Q: Who's winning the doping war- the cheaters or the testers?

A:  Generally, it makes sense for most sports to have a drug-testing program.  The public supports the values underlying the prohibition against certain substances in sports: respect for medical and sports ethics; protection of health; and a level competitive playing field for all athletes. Drug testing should be fair, cost-effective and internally financed. Compliance should be ensured by testing the athletes and punishing those who fail.

Rhetoric on Capitol Hill has reached fever pitch to legislate and federally finance more elaborate doping control programs. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has introduced the "Clean Sports Act of 2005" to establish uniform steroid policies for professional sports. The legislation sets minimum penalties of a two-year ban for the first violation and a lifetime ban for the second. It also permits the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy to require additional professional leagues and/or NCAA Division I or II sports to comply with the legislation. McCain wants the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) to administer testing for the four major professional sports- the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. Predictably, USADA is looking for a lot more money to do the job.  The federal government already provides nearly 65 percent of USADA's funding.  The new bill would allot nearly $52 million of taxpayer dollars over the next five years for additional research, education, testing and adjudication.  

Assuming Congress should be putting aside urgent social, economic, international and environmental problems to fix sports juicing, will legislation actually work? We gave $7.4 million of our tax dollars to USADA just last year.  Yet, drug-testing technology remains flawed. Forget all the media hype over the few so-called "designer steroids." The athletic use of synthetic human growth hormone has been commonplace for years. Although banned, there's still no reliable test to detect it. The same goes for insulin, IGF-1, interleukins, anti-myostatin antibodies and other progressive enhancers.  

A variety of masking drugs, techniques and devices are also widely available. Airport security recently caught a Minnesota Viking player with a device called the Whizzinator, along with white powder reported to be dehydrated urine. The skin-toned device is marketed as "an easy-to-conceal, easy-to-use urinating device with a very realistic prosthetic penis." One determined pro athlete described to me how he used a catheter to pump clean urine into his bladder before a drug test and I've heard of even more extreme methods. And gene doping- the Holy Grail of enhanced performance- is at hand, soon to make all these primitive methods obsolete.  

Not only are the cheaters succeeding, but current testing methods may be trapping the innocent. New research questions the accuracy of the test for the steroid nandrolone, raising the possibility that some athletes suspended for failing doping tests may have been wrongfully punished. Although the World Anti-Doping Agency says these "unstable urine" problems rarely occur, Simon Davis, a British authority on drug testing, said he believed the new findings could affect up to 70 percent of positive nandrolone cases.
   
The drug-testing issue is more complex than USADA and its supporters in Congress are claiming. Will another $52 million catch more cheaters, or simply foster new, more extreme (and dangerous) doping methods? To create a 100 percent perfect drug-testing system, you'd need to keep athletes under intense round-the-clock surveillance, monitor their diets, restrict their interpersonal contacts and test their blood and urine at least daily. But is this the brave new sports world we really want?  

If the eradication of all drugs from sports is a fantasy, how much more money should we throw at it? A major public pitch for federal intervention is that more aggressive testing and potentially career-ending punishments will restore professional athletes to the exalted status of role models for America's children. But what message are we sending to the kids if our athletes must be treated like criminals to stop them from cheating?