World Anti-Doping Agency
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA; French: Agence mondiale antidopage, AMA) is a foundation initiated by the International Olympic Committee based in Canada to promote, coordinate, and monitor the fight against drugs in sports. The agency's key activities include scientific research, education, development of anti-doping capacities, and monitoring of the World Anti-Doping Code, whose provisions are enforced by the UNESCO International Convention Against Doping in Sport. The aims of the Council of Europe Anti-Doping Convention and the United States Anti-Doping Agency are also closely aligned with those of WADA.
Abbreviation
WADA is responsible for the World Anti-Doping Code, adopted by more than 650 sports organisations, including international sports federations, national anti-doping organisations, the IOC, and the International Paralympic Committee.
Controversies[edit]
Statistical validity of tests[edit]
Professor Donald A. Berry has argued that the closed systems used by anti-doping agencies do not allow statistical validation of the tests.[36] This argument was seconded by an accompanying editorial in the journal Nature (7 August 2008).[37] The anti-doping community and scientists familiar with anti-doping work rejected these arguments. On 30 October 2008, Nature (Vol 455) published a letter to the editor from WADA countering Berry's article.[38] There has been at least one case where the development of statistical decision limit used by WADA in HGH use testing was found invalid by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.[39]
Database leaks[edit]
In August 2016, the World Anti-Doping Agency reported the receipt of phishing emails sent to users of its database claiming to be official WADA communications requesting their login details. After reviewing the two domains provided by WADA, it was found that the websites' registration and hosting information were consistent with the Russian hacking group Fancy Bear.[68] According to WADA, some of the data the hackers released had been forged.[69]
Due to evidence of widespread doping by Russian athletes, WADA recommended that Russian athletes be barred from participating in the 2016 Rio Olympics and Paralympics. Analysts said they believed the hack was in part an act of retaliation against whistleblowing Russian athlete Yuliya Stepanova, whose personal information was released in the breach.[70] In August 2016, WADA revealed that their systems had been breached, explaining that hackers from Fancy Bear had used an IOC-created account to gain access to their Anti-doping Administration and Management System (ADAMS) database.[71] The hackers then used the website fancybear.net to leak what they said were the Olympic drug testing files of several American athletes who had received therapeutic use exemptions, including gymnast Simone Biles for methylphenidate, tennis players Venus Williams (for prednisone, prednisolone, triamcinolone, and formoterol), and Serena Williams (for oxycodone, hydromorphone, prednisone, prednisolone, and methylprednisolone), and basketball player Elena Delle Donne (for an amphetamine and hydrocortisone).[72] The hackers focused on athletes who had been granted exemptions by WADA for various reasons. Subsequent leaks included athletes from many other countries.[71]
Council of Europe Anti-Doping Convention[edit]
The Anti-Doping Convention of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg was opened for signature on 16 December 1989 as the first multilateral legal standard in this field. It has been signed by 52 states including all 47 member states of the Council of Europe and non-member states Australia, Belarus, Canada, Morocco, and Tunisia.[73] The convention is open for signature by other non-European states. It does not claim to create a universal model of anti-doping, but sets a certain number of common standards and regulations requiring parties to adopt legislative, financial, technical, educational and other measures. In this sense the Convention strives for the same general aims as WADA, without being directly linked to it.
The main objective of the convention is to promote the national and international harmonisation of the measures to be taken against doping. Furthermore, the Convention describes the mission of the monitoring group set up in order to monitor its implementation and periodically re-examine the list of prohibited substances and methods which can be found in an annex to the main text. An additional protocol to the Convention entered into force on 1 April 2004 with the aim of ensuring the mutual recognition of anti-doping controls and of reinforcing the implementation of the Convention using a binding control system.
National Football League[edit]
It was revealed in May 2011 that the American National Football League (NFL), which had previously resisted more stringent drug testing, might allow WADA to conduct its drug tests instead of doing it in-house. This could lead the way to testing for HGH, which had previously been without testing in professional American football.[74] However, as of September 2013, cooperation was stalemated because "blood-testing for human growth hormone in the NFL had been delayed by the NFL's players union, who had tried 'every possible way to avoid testing'".[75] As American football players do not participate in international sporting events, that issue is not a top priority for WADA.[76]
Official website
Media related to World Anti-Doping Agency at Wikimedia Commons