National Football League: Players don’t agree to new Growth Hormone tests
As of yet, no agreement could be reached between the National Football League, which is pursuing a blood based approach to Human Growth Hormone (HGH) testing, and the NFL Players Association, which is still in doubt over the validity of blood based test. Negotiations continue as they have for a while now without any significant headway being made as both sides stick to their guns.
There has been development though on the scientific front. The existing HGH test screens the blood for traces of synthetic Human Growth Hormones. While the test is definitive, it can detect the presence of synthetic HGH within a 48 hour window. The new ‘bio-markers’ test on the other hand tracks changes in an athletes’ chemical makeup caused by use of Human Growth Hormones. The new test could detect the presence of HGH up to 14 days later.
Spokesman for the National Football league, Greg Aiello, said that it was the NFL’s position that HGH testing has come to a point that steps need to be taken to adapt it into the NFL’s drug testing policy and in this regard proposals have been made to the Players Union.
The NFLPA reserved comments until Sunday regarding the new test and even then the statement from the president of the players association, Kevin Mawae, was vague enough to not hint where the NFLPA stood on the issue of blood testing. In one statement the NFLPA renewed its commitment to and support of a program that would test for all banned substances without clearly defining one way or the other if they would support the so called bio markers test.
The new test, currently unavailable to the NFL, could take at least a few weeks or maybe even a few months until significant enough breakthroughs are made to make it more reliable. Considering the fact that a workable urine based test for HGH is still years in the future, the NFLPA is being given signs that it must move on from the increasingly unlikely urine test preference to HGH and focus on what works. “The test that works is blood,” said Adolpho Birch, Vice President of NFL’s Law and Labour policy.
Kevin Mawae told the press that he had been following the developments in testing techniques but maintained that the present techniques are not reliable enough to be incorporated into the NFL drug testing program. Experts at the Anti-Doping Agency however stand in firmly in disagreement with Mawae and claimed that the tests were completely reliable even in their current state.
Adolpho Birch said that the existing, even if limited in their scope, techniques of detecting HGH were not “inadequate”. He admitted that a longer window of detection than the present 48 hours would definitely be advantageous but regardless the present system works as a deterrent. “I don't know if it's a game-changer, per se, but it is important”, Birch said.
The NFL’s drug testing policy would fall under the purview of the collective bargaining agreement which expires in March. Unless issues are resolved, the drug testing policy among a few financial issues included, it could lead to work stoppage.
NFLPA might not have an agreement yet but has never failed to emphasize its commitment to stopping substance abuse. Kevin Mawae said that the HGH has been discussed on a number of occasions and that the Players association and the players themselves would favour fair and competitive play that excludes use of performance enhancing drugs. Mawae made it clear that in his opinion, players who used performance enhancing drugs were not only just cheating the game and their peers but were also cheating themselves.
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