but I think that again if you look at this from the perspective of the safety of the athlete the health of the athlete the situation they are in at the moment is where they are unable to make informed choices about those risks associated with doping it's just impossible so I should say the way Andy is going in response to your question the way you're asking it is very much about drugs in society not so much about drugs in sport so there's a whole similar argument that we should if we're going to legalise drugs in society then people will know they're taking the right thing then their doctor will talk about it so it is essentially the same argument I'm not against that argument but that is the argument I think that's a good argument I think doctors I think if you have people who go to their doctors we don't have a medic well on the panel we don't have anyone who's medically qualified if someone came to my GP saying a bodybuilder saying they were doing these drugs GP wouldn't say just don't do it they would talk to them about it and they would work out well I don't know do you know more than I do but maybe they wouldn't engage they would just say no they don't engage because it's clearly an issue so it's all done underground so it's all done underground no it's good so it's really good to you so I have insight on this as well with regards to medical education on AAS because AAS use is increasing every year I recently went to a conference in Liverpool about this it is increasing every year and the age range is getting younger so it is a worrying trend in that regard but I don't think I'll get so many stories because I have to interview people as part of my research I get a story saying I'm not comfortable going to my doctor because all they do is tell me not to do it they'll just shame me for my choices and that kind of discourages people from getting the appropriate help which is kind of an issue with AAS is not the short term side effect which I actually think some of the bodybuilders are better at knowing what have to deal with them than the doctors but it's the long term sorry so it's the longer term which is unknown really in terms of liver and heart damage that's 10-20 years down the line so I've had debates with various bodybuilders and the short term they can control their symptoms and they know as much as the doctor and of course that links in exactly into the cigarette argument in the sense because there's no short term well apart from the difficulty in running faster but the longer term health benefit and when you're making that decision to do AAS now we don't have enough good clinical data because we're not allowed to do the randomised control and because we don't know and it's all anecdotal and it's all not just YouTube but all case studies we don't know the longer term damage and it could be quite it could be relatively serious so we don't know that that would be my concern about AAS not so much the short term but in terms of society at least support different questions but in terms of society thank you Owen I thought I'd use you as the chair to decide which of my many questions might need to be put to the panel or maybe all of them who knows given that the medal chase has corrupted the Olympic Games wouldn't cheating under a neutral flag is the way forward is question number one question number two Chris you're like this one if meldonium is the equivalent to statins in western society why isn't Viagra banned in sport that has a proper chemical meaning as you know and then aren't we all really kidding ourselves trying to treat sports the same in respects of the prohibited list and sanctions given that actually sports are all different and so are athletes and so the more we treat them as generic the more we're likely to go to the lowest common denominator which is cheating why don't we put one of those questions to each of the panel and do it like that and she'll be saying Nicole do you want to take that last question about the universal code if you like because I think it's an interesting debate isn't it because obviously in 1999 we started to set up a universal code that we're basically trying to treat all countries and all sports and all athletes the same has that now outlived its usefulness in some way or do you think the point is to the end goal is to the good one I think the end goal is the good one but I think I don't disagree with Michelle in that you're right you just start to blast open a whole new debate to this issue and I know that it's one that you know you just see have even discussed about whether you just have at the moment for those of you who don't know there is a list of stuff that's banned in competition and there's a stuff that's banned in and out of competition so there are some substances that you can take when you're not competing but won't be tied you if they're still in your system when you compete but so it's complex and there's a discussion about whether you just have just a broad blanket it's banned at all times which is interesting for your stimulant substances and your cold remedies and things like this I don't think there's a right or a wrong on this one I know it might be that given the way that the world event generally of anti-doping is going that's a discussion or a debate that needs to be had again and you also get the legal arguments around can't have been illustrated for trading the whole lifetime ban I think you have to have harmony of sanctions across countries you're looking at the sports not necessarily harmony of sanctions across I guess what I'm saying is if you're from France and you're a footballer then if you take the same substances and you're a footballer in Iceland then it should be treated the same it should be treated the same it should be treated the same it should be treated the same I think it would undermine the process if there was a if you start to implode the whole purpose of the one code well you do hear some sports arguing I mean I've heard athletics I've ironically given them their problems I've heard a co-argue recently and say we were at a four year ban we got argued down to two by other sports and actually we should have stayed at four I mean Michelle will know you go back 15 years and I mean countries were doing whatever they wanted to do and how is that right that you know a weightlifter from this country gets six months and then a weightlifter from somebody or even worse a cyclist from a different country for something far less serious it's getting a greater sound show but the thoughts that happen also say sorry you want me to use the microphone I would also say you know having worked with various sports this whole this whole sort of fraud really of an in and out of competition list is ridiculous it's a trip wire for athletes and we looked at it with one of the sports I work with professional golf and the golfers said well that's absolutely ridiculous and so they went for the full list all the time and it makes sense to them because it's how you are in and out of competition what does competition really mean it's so sport specific that it's about time in some respects the anti doping itself grew up and was actually addressing these issues and you know a four year ban for a rower is not like a four year ban for a darts player let's face it so we've got to be a little bit more specific in the way we're going to deal with this it's basically that you end up catching low hanging fruit don't you that you end up catching a lot of athletes who have tripped up on pseudo fed or supplements and maybe not catching the golfers and we haven't moved away from I see that recently UCAD have applied a penalty to someone for an asthma inhaler for the very same asthma inhaler the United States just days ago gave a warning fair we're not really being fair let's face it Andy the neutral flag is the contention that basically you'd have a team competing at the Olympics that is basically Andy's anything goes team and they compete against countries that are regulated by a wider interesting everybody in the same shirt last night that's what we want I thought you meant to have all countries without any national flags whatsoever I mean I think interesting so basically there's no no longer any country by country affiliation no national anthems I mean the funny thing is the medal table doesn't exist by the way the IOC does not publish a medal table for the Olympic Games it is entirely a product of the media and its construction of this theatre of spectacle that is the Olympic Games which we all enjoy whether or not we think someone's doping or not and that's you know so the idea of athletes competing under a neutral flag the problem with it is that sport is underpinned by these nationalist interests and if you take that it's like pulling the rug from undersport it will just collapse and that wouldn't be such a bad situation if it can rebuild and embrace some other values like you know the most viewed sport online at the moment is parkour which is trying to get recognition as an official sport and inline skating is another one there's lots of new ways in which people are becoming physically active that have nothing to do with that history of sport that is around the Olympic Games and I think that before we get to a point where you have no nations we will get to a point where people just won't be interested in the so-called fastest person in the world it will just not be about that it will be about something completely different and actually I think the values of the Olympic Games in particular lead us to that situation and the modern Olympic Games as a social movement that is about bringing together the youth of the world is losing touch with that community and we see that in the dwindling numbers of participation in all kinds of sports but you're mixing up there again some participation and spectacles so people might want to watch parkour but they wouldn't go to a stadium and watch people compete to do parkour to win a medal would they? Well that's a slightly different point but I think that again we are moving from an era of spectatorship to an era of participatory spectatorship and we see that within these younger sports where it's not just about doing or watching it's also about capturing and creating and you see that in many of these youth sports people don't want to just sit and watch something anymore broadcasters around the Games are not planning for audience to be sitting there watching the content 100% of the time at least 50% you're looking at a phone so there's a sense in which the entire ecosystem of 21st century sport is changing and you see that in the practice of broadcasters spectatorship is on its way out Will you come in on either of those points and then address the Viagra question? Well yeah I think we've discussed who's going to take which of Michelle's questions and you know, Nicole to the first one you'd take the medals and as the 50 year old may I take Viagra not a bad idea I mean the Viagra is a technical scientific question I think Viagra as originally designed is quite similar to Meldonian and therefore could be potentially a performance enhancing because it ends up being more beneficial for the isozoan and the endzoan that's in the penis it's probably less likely but it is a borderline it could be performance enhancing I'm not going to tell you in my book and it could be banned but it might have a minor performance enhancing benefit in certain sports so that's one of those very technical issues and I imagine if there was a I don't know if it's probably not difficult to pick up so I imagine that if it was picked up that lots of people were taking Viagra but if lots of people were taking Viagra in certain specific sports it would get picked up and could be banned in the same way as Sudafed I mean I don't think it's different I mean it's a drug that is available and it's easier to get without the question it was just oh sorry it was interesting but seriously given that Meldonian in eastern bloc countries actually is technically an equivalent of statins in the western world and statins obviously are fairly controversial people are put on statins as a preventive measure so my understanding of Meldonian is although some people are put on it for a longer time it's supposed to be for a short time and statins are some people it's a lifetime and if some doctors had their way it's very very controversial it would be most certainly I'd be on statins but they want to dope everyone with statins at my age and in the US my brother he was older than me but was asked to put on statins quite early on I think that statin revolution is going to come is going to move away it's one of those things to be more targeted so if the whole population is on statins of course above a certain age then I think the issue relates much more to I think age older athletes doing elite sport and that's a bigger issue because they take much more medication and the wireless may not work with them and clearly we've had cases of people taking testosterone for performance enhancing and they'll say well I should be because many doctors give you testosterone because your levels go down and actually there is no clinical benefit taking testosterone or growth hormone when you're older but large parts of the population in countries take it and then you have an issue but that's I don't think that's just life age-related sport being tied in with but in those cases they are being given by doctors so in that sense they are being exactly what Andy would say I mean they are doctors justing now it's not clinically required but doctors are giving it but I mean I could just come in on that very quickly I think that for me I work a lot in this broad frame of human enhancement and I've got friends that literally trying to explore the possibility of immortality and life extension and as crazy I mean funny enough one of these guys we don't talk about life extension anymore because it's a bit nutty but we talk about health extension and we want to all live longer lives and be healthier over a significantly longer period of those lives we are embarking we are already embarked into a project where we accept the use of technology science medicine to allow us to live longer healthier lives the project of human enhancement is part and parcel of that if you reject that then reject anti-aging age related disease therapy and reject all these things that are about trying to extend the quality of your life if you want to embrace it then I think you have to be part of this this broader project which is more radical I want to live in Andy's world it's spectacularly well we are spectacularly bad at doing what you say spectacularly good at aesthetic life spectacularly bad despite masses of resources going into it and doing what you think is an obvious thing for science to do we are just spectacularly bad at gene therapy and gene doping it's just really difficult but the fact that we're bad at doing we're not trying to do it we are trying to extend life I'm happy to do it I'm just saying that we are already committed to this project of human enhancement life extension quality of life improvement but you know that is one question here and then we'll come back down here hi this is a question for Andy I'm just wondering where you sit on sport such as boxing where does the added implication of the person you're competing against being harmed because of doping and then moving on from that I guess as well as combat sports contact sports as well such as rugby, football where someone could potentially be harmed sorry is your question that within these sports the drugs harm them or doping harm them as opposed to the sport itself so when David Price as an example got knocked up and he was was found to be using steroids so I'm just thinking in your idealistic world how that would fit in I mean boxing would boxing is far from being an idealistic world so I'm not sure what your point is that these athletes are someone on steroids could hurt somebody more so if they were allowed they're more aggressive that there's more people doing harm people could die couldn't they they could and I think that so it's a question about the level of acceptable harm within boxing it's well beyond where it should be and again the point about our ability to modify sports to reduce the harm is where we should focus our attention I think to substance boxing has done that over the years but if drug taking or doping allowed someone to be more aggressive and I guess more violent which is of course the express purpose of the sport although boxes would say in a controlled way then you would do more to protect the athlete within this circumstance I mean I think the boxing is about trying to manage a series of skills and outwit your opponent I don't think it's about trying to I don't think it should be about trying to just kill somebody else so I have no problem with drug taking or doping making someone more aggressive but I think we would have to protect each fighter more effectively within that situation The rugby sport is an interesting one because in rugby obviously you've already alluded to the fact that people play as it's changing in a professional area they're doing more supplements doing more bodybuilding and so on If you add anything goes scenario into that equation where they're also taking steroids and surely you just increase the chances they're banging into each other and they're going to do each other more damage I mean what's the proposition that if you take the drug or the substance that you can punch harder or punch more frequently then I think that again it's a very simple response How would you do that? In the same way that we've done it over the years you have much more supervision within the ring you have much more protection of the athlete I mean I find it hard to see that we can You're not creating an extra problem because it becomes then a matter of your ability to outmaneuw for your opponent not about your ability to withstand impact and that is for me what the skills of boxing are about although I've got colleagues that will say boxing is far from being a sport anyway but I think that's what you would do I mean the same with tennis over the years people have talked about the increased speed of the male tennis serve and try to adjust the sport in accordance with that because reaction times haven't increased so you have to adjust the parameters of the sport to take into account those enhancements within the athlete playing the sport that for me is not problematic I don't see any problem with trying to protect each fighter more effectively whilst also allowing them to be more efficient as fighters they're not incompatible Is this on steroids? How would you protect the other boxer? Would you ask the referee to I don't know when the other boxer gets tired and he's on the ropes getting battered would you ask the referee to just wave off the fight? Isn't that what happens in boxing? Yeah but then the other guy would win and that would be cheating That's the whole point Hang on the situation that you're proposing is where one athlete is taking the drugs and the other fighter isn't If anyone was allowed to take drugs In both cases the referee would judge when someone is being unreasonably harmed and would stop the fight as happens now Let's go to Sophie and then a question here and then one there Hi Andy, sorry another one for you I think this is a fascinating debate but one of the things I want to ask you is have you thought about what happened when an athlete stops competing So in your world where doping is legal and athletes are taking performance enhancing substances which their body then becomes accustomed to because they need to enhance their performance what happens when that athlete stops competing Where's the duty of care for the athlete in terms of monitoring their health because their body has become accustomed to taking substances to what happens when these athletes stop I mean the duty of care towards athletes from sports federations and the sports administrative system is far below where it needs to be that it's just for me a question about what's fundamentally wrong with elite sports today and so yes I've thought about those implications and I'm concerned about those longer term health risks as I'm concerned about the long term health risks of elite sport participation generally and I think that if there's anything we've learnt from this year is that we can't make any assumptions about the levels of prevalence of doping within sports or the levels of corruption that underpins that sport administration to the extent that all sports federations are sufficiently corrupt we have no capacity to develop a system that is effective safe or indeed respects the interests long term and medium of those athletes so it's a question of governance within sport that would allow the system I described to flourish and at the moment we are well below where it needs to be and arguably sports federations should not be self governing and I think that is a huge shift in terms of what sport looks like at the moment but it is a required shift in order to make sure that we can protect those interests. Do you not think it's wider than the governance issue though this is a medical issue who is going to medically look after those athletes when they stop competing to make sure that they are not facing effects and do you not think that will then start to put undue pressure on to an already bursting health system bursting health system I mean we talk about sport first of all let's focus on that I don't want to live in your world sorry I'm just playing devil's advocate I'm just playing it out for the debate I guess if you think that sports put enough money into protecting the interests of athletes then great I don't think they do I think there's billions of pounds within sports and very little of it goes towards taking care of athletes so if you really commit to that idea then you know that needs to change already we see some intimations of that where in recent fiasgos with doping revelations that in fact oh yes we were told eight years ago that in Beijing everyone's being caught we're all okay everything's clean eight years later it's not the case so if you want and now we're hearing discussions about putting more money into wider I mean 11 years ago the American Academy of Pediatrics made a very simple point which actually came up in the first half of today that the problem or the situation of performance enhancement or aesthetic enhancement is not a sport problem it's a cultural phenomenon so yeah you might say it's a stressed out system but if you approach it just by trying to solve the problem of sport you're not going to solve anything because it's part of a bigger public health concern so yeah it's a stress system in public health terms I don't think it's stress system in sport terms it's just about where money gets diverted and we hear already sorry final point that there's an argument to be made for sponsors to put more money into anti-doping you know come on there's billions of dollars pounds of euros operating around this situation and they're not being diverted to attend to those concerns that you have which I also share I just wanted to agree with Professor Meyer about the want to get this guy a drink but I believe that the health of the athlete is what's paramount here and I think if you were to try and rule out drugs and push it further underground then you're going to get less quality drugs and it's going to damage the athlete's health even further I believe there needs to be an attitude change towards drugs role in sport and I mean Wemswater set up 2003 99 98 99 it doesn't work it hasn't worked there needs to be some radical change in wider starting from the governance all the way down lovely but my main question is about supplements I know you mentioned it earlier why is it so hard to try and regulate supplements and rule out all these steroids and stimulants to keep on turning up in supplements when they're not on the label and what steps are you doing to try and eradicate this from the supplement industry so the role that we play is to purely we can't stop athletes sports people the general public taking supplements but it's not our remit so what we do is we say to them first and foremost you have to look at whether you nutritionally need to take a supplement if you are not getting what you need from a good valent nutritional diet ok speak to somebody about supplements to find out what allegedly you therefore need to take to asia recovery or whatever you're lacking in your diet at the point that you make the decision to take a supplement do some due diligence and we have something called informed sport which is organisation that batch tests supplements to give them some degree of I guess a certainty is probably the wrong word but to say look if you're faced with this wealth of choice about supplements go to somewhere that have done some batch testing to say look we've done some batch testing and we're not seeing x, y, z in it so if you're faced with a choice of something from the informed sport list or something from China about which you know nothing about go to the informed sport list and it mitigates it reduces your risk no manufacturer right now is putting their money where their mouth is and saying we will produce a supplement and stand behind it and say that no matter what this product is clean anybody who buys anything out here right now that has that it's either IOC approved or WADA approved it's lies because at the moment the IOC do not approve any supplements WADA do not approve any supplements no organisation right now approves a supplement and that's because the components of a supplement are coming from all over the world and they come into a factory and putting this down into real bare basics I'm sure it's far more sophisticated than this shipping it in from all over the conditions about which that one ingredient has been manufactured package is absolutely unknown so if it's if you just take one element of a substance that's coming into let's say a factory in the UK and that has been run alongside some steroids or some other prohibited stuff it could well be contaminated and that's why no manufacturer right now is going to say I will absolutely rubber stamp this and say sue me if you take this supplement and get an adverse finding from it when you're saying that no one knows where this is coming from are you not asking the questions to the supplement companies or is WADA not trying to find out where this is coming from does someone actually knows when you look at the composition of a supplement just vitamin D vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C I mean even that which on the face of it is completely harmless is being manufactured all around the world in companies where I mean if you think that a company can go into due diligence all of the time 365 days a year about what is being produced in these factories all around the world forget it that's why nothing is kite marked nothing comes with any degree of certainty when it comes to supplements and you're right it's a nightmare but that's the reality of what we're facing at the moment I mean just to quickly I guess in my world how expensive would it be to develop a personal analytics kit that each athlete can have and put their substance into and see what's in it impossible in a sense so impossible that's why you have a wallet at lab while the Russians had a whole separate lab so the answer to create a little kit that would all the kind of contaminants in there impossible so in the same way that 20 years ago it cost £2.5 billion to Mapo Gino now it's less than £1,000 Gino's a linear problem sometimes people get a fact that it's a human genome it was rather trivial bit of technology but in the sense that it's a linear set of codes so the question are you saying do we check the supplements of course in one sense they've got to be safe to eat put it in your mouth so a small contaminant would not pass a wider test you have to do a wider test and you have to have more of an aspect so otherwise there's no point you're in an intermediate zone now some supplements companies will that claim they don't have performance have steroids in them will probably put a little bit of steroid in them because they'll work better even though they claim they haven't got steroids in that's the real black market the dark end of the supplement industry but they have to be safe arguably if you take them on the shelf they've got to be safe to eat so there's a whole set of regulations around that there's a big issue and if you go to the UK and Europe you can't claim they do all these wonderful things because there's regulations in the US you can claim everything about supplements if you walk into a drugstore or pharmacy in the US all these supplements all these wonderful things they do they just say the FDA doesn't approve this doesn't agree with it you can claim anything you like without proving it works so the supplement industry is a massive industry and because they aren't linked to the drug some of the drug companies also have smaller arms it's a complicated big area we could do another album I would say you don't need to the bottom line actually probably even in elite sport you don't really need to take supplements to be able to run faster and even to get a good body you don't need now if you want to go to the level where you're looking at there you probably do and if you want to do the Tour de France there are specialist things but in general in life supplement industry is a bit of a myth you don't need it to be a normal healthy human being and to do performance enhance but elite sport is the very top end there's a specialist thing and you might well need it we haven't got a lot to say to take a couple more short questions we've got two here in the front we've been waiting for a while on the left my question is mainly for Nicol actually what's your opinion on the fact that some countries want to make taking a little offence Look I I get why some countries take that stance we're having a similar discussion with the UK Government at the moment our view here in the UK generally I'm sensing is that we have enough legislation but it's about identifying where the gaps are in that legislation to see if we just need to to fill some gaps what we're hearing from discussions that we have had in the past and prior to the London Olympic Games in 2012 was that that the police are under resourced they've got competing priorities and if you're looking at things like people trafficking or gun crime and then you've got us knocking at the door going yeah well we think somebody's doping it's coming way way down on their list of priorities and you can't just have legislation if you're not going to enforce it and it's not going to be meaningful I mean we've got this fantastic piece of legislation that makes an offence for any of you to use your mobile phones you know hold your phones in your cars how many of you have held your phones in your cars no action is there until there's action but until somebody the police start stopping people and prosecuting them for that it's meaningless legislation so we can go through the motions of criminalising doping in sport but it's got to have the weight of the law behind it so just to play devil's advocate here we've all seen in the news about the Russian state doping and how the whole coaches and the system there has developed such that the athletes in athletics now won't be able at least most of them to take part in Rio so just how do you think well we also heard last year allegations against Mo Farah mainly against his coach but that also rubbed off against him as an athlete and I'm just picking on him as an example because he's sort of lauded as a great British runner a great British talent and athlete so if we look at Russia and we say that their whole system with their coaches and their whole entourage really reflects on the individual athletes what's your opinion on how Mo Farah's coach reflects on him as an athlete and would he be well placed to represent our country in the Olympics Nicole oh I think I should go last actually I'm the obvious choice to answer this question let's go down the line I'm fair to ask Nicole to answer so I can't even answer because the Salazar case is still going on it's really difficult to answer because you're making accusations about Salazar and he's going through US anti-doping panorama panorama but the implication in what you're saying it's very important actually because I'm naming somebody next to something else so there is an allegation about Salazar that is unproven so you're suggesting that Mo Farah shouldn't represent us because he is associated with a coach who coaches other athletes and that coach has got unproven accusations against him and I could list any number if I speak to a journalist not obviously not you but other journalists who aren't sport journalists they will list every single athlete who wins a medal as doping and they tell you almost for sure not really the sports journalists who know a bit more but it is a general thing and it's just a non-question I don't think you're allowed to answer that question not just whilst someone's unproven it's just otherwise there is no sport it's the Chris Froome question so Chris Froome wins the Tour de France he must be doping well then there's no point you have to have evidence and as a scientist that's what I think as well so you need to give me an example that is more trying to think of an example there are athletes who have worked with other coaches who have been doping of course the issue that Team Sky had was that it tried to have a team that had no connection with doping at all and that failed because in cycling it was almost impossible so some coaches came in and they had some point in the past so then is that part of the whole team I think that's a legitimate question I can't remember there were athletes who went with an East German coach so there is an issue around that there are live questions where you can raise that should you associate with people who have been known to cheat should that be a problem I don't think it's fair because even the coach has not been proven and therefore I don't know how we can answer it Chris is spot on so until a case has been proven against somebody it's all bug well done to doping code has provision about prohibited association so if you are associated with somebody who has been banned certainly you can to doping we will write to that athlete to say you need to disassociate yourself from that individual you've got a certain amount of time to do it and if not then we're going to come back at you and put a spotlight on you and say why are you still hanging out with somebody who is banned at this particular moment in time that is a rush that is an exceptional scenario in a sense it's been decided that the system was so rotten that any of those individual athletes couldn't possibly not be tainted by but I think it's a the broader question you raise is interesting one too which is basically what to be careful not to become blinded by patriotism here as well you can see these things in country specific terms because the danger is that Russia will do become the bogeyman and any kind of you know any allegations against our own athletes are sort of you know Russia will do it how many people you've got on the UK ban list there's a huge number, a significant number so we have athletes who are cheating in our country I mean I would just say that I sometimes secretly hope people like Mo Farrow would be found guilty of doping because if the nicest guys in sport are doing it too then you know there must be something inherently wrong with the system and of course he wouldn't ever be put forward if he were found guilty if anyone was found guilty they wouldn't represent the nation in the present system but you know unless these idols fall then I think we won't find I mean imagine it did happen imagine Usain Bolt was then brought up well Mo Farrow was brought up on a charge how would we feel about sports then would it collapse, would people stop watching I don't think they would I disagree but anyway that would be a much longer debate but they haven't, many athletes have been found guilty and we still watch I think that if Usain Bolt was found to have to have doped throughout his career it would be a hammer blow audience will go up no exactly people still watch athletics less of them than used to they're not playing as much as they did they were watching parkour anyway we have to draw it to a close because we've run over time already so all three of you if I could just quickly go along the line and ask you for one thought to send people away with I mean I think very interesting we sort of had a theoretical debate between Andy's world and Nicole's world I think that debate will continue but within that there's a separate debate about whether or not the system we've got is working and I think we'd all agree that that system needs more resource but it also needs a fundamental global governance which both Andy and Nicole said in different ways unless you solve that you can't necessarily solve some of the other issues we're talking about but certainly it's not going away so just very quickly one final thought from each of you I don't feel I should say a big science talk I just kind of say don't let physical activity is good for you I feel I'd say anyway so don't worry I love people not to be spectators but to be joint spread editors and consumers and if elite sport makes you more active which we know doesn't really anyway but just be hackative because it's healthy and I feel like I'm saying don't take supplements most supplements are a waste of money why don't we leave that as a public service most supplements are a waste of money let's leave that I'll say that most supplements are a waste of money I am so sick of this debate I can't tell you my mother always said to me just stop talking about this issue you're not going to progress in life in your career if you keep making these arguments you're talking about sport in this way and I often get painted as the kind of outsider I grew up with sports I played every sport as a school kid I was in every team I invest a lot of my life into developing sports work a lot with the International Olympic Committee in building its community and its work and I guess I just see that fundamentally this anti-doping project isn't working and it is so much of a dogma within many of the actually tonight I think it hasn't been so much but there is such a strong position it's like telling people just who believe in God if you're going to a church to say it doesn't exist, just stop believing but that is the wall I find myself against all the time and I'm kind of tired of it but I think there's a fundamental point about social change that underpins it which is why I keep talking about it I really respect individuals like Andy who come at this from a completely different perspective because it challenges it challenges organisations like UK Anti-Doping it challenges the world that anti-doping organisations operate within I'm not saying that I have any desire to enter into Andy's world any time soon or that I will be encouraging people to do that but I think what anti-doping has to do is constantly challenge itself and evolve and look at things differently and that means you've got to learn you've got to see people's different points of view so onwards and upwards Thank you, thank you all too for your extra questions and thank you for that panel