Patterico's Pontifications

1/14/2013

Lance Armstrong: Did I Use Performance Enhancing Drugs? No. No. No. No. No… Yes. A Bit.

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:43 pm



From Drudge, in the Associated Press:

Lance Armstrong ended a decade of denial by confessing to Oprah Winfrey that he used performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press.

The admission Monday came hours after an emotional apology by Armstrong to the Livestrong charity that he founded and turned into a global institution on the strength of his celebrity as a cancer survivor.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the interview is to be broadcast Thursday on Winfrey’s network.

168 Responses to “Lance Armstrong: Did I Use Performance Enhancing Drugs? No. No. No. No. No… Yes. A Bit.”

  1. i take performance enhancing drugs all the time it’s nice to have that extra edge so I can be all I can be and maximize my contribution to america

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  2. today I had am extra shot nonfat latte for example plus also I had taco bell for breakfast cause of I think maybe I had a little more absinthe last night than was wise

    but bam I was at the top of my game by 11:30

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  3. I saw a guy when I was coming home who was clearly on performance enhancing drugs.

    He performed well.

    I guess, everyone knew. And so what?

    Jamie (029f5e)

  4. I say find out what he was using, and send a case of it to everyone in Washington.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  5. 1.He has never failed a drug test.

    Comment by JD (318f81) — 8/24/2012 @ 7:50 am

    EPWJ (8a4ca7)

  6. He has still never failed a drug test.

    JD (b63a52)

  7. that’s cause he’s awesome

    i just hope he learns someday to be proud of what he accomplished instead of letting losers shame him

    happyfeet (ce327d)

  8. and the amount of drugs Mr. lance took for to excel at his career are not even a fraction of what piggy piggy oprah has done on herself

    happyfeet (ce327d)

  9. Or Mr President, for that matter.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  10. It’s too bad for Lance, and it’s too bad for the sport, if the truth is that everyone had to cheat to win because everyone was cheating.

    That’s the kind of system that rewards corruption, because of everyone is guilty, success or failure becomes about enforcement discretion or sophistication in the cheating.

    Anyway, EPWJ has been all over the place lately. Either they are presumed innocent until proven guilty, or those who gave them that much are to be ridiculed… it appears this rule changes based on whether EPWJ likes the person of interest.

    I gave Lance the benefit of the doubt on this one. I don’t think that’s so bad.

    Dustin (73fead)

  11. While I think Armstrong’s most definitely finally telling the truth… feh. Color me unimpressed.

    I’ve a hunch Armstrong would also wholeheartedly agree to claim to be a hermit crab if he thought it would get him back into the good graces of the Tour de France and pro biking.

    qdpsteve (e4fc78)

  12. ==Anyway, EPWJ has been all over the place lately.==
    I’d say you are a very astute observer, Dustin.

    elissa (98cee2)

  13. I still don’t see the big deal, and especially why this is any of the law’s business. The law should not have any interest in enforcing the rules of sport organisations. If a sport organisation isn’t interested in enforcing its own rules, then why should the law care? It should certainly not be pushing them to do so.

    There is nothing inherently wrong with taking drugs to make one a better athlete. If the body running a particular race has rules, and enforces them, then you either comply or hope not to get caught, and if you get caught you lose. But that’s between you and them. When Congress sticks its nose in, something has gone terribly awry. And either way, I see no reason at all why we, the public, should give a damn. Armstrong rode good races; how he got the ability to do so doesn’t change that.

    Why should the top level of sports be reserved for those lucky enough to have been born with the top natural talents? What’s wrong if those who weren’t quite so lucky in the natural lottery decide to improve themselves?

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  14. I dunno. I’m just back from helping myself to some delicious tasty drugs myself. So yeah.

    But if you were to ask me whether or not I’d helped myself to them, I’d be like “Um. Yeah. Several, in fact.”

    So, I dunno.

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  15. WHAT ever.
    .
    .
    .

    Gun Control, Fiscal Cliff, Quantitative Easing, Trillion Dollar budget overruns…

    Oh, hey, LOOK! Lance Armstrong is confessing!!

    Smock Puppet, 10th Dan Snark Master and Misapprehension Correction Specialist (98ae1f)

  16. The Tour de France is a cheating game where a bike race occasionally breaks out.

    luagha (1de9ec)

  17. He ruined a lot of lives for his own glory. He disgusts me.

    MayBee (b27ea0)

  18. Do these drugs work on arthritis?
    I love cortisone.

    mg (31009b)

  19. He ruined a lot of lives for his own glory. He disgusts me.

    Comment by MayBee (b27ea0) — 1/14/2013

    He’s a shameless liar, that’s for sure.

    Dustin (73fead)

  20. Lance ‘s best finish before he got sick was 36th.
    He will be paying lawsuits the rest of his life.
    Just what the lawyers ordered.

    mg (31009b)

  21. I truly feel sorry for Greg Lemond, 3 time winner of the tour de france, Armstrong trashed this great cyclists career.

    mg (31009b)

  22. 26.He is not pleading no contest, Leviticus. He has passed every test ever given him, and said he is done fighting their nonsense.

    Comment by JD (318f81) — 8/24/2012 @ 8:58 am

    EPWJ (8a4ca7)

  23. Is it sad that I understood the reference in the title without the Monty Python clip?

    Kman (5576bf)

  24. watching a cnn propaganda slut like carol costello feign incredulousness at lance’s lies is a lot of surreal to wake up to

    happyfeet (ce327d)

  25. I say find out what he was using, and send a case of it to everyone in Washington.
    Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 1/14/2013 @ 7:32 pm

    — A case of cheating? Feh! They’ve already got one.

    Icy (843df0)

  26. Is it sad that I understood the reference in the title without the Monty Python clip?
    Comment by Kman (5576bf) — 1/15/2013 @ 6:58 am

    — Just means you’re old, like a lot of us, and (well, it is you) almost cool.

    Icy (843df0)

  27. watching a cnn propaganda slut like carol costello feign incredulousness at lance’s lies is a lot of surreal to wake up to
    Comment by happyfeet (ce327d) — 1/15/2013 @ 7:10 am

    — Funny. Most people I know use CNN like Ambien.

    Icy (843df0)

  28. that’s why it was on when i woke up

    happyfeet (ce327d)

  29. Smock Puppet doing the “Patterico’s wasting our time,” dance?

    Uncool.

    Thou hath snarketh motht inappropriately.

    Icy (843df0)

  30. I used to do that, too, Mr. feets. That’s how I woke up on 9/11/01 to the sound of Matt Lauer’s voice.

    Now, I cannot think about that tragedy without hearing his adenoidal whine in my head.

    It’s like solemnly walking up to the ruins of your tornado-ravaged house to salvage a few mementos … and stepping on a rake in the yard.

    Icy (843df0)

  31. i’d forgotten about him last i heard he was maybe not getting his contract renewed

    i think it’s amazing how many propaganda sluts are feeding out of the same trough but I don’t think it’s sustainable

    happyfeet (ce327d)

  32. Comment by Leviticus (17b7a5) — 1/14/2013 @ 9:20 pm
    I dunno. I’m just back from helping myself to some delicious tasty drugs myself. So yeah.
    — Ah, college. A place where a young person can go to throw out all sense of morality in order to discover what is really important in life.

    But if you were to ask me whether or not I’d helped myself to them, I’d be like “Um. Yeah. Several, in fact.”
    — If you want to shrink your testes without side effects, might I suggest the video stylings of one Ms. Sandra Fluke?

    Icy (843df0)

  33. For ‘sustainability’, see above ^^^

    Icy (843df0)

  34. Why should the top level of sports be reserved for those lucky enough to have been born with the top natural talents?

    — Has Patterico erected the Comment Hall of Fame yet?

    [BTW, I hear that the PGA is going to disallow players from wedging the putter up against their bodies. About damn time, I say!]

    Icy (843df0)

  35. I agree with those people who think what Armstrong did was no big deal.

    Does anyone here really care about the Tour De France?

    I’m not particularly picking on the sport of cycling. I like bike riding. I’m just not interested in watching someone else do it.

    All sports are like that with me. They only interest me if I’m the one playing the game.

    What’s wrong if those who weren’t quite so lucky in the natural lottery decide to improve themselves?

    There’s nothing wrong with it, I guess. But just knowing that the only thing that kept me out of the NFL was my unwillingness to take steroids makes me disinterested in watching all those guys who were willing.

    Steve57 (fe2b65)

  36. I’ve a hunch Armstrong would also wholeheartedly agree to claim to be a hermit crab if he thought it would get him back into the good graces of the Tour de France and pro biking.
    Comment by qdpsteve (e4fc78) — 1/14/2013 @ 8:27 pm

    — I find it more than a little giggle-worthy, the notion that by confessing to cheating Armstrong will somehow be allowed back into competitive cycling’s good graces.
    1) He’s 41 years old; that’s retirement age in his sport.
    2) The only thing professional cycling wants from him now is for him to tell them how he did it and how he got away with it.

    Icy (843df0)

  37. EPWJ has been all over the place lately. Either they are presumed innocent until proven guilty, or those who gave them that much are to be ridiculed… it appears this rule changes based on whether EPWJ likes the person of interest.

    — Even EPWJ knows that David Gregory broke the ‘law that shouldn’t be a law’. He’s seen the evidence with his own eyes.

    Nobody knows that Lance Armstrong violated cycling’s anti-doping policy; not until or unless Armstrong admits it, that is.

    Icy (843df0)

  38. The only thing that shocked me about the Lance Armstrong affair was discovering there’s a federal agency that polices athlete’s who use performance enhancing drugs.

    The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

    I guess we must have solved all our other federal law enforcement problems if they’ve got the time to waste on this.

    Steve57 (fe2b65)

  39. i think you can largely thank meghan’s coward daddy for that entrenched little bit of nannystate nonsense

    happyfeet (ce327d)

  40. Oprah Winfrey said Lance Armstrong, who she said confessed to her that he used performance-enhancing drugs during his string of Tour de France victories, did ‘not come clean in the manner’ she expected, Reuters reported.
    Winfrey went on to say that she would leave it to others to decided if the former champion was contrite during the interview that was taped on Monday in Texas, but she did call him thoughtful and serious.

    — Can you say the “everybody else was doing it” or “the particular thing I was doing was a gray area at that time,” defense? Slick “parsing of the word ‘is'” Willie rears his ugly little head yet again.

    Icy (843df0)

  41. Can you say the “everybody else was doing it” or “the particular thing I was doing was a gray area at that time,” defense?

    It may not be a defense, but everyone else was doing it. The Tour De France titles stripped from Armstrong now have no official winner. The second and third place riders were also doping.

    Steve57 (fe2b65)

  42. CHEVY VOLT GOES UPSCALE IN NEW ELECTRIC CADILLAC
    General Motors is trying to find more buyers for the Chevrolet Volt’s electric technology. So it’s putting it inside a new Cadillac. The company on Tuesday introduced the Cadillac ELR, which has the same battery and gas-powered generator as the Chevy version.

    — Because NOTHING impresses the neighbors more than when your Caddy catches fire.

    Icy (843df0)

  43. 41. – Because NOTHING impresses the neighbors more than when your Caddy catches fire.

    Comment by Icy (843df0) — 1/15/2013 @ 8:50 am

    I dunno. If you really want to impress the neighbors with a flammable electric vehicle you could spend $100 grand on these:

    http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/10/31/fisker-karmas-catch-fire-after-being-submerged-by-hurricane-sandy-flood/

    I’ve never owned a car that would catch fire when it gets wet. I guess you have to pay extra for that.

    Steve57 (fe2b65)

  44. Comment by Steve57 (fe2b65) — 1/15/2013 @ 8:48 am

    — Unfortunately, this also re-raises the never-to-be-answered question of “Did blood doping (or whatever he was doing to enhance himself) contribute to or cause his cancer?”

    Icy (843df0)

  45. The moral of the Lance Armstrong story is we all need heros. Just don’t let the media/sports/entertainment guys pick ’em for you. Find them in your daily life.

    glenn (647d76)

  46. herein we see Meghan’s coward daddy trying to expand USADA’s umbrella to cover Major League Baseball

    what he’s mostly accomplished is to get USADA involved in his fascist dream of hyper-regulating dietary supplements

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  47. Comment by Icy (843df0) — 1/15/2013 @ 8:50 am

    Because NOTHING impresses the neighbors more than when your Caddy catches fire.

    Cadillacs will have gone through enough tests, but that wasn’t true for the Boeing 787.

    These explosions of lithium batteries always come as a surprise. That’s because they don’t have the proper science.

    It’s actually the same thing that Fleischmann and Pons discovered in the 1980s – in fact they actually first encountered this in the 1960s:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/science/martin-fleischmann-cold-fusion-seeker-dies-at-85.html?pagewanted=all

    Cold fusion. In the form of sudden unexpected small explosions.

    Only the didn’t have the right explanation – they thought hydrogen atoms were fusing together when brought into close proximity inside palladium, and this was discredited:

    http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/050399sci-cold-fusion.html

    An article in the November 2012 issue of Discover explains what might really have happened. (I think it was Discover, but it might be the article in Popular Science. I can’t read it here, but maybe it is clearer on some other computers)

    ht/in.zinio.com/sitemap/ScienceTech-magazines/Discover/Nov-12/cat1960026/is-416237221/pg-13

    Anyway, it wasn’t the palladium, it was the lithium. It turns out that when protons are put into a strong electrical field, some of the electrons merge with the proton (hydrogen nuclei) to create neutrons. Neutrons have now been discovered in the aftermath of lightning.

    Now loose neutrons have a half life of bout 20 minutes, after which they decay back into a proton and an electron.

    But before that, they can enter atoms and create isotopes.

    One of the atoms neutrons easily enter in is lithium.

    H + e = neutron + Li -> Be + e

    The lithium, with an extra neutron quickly decays, emitting a beta particle (an electron) to become beryllium.

    Beryllium is very unusual it that it does not accept neutrons. in fact it repels them.

    The beryllium isotope then quickly decays into 2 helium particles.

    What I don’t know is if this is true for all lithium or only lithium-6 or lithium 7 (92% of lithim is lithium 7)

    It would become either Beryllium-7 or beryllium-8. If it beryllium-8 then what you get at the end are two alpha particles. (aka helium nuclei)

    In any case, the hotter the battery gets, the more neutrons are absorbed by the lithium. Or maybe it’s the other way around – the more neutrons are absorbed by the lithium, the hotter the battery gets. Maybe the beryllium sometimes emits a neutron instead of splitting up and perhaps two neutrons sometimes are created in lace of one.

    Anyway this is something not yet known to science, and science now proceeds very slowly. It’s not the 1930s.

    At some point so much heat is generated that the battery explodes.

    There ought to be way to get control of this reaction – in fact somebody who knows enough could probably figure out right now what to do.

    Sammy Finkelman (5b43a3)

  48. 47. There ought to be way to get control of this reaction – in fact somebody who knows enough could probably figure out right now what to do.

    Comment by Sammy Finkelman (5b43a3) — 1/15/2013 @ 9:32 am

    Judging by the Volt, that somebody isn’t an engineer at GM.

    Steve57 (fe2b65)

  49. That episode where homer, was put in charge, of designing a car, by long lost brother comes to mind,

    narciso (3fec35)

  50. “These explosions of lithium batteries always come as a surprise. That’s because they don’t have the proper science.”

    Sammy – Exactly. Thirty years of testing is not enough. Just as 30 years of manufacturing and improvement is not enough to make wind power economically competitive without tax credits and subsidies.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  51. Herb!

    Icy (843df0)

  52. Record LOW temp here in Tucson last night.

    Al Roker, AlGroper . . . neither one of them has a degree in meteorology.

    Icy (843df0)

  53. Armstrong violated the law, so of course he must be punished and shamed for his illegal drug use. Of course it disqualifies him from a critical and important position like heading a charity he founded (that has helped countless people) and holding some records. I’m sure Obama himself will be along at any time now to chastise Armstrong for his illegal drug use, and point out why he should be stripped of his accomplishments as a consequence.

    Oh, wait…. is that the choom wagon I hear?

    Arizona CJ (f147c7)

  54. Comment by Sammy Finkelman (5b43a3) — 1/15/2013 @ 9:32 am:

    “There ought to be way to get control of this reaction – in fact somebody who knows enough could probably figure out right now what to do.

    Comment by Steve57 (fe2b65) — 1/15/2013 @ 9:48 am

    Judging by the Volt, that somebody isn’t an engineer at GM.

    Here’s story of another explosion:

    http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0411/GM-Explosion-at-battery-research-facility-unrelated-to-the-Chevrolet-Volt

    At the heart of the explosion was a lithium-ion battery, according to a fire department official cited in local news reports.

    </b

    They still don't know that there may be a nuclear reaction involved here. There's got to be a connection between all these lithium battery explosions that nobody ever predicts in advance and the explosions related to “cold fusion.”

    It’s now often called low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) instead of “cold fusion”

    Here’s a report of some people working on it:

    http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115×11681

    Somebody maybe duplicated it in 2009:

    http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BiberianJPunexplaine.pdf (not clear if there was lithium around somewhere)

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  55. Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 1/15/2013 @ 10:28 am

    Thirty years of testing is not enough. Just as 30 years of manufacturing and improvement is not enough to make wind power economically competitive without tax credits and subsidies

    The technology isn’t good enough until it finally is. Lithium batteries have been improving. Not so, i think, wind power.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  56. Here it is:

    http://in.zinio.com/sitemap/ScienceTech-magazines/Discover/Nov-12/cat1960026/is-416237221/pg-13

    I think it’s deliberately out of focus.

    I;m not sure if the story is free, if you know what to do.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  57. People like Armstrong and Sosa are why I stopped being a sports fan many, many years ago. If you don’t know who’s cheating by taking PEDs, what’s the point in cheering for anyone?

    CrustyB (69f730)

  58. He has still never failed a drug test.

    He may actually have failed it once or twice and had it suppressed, but basically that’s true – because he knew exactrly what were the limits of teh drug tests, what was being tested, etc.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/sports/cycling/how-lance-armstrong-beat-cyclings-drug-tests.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  59. “The technology isn’t good enough until it finally is. Lithium batteries have been improving. Not so, i think, wind power.”

    Sammy – Thank goodness we have the free market to prevent forcing stuff like that on consumers before it is ready…….Oh, wait.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  60. ” – Ah, college. A place where a young person can go to throw out all sense of morality in order to discover what is really important in life.”

    – Icy

    I don’t really think having a few beers equates to “throw[ing] out all sense of morality.”

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  61. But you notice that I’m not lying about it, I hope.

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  62. Doping violates the rules of the sports we’re talking about, right? So Armstrong was cheating, right? And cheating is bad, right? And lying over and over and over about cheating is bad, right?

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  63. well if you’re gonna parse everything like that then yeah probably there are some different choices Lance maybe could’ve made that would’ve been better from an ethical perspective

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  64. And cheating is bad, right? And lying over and over and over about cheating is bad, right?

    I think that sums it up.

    None of us are sinless and we should be wary of being overly judgmental (I have a problem with this a lot), but Lance Armstrong was very dishonest, and as Crusty said, this kind of behavior ruins the sport. All the cheaters are actually taking a lot from the fans, so they are selfish too.

    It’s great that Lance has raised funds for cancer research, though I think a lot of that movement was a little too focused on the less noble aspects of charity (such as the showy rubber bracelets). I also think his athletic accomplishment is still impressive. It’s sad that all that work is now completely ruined.

    Dustin (73fead)

  65. People like Armstrong and Sosa are why I stopped being a sports fan many, many years ago. If you don’t know who’s cheating by taking PEDs, what’s the point in cheering for anyone?

    Why not cheer for whoever is performing well, regardless of how they got the talent? Why is talent from genes better than talent from drugs?

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  66. Milhouse – Have you ever competed in any competitive sports?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  67. Lance Armstrong was always careful never to take the kind of drugs that could harm your health – it was usually extra amounts of substances normally in the body, or that could be in the body. He apparently never used steroids. But it wasn’t extra vitamins, either, and I gather, most of it was injected and not swallowed.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  68. Milhouse – Have you ever competed in any competitive sports?

    No. What difference does that make? What I see here is exactly the same pagan worship of the “natural” and disdain for the “artificial” that we decry in the green movement.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  69. Another thing that can be said for Lance Armstrong wa sthat at the time he was racing, there probably wasn’t any person at the top rank whho didn’t dope in some way – it simply wasn’t humanly possible to do so well. Lance Armstrong, however, was better at picking out what to use, both to avoid detection, and to avoid harmful (and noticeable) side effects, although we have this question about the cancer.

    His career should be studied in order to help recognize situations where in spoite of “proof” to the contrary, there could still be a coverup going on.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  70. Well, it was against the rules. In baseball, for instance, it is against teh rules to use a spitball, but not to throw a knuckleball, or for that matter, to steal a base.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  71. What I see here is exactly the same pagan worship of the “natural” and disdain for the “artificial” that we decry in the green movement.

    Talent in sports is a bit like breasts: while the artificial kind looks impressive, the natural kind is so much more aesthetically pleasing.

    Chuck Bartowski (11fb31)

  72. “No. What difference does that make?”

    Milhouse – Well, if you had any experience participating in competitive sports it might color your opinion. Wondering whether you were getting your butt kicked because you did not have enough talent or didn’t work hard enough or because the other guy was taking performance enhancing drugs takes humility, something which you lack.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  73. What I see here is exactly the same pagan worship of the “natural” and disdain for the “artificial” that we decry in the green movement.

    Comment by Milhouse (15b6fd)

    I think that is a strange interpretation.

    They have rules. When you compete, you should honor those rules. If you don’t like the rules, come up with your own sport that doesn’t have them. I think that may be one answer to this. A doping league and a non doping league (for many sports).

    This seems very simple to me.

    Dustin (73fead)

  74. “A doping league and a non doping league (for many sports).”

    Dustin – Or clearly identify the doping competitors with some symbol on their uniforms.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  75. Milhouse – Well, if you had any experience participating in competitive sports it might color your opinion. Wondering whether you were getting your butt kicked because you did not have enough talent or didn’t work hard enough or because the other guy was taking performance enhancing drugs takes humility, something which you lack.

    Talent is talent; what difference does it make where it comes from? If you have less talent than the other guy, why does it matter whether it’s because you had the wrong parents, or used the wrong training regimen, or ate the wrong foods, or wore the wrong shoes, or took the wrong drugs?

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  76. Winning by breaking the rules is talent?

    Dustin (73fead)

  77. Did anyone really think he could have won all those races without doping? Even after chemo?

    I just figured everybody did it, and everybody kept it quiet because … everybody did it.

    I think that was the common view and why he ended up confessing on Oprah’s sub-network show.

    Patricia (be0117)

  78. They have rules. When you compete, you should honor those rules

    Why are we so concerned about an arbitrary rule? A rule that is routinely broken is not a rule, no matter what the books say. My point here is that people seem so upset, as if this rule were not simply an arbitrary decision of some bureaucrat in the particular sport, but a moral principle.

    For that matter, why did they have that rule in the first place? I believe it’s because they were pressured to adopt it, by people who were motivated, ultimately, by a pagan nature fetish. The same fetish that makes people disdain “artificial” ingredients in food and imagine that “natural” ones are better, that values “untouched wilderness” over places that have been improved by human effort, and ultimately that makes some extreme people prefer that a cougar, wolf, or polar bear kill a human than the other way around.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  79. Why are we so concerned about an arbitrary rule?

    There is absolutely nothing arbitrary about it.

    And everyone is 100% aware of the rule. Lance swore repeatedly that he would never break it.

    In a contest, it’s important that everyone play by the rules so that it really is a test of talent.

    This is super simple stuff.

    Dustin (73fead)

  80. I just figured everybody did it, and everybody kept it quiet because … everybody did it.

    I suspect most of the successful racers did. I also bet that many racers didn’t, and perhaps some that were somewhat successful didn’t. Their triumph has been stolen.

    Dustin (73fead)

  81. PED’s are not equivalents to hard work or talent, Milhouse.

    JD (b63a52)

  82. as if this rule were not simply an arbitrary decision of some bureaucrat

    How is a rule that governs everybody participating in a sport arbitrary? It is not like they pulled it oh of their arses.

    JD (b63a52)

  83. 78. I think Milhouse nails this one.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  84. Don’t get me wrong …. I think PED’s should be allowed. I think there are certain sports where their efficacy is far greater, biking being near the top of the list. No steroid ever improved eye hand coordination allowing a baseball player to put a bat on a 98 mph fastball. No steroid allows a basketball to come off a shooters hand with the right trajectory and proper back spin.

    JD (b63a52)

  85. I know that major league baseball has made a joke of the rules, but there’s a reason we looked down on the East German and Russian teams,

    narciso (3fec35)

  86. “Talent is talent; what difference does it make where it comes from?”

    Milhouse – What do you know about athletic talent?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  87. Sports suck. Boxing was ruined back in the 70’s, Baseball has been crap since Nolan retired, Round ball is a freak show, one on one BS, Footsball is unwatchable.

    Demo derbies might still be pure but I wouldn’t bet on it.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  88. PED’s are not equivalents to hard work or talent, Milhouse.

    Why not? In what way are they inferior? Because you say so?

    How is a rule that governs everybody participating in a sport arbitrary? It is not like they pulled it oh of their arses.

    Where did they pull it from? What justifies it? If they were constitutionally barred from making arbitrary and capricious rules, as governmental bodies are, how would they defend it in court?

    Milhouse – What do you know about athletic talent?

    What is there to know about it? You can sneer all you like, but all you’ve got is snobbery and deep down a pagan reverence for Mother Nature.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  89. Why not? In what way are they inferior? Because you say so?

    Yes, sure. Hard work is not something that can be purchased.

    Where did they pull it from? What justifies it? If they were constitutionally barred from making arbitrary and capricious rules, as governmental bodies are, how would they defend it in court?

    Good for them the Constitution is silent on the rule of sports as promulgated by their governing bodies.

    Since you know not the difference between hard work and PEDs, or the difference between talent and taking a pill, I shall slink off so as to not get in the way of your ignorance.

    JD (840c05)

  90. “You can sneer all you like, but all you’ve got is snobbery and deep down a pagan reverence for Mother Nature.”

    Milhouse – I must have missed that.

    All I see is you bloviating on yet another subject about which you know nothing with what most rational people would term a complete lack of a moral compass. Your bizarre personal philosophy that it perfectly fine to choose which laws to obey, cheat to win elections, nations should not enforce borders except Israel, statutory rape laws should be eliminated, among many other “interesting” positions suggest a deeply narcissistic anti-social personality disorder.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  91. 100 years ago there was the cult of “amateurism”, and people looked down their noses at professional athletes. There was no justification at all for this, it was pure snobbery; amateurs were by definition “gentlemen” — who else could afford to play for free? — while professionals were from those nasty lower classes who worked for their livings. That is all there ever was to it. Pure classism. And at the bottom that’s all there is to the modern disdain of PEDs.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  92. “What is there to know about it?”

    Milhouse – What kind of argument is that?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  93. “That is all there ever was to it. Pure classism. And at the bottom that’s all there is to the modern disdain of PEDs.”

    Ignorant buffoon.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  94. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

    JD (840c05)

  95. PEDs are the future

    I know this cause they’re in Snow Crash

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  96. Crusty B–since you brought up Sammy Sosa in your comment I thought you and others might enjoy this:

    Rep. Mike Quigley is the Democrat congressman from the Illinois 5th congressional district (this is the seat both Blago and Rahm once held). Mike Quigley was at City Club of Chicago on Monday. This is a decades old, paid membership, lunch meeting which serves as a friendly venue for nonpartisan forums and debates on public issues that pertain to Chicago metropolitan residents. Yesterday Quigley was asked the odds of this Congress passing meaningful gun control legislation. In true Quigley fashion, he said Sammy Sosa had a better chance of being elected to the Hall of Fame than a gun control bill (any gun control bill) has of making it to the House floor.

    elissa (98cee2)

  97. In true Quigley fashion, he said the Cubs had a better chance of winning the World Series in the next decade than a gun control bill (any gun control bill) has of making it to the House floor.

    FTFY 😉

    JD (b63a52)

  98. Whatever, JD. I am a White Sox fan! We got our WS trophy in 2005. 🙂

    The Cubbies? meh. There’s a high likelihood dead certainty that Congressman Quigley is both a Cub fan and a gun control fan, though. So he’s really sort of doubly screwed.

    elissa (98cee2)

  99. Well played, Elissa. Well played.

    JD (b63a52)

  100. Milhouse –

    I think you’ve set up a false dichotomy between “Drugs” and “Talent.” The better dichotomy is between “Drugs” and “Hard Work.”

    We honor athletes because they work so hard to gain the skills and strength and endurance that make them successful. If someone can gain the same strength and skills and endurance with less work and more drugs, then that devalues hard work. If someone can gain more strength and skills and endurance with the same amount of work and more drugs, then that devalues hard work vis a vis drugs. Either way, PEDs devalue the hard work which was once the currency of the athletic realm.

    Do you not think of strong work ethic or dedication to craft as moral principles, the value of which should be preserved if possible?

    Dustin is right: this is super simple stuff.

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  101. Oops. I see that JD already discussed the hard work issue.

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  102. We honor athletes because they work so hard to gain the skills and strength and endurance that make them successful.

    Really? What of someone who was just born with it, and doesn’t need hard work? Is his talent less valuable? That sounds like the labour theory of value. Is a ditch worth less because it was dug in half an hour with a backhoe rather than in a week by a team of navvies?

    Do you not think of strong work ethic or dedication to craft as moral principles, the value of which should be preserved if possible?

    A “work ethic” is not about valuing work for its own sake, it’s about not expecting to be given things by others. But work itself is not a good thing, it’s the price we pay for the things we want, and the less of it we can pay the better. If the same result can be achieved with more work or with less, then doing it the hard way is wasteful, inefficient, and approaches being morally wrong, to whatever extent morality is relevant to the question. Laziness is the mother of invention, after all. And I don’t even understand “dedication to craft”. What matters is results, not how they were achieved.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  103. Do you understand the difference between natural talent and hard work?

    JD (840c05)

  104. “What matters is results, not how they were achieved.”

    – Milhouse

    Well, as long as we’re talking about moral principles, I refuse to adopt that one.

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  105. PEDS are the future

    Well hey folks, if we’re gonna go there, then let’s really GO THERE. (Surprised Patterico didn’t think of linking this already.)

    http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi3241673753/

    qdpsteve (e4fc78)

  106. PEDs are the future
    I know this cause they’re in Snow Crash
    Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 1/15/2013 @ 4:42 pm

    — Nice!

    Geek.

    Icy (9d8b8c)

  107. I wish we could force government bureaucrats to take performance enhancing drugs.
    Some of those knuckleheads at the DMV move so slowly.

    Elephant Stone (a0910d)

  108. Do you understand the difference between natural talent and hard work?

    Of course. Either one can result in the same performance. And you seem to have no problem with the former. Or do you? Did Babe Ruth work hard, or was he just naturally good?

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  109. The only thing that shocked me about the Lance Armstrong affair was discovering there’s a federal agency that polices athlete’s who use performance enhancing drugs.

    The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

    USADA is not a federal government agency.

    The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is the national anti-doping organization for the Olympic movement in the United States. The U.S. Congress recognized USADA as “the official anti-doping agency for Olympic, Pan American and Paralympic sport in the United States.”
    Since its inception in 2000, USADA has worked to preserve the integrity of competition, inspire true sport and protect the rights of athletes in the Olympic & Paralympic movement in the United States. With the vision to be the guardian of the values and life lessons learned through true sport, our organization’s anti-doping programs are comprehensive, including in-competition and out-of-competition testing, results management and adjudication processes, drug reference resources and therapeutic use exemption process, scientific research initiatives, and athlete and outreach education. We continue to work to improve our system and anti-doping endeavors to further protect clean athletes and the health of future athletes.
    As a non-profit, non-governmental agency, our programs:

    Provide deterrence and preservation of sport for athletes, coaches, students, teachers, parents, scientists and more through education and resources;
    Include numerous protections for athletes to ensure that only athletes who are guilty of a doping violation are sanctioned;
    Strive to systematically identify and sanction those individuals who are engaged in the effort to gain an advantage over athletes who are competing clean; and
    Fund pioneering research for the detection of doping substances and techniques, and the pursuit of scientific excellence in doping control.

    Michael Ejercito (2e0217)

  110. USADA is not a government entity, however the agency is partly funded by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), with its remaining budget generated from contracts for anti-doping services with sport organizations, most notably the United States Olympic Committee.[5] The United States has also ratified the UNESCO International Convention against Doping in Sport, the first global international treaty against doping in sport, and relies in a large part on USADA to carry out this commitment
    Contents

    happyfeet (ce327d)

  111. “Do you understand the difference between natural talent and hard work?”

    JD – I’m not sure Milhouse would be able to differentiate between an athlete who had natural ability and one who developed skills purely through hard work, but he seems to believe that world class athletes spring from the womb ready to compete on the international stage as soon as they can walk based upon the content of his comments. Such invincible, weapons grade ignorance is tough to argue against.

    I’m frankly surprised he didn’t cite the little known fact that Michael Jordan was able to complete a reverse 360 dunk at the age of 18 months.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  112. Did Babe Ruth work hard at his game? Or did he just have natural talent? More importantly, why should anyone care?

    The labour theory of value is bunk, and anyone who believes in it has no place in the liberal (now known as conservative) movement.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  113. Daley – I don’t really get why Milhouse insists on overlaying so e political theory over sports. As Leviticus noted, I shall not subscribe to his theory that the ends are all that matter, or that not cheating could be immoral. Unlike Milhouse, I can appreciate the beauty of natural talent, but can also respect the time, work, discipline, and dedication of one devoted to their craft.

    JD (b63a52)

  114. Some have been claiming that everyone in cycling uses PED’s at the elite level. It sounds like one of those things that “everybody” knows which is in fact BS. But if it’s true then he didn’t have an unfair advantage so what’s the big deal?

    Gerald A (138c50)

  115. Gerald – I think in one of his wins, 22 or 23 of the Top 25 had tested positive. That is obviously not all, but a significant number of the top riders.

    JD (b63a52)

  116. JD

    But isnt the use of PEDS circumventing the discipline to build the stamina and the strength to compete at elite levels?

    I agree with you about hand eye coordination and the other skills but tremedous strength in many sports overcomes those deficits.

    EPWJ (8a4ca7)

  117. Comment by Gerald A (138c50) — 1/16/2013 @ 6:14 am

    But if it’s true then he didn’t have an unfair advantage so what’s the big deal?

    Somebody was asked that sort of question on the CBS Evening News last night, and he gave three reasons why indeed Lance Armstrong had an unfair advantage over other competitors.

    1) Not everybody had the same amount of money. This doping regimen cost money, so it placed an higher premium on money. Of course that’s true anyway, in building bicycles, and even more true in auto racing.

    2) Not everybody was willing to take the same risks. (and you can add the fact itis against the rules, limits the nummber of competitors)

    3) Not everybody had the same connections he did.

    In addition, unlike the people in baseball, he was the captain of his team and forced other members of his team to take drugs – and they hadn’t necessarily signed up for that, nor foor the dishonesty.

    He also had the chutzpah sue people who accused him of cheating, and even win the cases.

    One way Lance Armstrong differed from some of his competitors is he was more careful, both detection-wise and health-wise, what he used. He was better at this sort of stuff.

    Sammy Finkelman (b4516d)

  118. What really started Lance Armstrong at cheating was when he cheated at fighting cancer and won. He probably has not told the full truth of the things he did to beat cancer. Some of it may not have been legal.

    Sammy Finkelman (b4516d)

  119. JD – You just have a pagan nature fetish.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  120. Also, you’re a Communist.

    Leviticus (180ca0)

  121. I denounce you.

    Leviticus (180ca0)

  122. I denounce him too.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  123. i don’t know why it’s so important for the cnn propaganda sluts to keep hammering Mr. Lance

    these are the people who hired Eliot Spitzer and bought him his own whore sidekick to pal around with, and yet they would have you believe Mr. Lance, who has done a lot of genuine for reals good in the world particularly in the battle against the cancerous cells, is hopelessly irredeemable

    it doesn’t compute really

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  124. but tremedous strength in many sports overcomes those deficits.

    Nope. Doesn’t matter how strong you are if you can’t put the bat on the ball, club on the ball, etc. Were strength such an overriding characteristic, we would see body builders and power lifters dunking basketballs. Functional strength is key.

    I agree PEDs aid in that. Never disputed that. They to more in training and recovery than in performance, though they are obviously linked.

    JD (840c05)

  125. What really started Lance Armstrong at cheating was when he cheated at fighting cancer and won. He probably has not told the full truth of the things he did to beat cancer. Some of it may not have been legal.

    WTFF?!

    JD (840c05)

  126. Unpaid high school and college athletes who have no hopes of competing on the professional or international level or seeing a dime of money from their athletic endeavors consume PEDs like weasels on crack because they are not pagan nature fetishists and know the labor theory of value is bunk.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  127. JD

    I agree

    EPWJ (8a4ca7)

  128. 108. Comment by Elephant Stone (a0910d) — 1/15/2013 @ 7:48 pm

    I wish we could force government bureaucrats to take performance enhancing drugs.

    It could be a good idea.

    You could start with coffee.

    But those were not the kinds of drugs that lance Armstrong used. What he did mainly was to increase the number of red blood cells in his (and other team members’) blood.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  129. Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 1/16/2013 @ 10:49 am

    reals good in the world particularly in the battle against the cancerous cells,

    I am not so sure. I think he cheated in his fight against cancer, (he did things other people couldn’t do) but doesn’t want to admit it.

    Has Lance Armstrong explained what he did to beat cancer? Or has he lied about it?

    What exactly did he do? What treatment? All that wikipedia says is:

    His cancer treatments included brain and testicular surgery and extensive chemotherapy. In February 1997, he was declared cancer-free and the same year he founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer support.

    What do you mean he “was declared cancer free?”

    WHAT DID HE DO??

    Whatever he did do, it looks like he kept it a secret, and set up this foundation as a cover – like he doesn’t know already something important about cancer..

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  130. Another possibility, of course, is that whole cancer episode was a hoax – something he needed as an excuse to withdraw from competition, because he knew his use of performance enhancing drugs would be detected.

    Do we know for a fact he had cancer? Some impartial source? At least that he actually underwent surgery and chemotherapy?

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  131. SF: What really started Lance Armstrong at cheating was when he cheated at fighting cancer and won. He probably has not told the full truth of the things he did to beat cancer. Some of it may not have been legal.

    126. Comment by JD (840c05) — 1/16/2013 @ 11:15 am

    WTFF?!

    Yes, the whole cancer episode is very mysterious.

    I think it’s is quite possible that breaking the rules in his fight against cancer – perhaps contacts he made – motivated him,or gave him the contacts to break other rules.

    Or maybe he never had cancer at all.

    Two things seem clear:

    1) In spite of his setting up a cancer research foundation, Lance Armtroing has apparently never vouchsafed to the world exactly what he did to beat cancer after his prognosis had been declared very bad.

    I would think anybody cured of cancer by an unusual treatment would want to publicize it. Similar to the story Lorenzo’s Oil and nerve disease. (adrenoleukodystrophy or ALD)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo's_Oil
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104756/

    <i In their quest, the Odones clashed with doctors, scientists, and support groups, who were skeptical that anything could be done about Adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), much less by laypeople.

    But this is not what we see. Has Lance Armstrong ever talked about what he did to beat cancer?

    If the story of Lance Armstrong’s fight against cancer is true, he must have done the same thing: clashed with experts, maybe even broke laws.

    Maybe even established the contacts that later enabled him to cheat so successfully.

    2) His cheating started, or is believed to have started, after he recovered from cancer.

    As I said, maybe the cheating started before and the cancer story was just a way to drop out of competition without questions being asked.

    So either he broke some laws or rules and paid a lot of money – bribes – to get the treatment for cancer, and was sworn to secrecy, or he never had cancer at all.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  132. Is Astroglide a PED? Makes STP look like glue.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  133. I am not so sure. I think he cheated in his fight against cancer, (he did things other people couldn’t do) but doesn’t want to admit it.

    Has Lance Armstrong explained what he did to beat cancer? Or has he lied about it?

    What exactly did he do? What treatment? All that wikipedia says is:

    His cancer treatments included brain and testicular surgery and extensive chemotherapy. In February 1997, he was declared cancer-free and the same year he founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer support.

    What do you mean he “was declared cancer free?”

    WHAT DID HE DO??

    Whatever he did do, it looks like he kept it a secret, and set up this foundation as a cover – like he doesn’t know already something important about cancer..

    Maybe even broke the law too. Chopped off his nut just for cover.

    JD (b63a52)

  134. do we even know where the offending testicle is today?

    Anderson Cooper needs to work the 360 action on this story

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  135. “do we even know where the offending testicle is today?”

    Mr. Feets – I ponder that question myself. Maybe Sheryl “One Sheet” Crow knows the answer. Does Mr. Armstrong use a neuticle to stay balanced? Balance is important in cycling.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  136. poor sheryl has a lot on her pate right now

    happyfeet (ce327d)

  137. Comment by JD (b63a52) — 1/16/2013 @ 5:57 pm

    Chopped off his nut just for cover.

    If he didn’t have cancer, he almost certainly didn’t do that, and the surgery is as real as the surgery undergone by Lennay Kekua.

    What doesn’t add up, is that no story of finding a doctor, or doing some experimental treatment, made its way into the Wikipedia article about Lance Armstrong, and yet he admits (or claims) the first series of doctors he saw gave him a very poor prognosis and he didn’t use them, and he also set up a cancer research foundation

    What would make sense is either:

    A) Some of the contacts he made in his search for a cure for his cancer were vital also in telling him how to beat the drug tests and so he had to keep all the detils secret.

    OR

    B) He began cheating before, and he made up the story about cancer to explain his sudden retirement, the way basketball player Magic Johnson made up his story about having AIDS.

    Sammy Finkelman (03b22d)

  138. There is some indication from today’s New York times that Lance Armstrong at least was in a hospital.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/sports/cycling/hard-questions-for-lance-armstrong.html?hpw&_r=0

    Frankie Andreu, one of your former teammates and closest friends, said he and his wife, Betsy, heard a doping confession from you in October 1996 when visiting you in a hospital while you fought cancer. They said they were in the room with several of your friends when they overheard two doctors ask if you had ever used performance-enhancing drugs. They said you had answered yes: EPO, testosterone, human growth hormone and cortisone.

    Stephanie McIlvain, your personal representative at Oakley who is married to a man high up in that company, told the three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond in a 2004 phone call that she heard that doping admission. “I’m not going to lie,” she said in the conversation that LeMond secretly recorded. “You know, I was in that room. I heard it.”

    When you denied, again and again, that the admission never occurred, were you lying? If so, how did you keep most of the people in the hospital room that day quiet about your doping? Did former sponsors, like Nike and Oakley, know about your doping? Did they ever ask you about any of the doping allegations? If not, why do you think they never asked when the evidence against you was mounting?

    There are two possibilities:

    1) He did admit it, but only some people close to him heard it and they didn’t talk often, and were beholden to him, so it was no big deal to keep them quiet.

    OR

    2) The whole story of the admission to doctors at the hospital was made up to bolster the notion that he had cancer, and at the same time, could NOT REALLY be used against him, but because it was an admission of drug use they’d believe the hospital. Who said this story first? Is it otherwise plausible? Q. Why would this be asked in front of a lot of witnesses? Why would Lance Armstrong not ask for privacy?? (you could say he’d given up hope of returning to racing and none oif thsi mattered to him at the time)

    The drugs by the way, include steroids. I read something to the effect that he had a stash in 2004. This is quite possible. It could be for otehrs, and it could also be he used them very sparringly after 1996, because if he had used a lot it would ahve been detectible and visible.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  139. Down yet another rabbit-hole goes Sammy.

    JD (840c05)

  140. lance is trying so hard to make things right

    but anderson cooper just isn’t having it

    “no you are NOT forgiven,” says Anderson, in a voice dripping with scorn.

    and a tear rolls silently down lance’s cheek

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  141. “Down yet another rabbit-hole goes Sammy.”

    JD – I think Lance might have had a concussion, like Hillary, and then a blood clot near the brain, which combined could cause you to inadvertently forget things you said in the past or say things which were not truthful at the time or some combination of the two or maybe neither.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  142. I think Lance broke the law when he removed his testicle and was cured of cancer.

    JD (840c05)

  143. JD – I think his testicle is in the Smithsonian.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  144. Or maybe somebody deep fried it and ate it. It tough sometimes to tell with these things.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  145. I found two stories from the 1990s in the New York Times:

    http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/09/sports/armstrong-acknowledges-cancer-battle.html

    In this article, published (Wednesday) October 9, 1996 Lance Armstrong announced in a telephone conference call from his home in Austin, texas, that he had testicular cancer, that it had spread to his abdomen and lungs and that he started 12 weeks of chemotherapy on Monday (October 7)

    He stated further that the cancer had a survival rate of 97 percent, but that it goes down if it has spread, that his cancer was “advanced” but that his doctors put his chances of recovery at 65 and 85 percent. Checking with the National Cancer Institute, the New York times found out that five-year survival rate for testicular cancer, when it has spread to a distant site is 72.2 percent.

    (Later web pages, like this one, http://www.nndb.com/people/702/000030612/ claim doctrs told him he had a 50-50 chance. Perhaps that is supposed to be later)

    Anyway, Armstrong said he had started the chemotherapy on Monday, that he’d had 4 hours of chemotherapy the day before, and that his doctor has approved bicycle riding up to 50 miles a day as early as the next week (during the chemotherapy?).

    He said that it had happened very fast, after he had felt severe pain in a testicle, coughed up blood, and that after an ultrasound at St. David’s Hospital in Austin he was told the testicle had to be removed and it was the next day.

    Where was his career then? The article explains:

    In 1996, Armstrong dropped out of the Tour de France the first week claiming he lost his power in cold and rainy weather and could not finish a daily stage. (now we would say he discovered he’d lose a drug test) In the teleconference Armstrong said his cancer could not have affected him then because later in 1996 he did pretty well in the Olympic games aand other races and was competing at the highest levels a month before.

    Lance Armstrong had signed a two-year contract in Septembe the new Cofidis team in France for it was believed $1.25 million a year, and he was quietly refunding some of the money to pay his teammate Frankie Andreu (who has since said that in that month of October 1996 he heard Armstrong admit using 4 different drugs to to doctors.)

    Now you see, cancer would have been a way to get out of his contract.

    Suppose he was doping and that was the only reason he was so good. He could:

    A) continue, and get caught.

    B) stop using drugs and do suspiciously badly.

    C) Quit and raise suspicions as to why.

    D) Quit because he has cancer.

    The next article is from October 25, 1996:

    http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/25/sports/brain-surgery-for-armstrong.html

    His agent, Bill Stapleton, releases a statement saying that Lance Armstrong has just undergone brain surgery to remove two ”superficial lesions” during a procedure at Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis. (If this is superficial, why is this called brain surgery?)

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  146. Be made up the fake cancer and the. Had testicle removal surgery and brain surgery and chemotherapy in an elaborate ruse to avoid a drug test.

    JD (840c05)

  147. The claim now is that he really had had a lot less than a 50-50 chance of survival, but that his doctors had lied to him.

    So again, what went on here? Is it:

    A) A semi-miracle?

    B) Lance Armstrong beat cancer by cheating in some manner that he declines to reveal, in spite of the fact he’s started a cancer research foundation. [possible if the full story would iopen the door to revelations about doping]

    C) Lance Armstrong never had cancer at all.

    This is the version now:

    http://www.celebatheists.com/wiki/Lance_Armstrong

    On October 2, 1996, at age 25, Armstrong was diagnosed with stage three testicular cancer. The cancer spread to his lungs, abdomen and brain. On that first visit to a urologist in Austin, Texas, for his cancer symptoms he was coughing up blood and had a large, painful testicular tumor. Immediate surgery and chemotherapy were required to save his life. Armstrong had an orchiectomy to remove his diseased testicle. After his surgery, his doctor stated that he had less than a 40% survival chance.

    That’s not what Armstrong told reporters. When did the doctor say that? To whom? Was he authorized to speak?

    The standard chemotherapeutic regimen for the treatment of this type of cancer is a cocktail of the drugs bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin (or Platinol) (BEP). Armstrong, however, chose an alternative, etoposide, ifosfamide, and cisplatin (VIP), to avoid the lung toxicity associated with the drug bleomycin.[7] This decision may have saved his cycling career. His primary treatment was received at the Indiana University (IU), Indianapolis, Medical Center, where Dr. Lawrence Einhorn had pioneered the use of cisplatinum to treat testicular cancer. His primary oncologist there was Dr. Craig Nichols.[7] Also at IU, his brain tumors were surgically removed and found to contain extensive necrosis (dead tissue). His last chemotherapy treatment was received on December 13, 1996. source: wikipedia

    This is not now there in the Wikipedia article.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  148. I think the Saudi Arabian dude who killed Vince Foster has Lance’s testicle.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  149. This is Lance Armstrong explaining hiw he survived:

    http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/magazine/issues/summer06/articles/summer06pg6-9.html

    But all it says is that he underwent two surgeries Armstrong underwent two surgeries, one to remove his cancerous testicle and another to remove two cancerous lesions on his brain and that he received four rounds of chemotherapy over a three-month period.

    nd then he talks about a different method of fighting cancer – but it doesn’t say he did it!

    he says he read, he says “You must be your own best advocate to be sure the treatment you are getting is best for you” it says he discovered the National Cancer Institute and it’s a very valuable resource but doesn’t say what he learned from it helped him in any way!

    The only anecdoite he tells is about his experience is that his nurse Latrice Haney, started introducing me to other patients – or maybe we should say started introducing other patients to him, so they should be able to testify hhe wa sin the hospital? And he says he realized hiow many people had cancer.

    There’s something missing from the story.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  150. Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 1/17/2013 @ 3:05 pm

    I think the Saudi Arabian dude who killed Vince Foster has Lance’s testicle.

    They undoutably just discarded it as medical waste, or sent it to a pathologist. He’s an atheist, so it would not have been buried.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  151. ==Or maybe somebody deep fried it and ate it.==

    Daley, as you well know, they have annual festivals for that sort of thing (involving turkey testicles) up in cheese head land.

    elissa (f0ffcc)

  152. -He talks about the National Cancer Institute but doesn’t say what he learned from it, or that it helped him in any way!

    Did he pull strings? That could be a reason for not saying what he learned and hiding the impooirtant treatment that he got? It might have been off the record, in violation of some protocol, or “ethics” and maybe in the end led to more or better doping.

    Or was the whole cancer story a lie in the first place?

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  153. Of maybe he just got the standard protocol?!

    How does one cheat at cancer treatment? What possible criminal activities can you think he may have engaged in?

    I do not think he ever had cancer. Elaborate ruse to avoid testing. Everyone knows testicular removal and brain surgery makes you lighter and faster.

    JD (840c05)

  154. Lance Armstrong in 1997 about his cancer:

    http://tcrc.acor.org/lance.html

    He claims he knew something was wrong three years before – and he had always had a size difference between his testicles.

    He coughed up blood only once. (then would it actually be related to cancer at all?)

    His neighbor who was a urologist told him there was a high cure rate, biut at that time he (Lance Armstrong) didn’t know it was that bad in his my lungs or anything about AFP levels, HCG levels or anything about what was in his brain.

    He said he didn’t do any surgery for the mass in his abdomen because there was so little of it.

    Lance bowed his head to show 2 circular scars, 1 at the top, the other in the center/back of his head, both approximately the size of silver dollars.)

    As for alternative treatments, he said he took vitamins, but he alwasys took vitamins.

    Did your cancer affect your relationship with your sponsors, team mates, people around you?

    My (French) team sponsor wanted to renegotiate my contract right in the middle of my therapy! So there was some negative reaction…my family’s pretty small, and I have a few really close friends, and they were just solid. My first cycle of BEP chemo here, I’d have 10 people coming in with me! I even had 10 people fly up to IU after my brain surgery!

    Did you find the Europeans viewed your cancer differently than the Americans?

    Yeah they did…in our sport there’s a lot of talk about “doping”, and the sport is a big European sport, every day in the papers are articles about cycling and doping and there was a lot of speculation that my cancer was doping and I was a big doper and yada-yada-ya…that kind of stuff, it doesn’t even phase me, I’m like “whatever, guys”…but there wasn’t that much in America, Sports Illustrated said something about it (the doping) which I thought was kind of cheap…

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  155. Comment by JD (840c05) — 1/17/2013 @ 3:25 pm

    How does one cheat at cancer treatment? What possible criminal activities can you think he may have engaged in?

    Getting doctors to violate rules and use some treatment that’s not even yet in clinical trials.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  156. “Daley, as you well know, they have annual festivals for that sort of thing (involving turkey testicles) up in cheese head land.”

    elissa – They do many strange things north of the Cheese Curtain. Testicles are consumed in many parts of this country, which why I mentioned the possibility of part of Mr. Armstrong’s anatomy getting waylaid and snarfed in one of those rituals.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  157. Getting doctors to violate rules and use some treatment that’s not even yet in clinical trials.

    Do you have any evidence of this, or is this one of those things that because you think it is somehow possible, it becomes plausible?

    JD (b63a52)

  158. “Getting doctors to violate rules and use some treatment that’s not even yet in clinical trials.”

    Comment by JD (b63a52) — 1/17/2013 @ 4:15 pm

    Do you have any evidence of this, or is this one of those things that because you think it is somehow possible, it becomes plausible?

    Only the fact that he got better, when, according to the description he gave, he should have had very poor chances and he has given no explanation as to what he did different (beyond using somewhat different chemotherapy drugs)

    I was reading through the comments to a New York Times article about Lance Armstrong from last October, and I discovered something interesting:

    Erythropoietin (or EPO) the drug that Lance Armstrong is supposed to have used after his cancer treatment (he later switched to blood transfusions of his own blood) is also used, and used to be used more, in cancer treatment! There are now all kinds of warnings about it. It’s supposed to give people heart attacks because it supposedly thickens the blood, and it is supposed to promote cancer. EPO was never used to treat cancer – it was used to counteract the anemia caused by chemotherapy, because the number of red blood cells got too low. EPO stimulates the growth of blood cells.

    But, wait! Certain immune cells grow in the same place. What if a doctor had a theory, and was right, that EPO could boost the immune system.

    Like for instance, here:

    http://www.pnas.org/content/98/9/5181.full.pdf

    Now at that time there’s already a campaign against using EPO because it is supposed to harm people. It doesn’t build up till about 2002. But here we already sime worry by 1990 about heart attacks:

    http://articles.latimes.com/1990-06-02/sports/sp-143_1_performance-enhancing-drug

    And articles from 2008 indicates someone was climing caner already by 1990.

    Any doctor would get in trouble for using it as a treatment against the cancer itself. Lance Armstrong might possibly arrange for a bootleg supply. Which later on he would use for racing.

    By 2007, the EPA adds a black box warning:

    ttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/washington/10fda.html That has to do with heart attacks.

    Now maybe that’s only risky if the red blood cell levels get way too high, well above anything seen naturally. This page says levels up to 48% are OK.

    http://www.hammernutrition.com/knowledge/diet-for-increasing-your-natural-epo.280.html

    They continue to worry about tumors:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/business/12anemia.html?pagewanted=print

    Now it’s supposed to cause cancer or make it worse:

    http://ki.se/ki/jsp/polopoly.jsp?l=en&d=130&a=133831&newsdep=130

    In any case, Lance Armstrong would have gotten EPO during cancer treatment, and there’s testimony that he did get it.

    Here’s the doctor he gave EPO to Lance Armstrong in 1996 till about Jan 1997, and that he tested him later, periodically till 2011 – twice a year after about 1998 – and would have recognized something odd about his hemotocrit levels.

    Dr, Craig Nichols also states that he was not present, but probably should have been present if it happened, when Lance Armstrong supposedly admitted to doctors using performance enhancing drugs (and that should have been recorded on medical records too if he admitted it too)

    d3epuodzu3wuis.cloudfront.net/C150.pdf

    Here is a 2006 discussion forum where this is mentioned, also the claim (apparently in 2005 testimony) that he had told doctors that he had previously used it. Somebody is lying.

    http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/205544-Lance-admits-EPO-use-NOT-DURING-CANCER-TREATMENT

    Here is what looks like a mid-2000-2010 decade view of EPO as a palliative during chemotherapy:

    http://www.rndsystems.com/cb_detail_objectname_SP04_Erythropoietin.aspx

    Sammy Finkelman (03b22d)

  159. What gets put on the list of banned substances:

    In Pursuit of Doped Excellence – New York Times Magazine, January 18, 2004

    Currently, in determining whether to put something on its banned list, W.A.D.A. considers whether a substance is performance enhancing, contrary to the spirit of sport or potentially dangerous to health. ”If it meets two of the three criteria, we are likely to put it on the list,” Pound says.

    But the first two criteria are ambiguous. Steroids and EPO are clearly performance enhancing. But so might Gatorade be, if you believe its advertising and all the data on the ”science of hydration” disseminated by the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. And plenty of sports drinks claim to do more than Gatorade. ”You identify a line and draw it somewhere,” Pound says. ”Why is it the 100-meter dash and not the 97-meter dash? It just is.”

    Between Gatorade and anabolic steroids lie all those powders and pills and injectibles that elite athletes put into their bodies, in quantities and combinations that may enhance performance or may prove innocuous. In most cases, no one is quite sure.

    Less open to interpretation is ”potentially dangerous to health.” Any medical or pseudo-medical activity that takes place underground or in the black market is, by definition, dangerous. Nearly everyone, regardless of how they feel about abortion, will agree that it’s more dangerous when it occurs in a back alley. Steroid use, dicey in most situations, is certainly more so when it takes place in the dark.

    So issues of health are the strongest rationale for W.A.D.A. and the whole antidoping effort: to protect athletes from their own worst instincts.

    Sammy Finkelman (03b22d)

  160. Getting doctors to violate rules and use some treatment that’s not even yet in clinical trials.

    Do you have any evidence of this, or is this one of those things that because you think it is somehow possible, it becomes plausible?

    Is it safe to assume it is the latter?

    JD (b63a52)

  161. Do you have any evidence of this, or is this one of those things that because you think it is somehow possible, it becomes plausible?

    Only the fact that he got better, when, according to the description he gave, he should have had very poor chances and he has given no explanation as to what he did different (beyond using somewhat different chemotherapy drugs)

    Your proof is that he survived?! I thought you said it had a 40% survival rate. Let’s assume that it was only 25%. 1 out of 4 would be expected to survive, yet you would suggest that the 1 out of 4 cheated and/or broke the law.

    JD (b63a52)

  162. So now we have several people – and at least Betsy Andreu reiterating yesterday that he admitted to doping in a hospital room in October 1996 – having given sworn testimony that he acknowledged drug use to doctors in front of them AND an affidavit by Dr. Craig Nichols saying he wasn’t present if he did and he most likely would have been if it had happened and it’s not in his medical records AND Lance Armstrong essentially saying no comment about that to Oprah Winfrey.

    Lance Armstrong: “I’m not going to take that on. Laying down on that one. …I’m gonna put that down.”

    Lance Armstrong admitted doping to Oprah Winfrey, claimed everybody did it so it was a level playing field, claimed he never pushed anyone to do that, and said how could the USADA say he ran the most sophisticated doping program in sports history – what about the East Germans in the 1970s?

    I suppose the USADA could say that was massive, but it wasn’t as sophisticated. They never had to beat the kind of tests Lance Armstrong did.

    Sammy Finkelman (03b22d)

  163. Comment by JD (b63a52) — 1/17/2013 @ 10:35 pm

    Your proof is that he survived?! I thought you said it had a 40% survival rate.

    That was one of the claims. And it wasn’t 40%, but “less than” 40% And that did not include everything discovered.

    The condition as fully described seems to have had less according to estimates in various reports.

    I think it’s most probable he took EPO more than officially prescribed, and certain specific vitamins like Vitamin A, and one other thing had to be there to get his immune system to target the cancer, and I don’t know what it would be. I should try to look up clinical trials – maybe only on mice – at that hospital or by those doctors – at that time.

    And either all of the people who testified to hearing him admit drug use OR his doctor, or both were lying around 2005, and Lance Armstrong even now feels it’s too sensitive a subject.

    Let’s say his doctor is lying – we’re half way there to proof something was different about his treatment. Especially if it was said but was kept out of the medical records.

    Sammy Finkelman (03b22d)

  164. You are halfway to nowhere. I went with a number less than 40 for your edification. You are using bizarro illogic to suggest that since he survived cancer, he cheated, or did something criminal. Bizarro.

    JD (d420da)

  165. From Lance Armstrong’s doctor’s affidavit:

    http://d3epuodzu3wuis.cloudfront.net/C150.pdf

    ALLEGED “CONFESSION” OF LANCE ARMSTRONG’S EPO USAGE PRIOR TO
    CANCER TREATMENT

    12. I did not have any knowledge of the background of Lance Armstrong before October 19,
    1996. I have been told that it is alleged that Lance Armstrong admitted to his doctors, in front of other non medical personnel, that he had used performance-enhancing drugs prior to being
    diagnosed with cancer. I have no recollection of being present during any conversation where
    Lance Armstrong stated this. Though I was not Lance Armstrong’s sole physician, I was
    responsible for the majority of his treatment and would have been present at every large meeting
    where discussions took place or decisions were made. I have, as mentioned above, had the
    opportunity to review Lance Armstrong’s medical file and can confirm that no entry has been
    made, neither by me, nor, by any other doctor that saw Lance Armstrong, to the effect that Lance
    Armstrong had been taking performance-enhancing drugs. I have never seen any evidence, either
    from myself or any other doctor, that indicates Lance Armstrong admitted, suggested or
    indicated that he has ever taken performance-enhancing drugs. His medical file from Indiana
    University Medial Center shows that during his treatment at the Center he was asked questions
    regarding his medical history over 20 times, which included questions regarding his past medical history and past medications and drugs taken. Nothing in the chart indicates he ever said or responded that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs. The anesthesia and surgical preoperative notes from October 23, 1996, the day before his brain surgery, are particularly
    instructive. In that situation, the anesthesiologist and the doctor are visiting with the patient in a very serious situation where accuracy in responses is very important. These doctors disclosed the risks of the brain surgery and anesthesia to Lance, including damage to adjacent tissue, and nuerological decline such as weakness, numbness, speech and vision problems and they discussed his medical history. Had there been any indication from Armstrong to either of these physicians that he had used performance enhancing drugs, that response would be noted in his records. There is no such note. I and other medical personnel visited with Armstrong about his
    medical history before his chemotherapy started on October 28, 1996. Lance Armstrong never
    admitted, suggested or indicated that he has ever taken performance-enhancing drugs. Had this
    been disclosed to me, I would have recorded it, or been aware of it, as a pertinent aspect of Lance Armstrong’s past medical history as I always do, for example, for prior smoking history, alcohol use, illicit drug use and HIV risk factors for each and every patient. Had I been present at any such ‘confession,’ I would most certainly have vividly recalled the fact. As stated previously, I did not know Lance Armstrong personally or professionally at the time of the first encounter, therefore, there should be no suggestion that I may have somehow purposely omitted to record or recall Lance Armstrong’s confession. In any event, I would have recorded such a confession as a matter of form, as indeed, would have my colleagues. None was recorded.

    13. Though doctors are under a professional obligation to record all matters regarding a
    patient’s medical history in his/her notes, it would be unusual to ask a professional athlete who
    has been diagnosed with testicular cancer whether or not he had previously used performanceenhancing
    drugs. I have treated other athletes with testicular cancer and don’t recall ever asking
    them whether or not they have used performing-enhancing drugs.

    14. While on this point, I believe that it is important to respond to allegations that perhaps
    the use of performance-enhancing drugs such as EPO can cause cancer and indeed may even
    have caused cancer in Lance Armstrong. There is no established scientific evidence that EPO can
    cause testicular cancer. From my treatment of Lance Armstrong I am confident that his cancer
    could not have, and indeed was not, caused by the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

    Was the doctor telling the truth? Were the other people? If so, who made up that story, and why?

    Lance Armstrong had no comment to Oprah Winfrey about this.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  166. You still haven’t explained how one “cheats” at treating cancer, or what criminal firms of treatment he may have engaged in.

    JD (d420da)

  167. JD – I think Lance used Voodoo to cure his “alleged” cancer. I do not know whether the use of Voodoo is prohibited by various bodies which regulate his sport.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)


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