OFFICIAL: LAWSUITS HINDER TESTING

One of America's leading drug-testing experts is calling for radical
changes in the International Olympic Committee's anti-doping tactics at a
time the Olympic movement is taking a beating from a bribery scandal
ignited in Salt Lake City.

Saying the current testing program for performance-enhancing agents is
ineffective, Don Catlin, director of UCLA's Olympic Analytical Laboratory,
said a new approach is needed to guard against lawsuits that have hamstrung
scientists.

``I want to do something different because I don't think what we're doing
today is handling the problem,'' Catlin said a week before a major drug
conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, organized by the IOC in response to
last year's series of doping scandals that stung amateur sports.

``Most of us are fairly frustrated with the problems we have,'' said
Catlin, an influential IOC medical commissioner. ``We watched many of our
tests that in their own right are reasonable and good fall by the wayside
due to intense legal activity. The way the current program is set up,
we've got to change it.''

Catlin's comments are striking in that while others have long criticized
drug testing as being ineffectual, sports officials generally have defended
their administration. It represents one of the first major cracks from the
IOC front line and could signal a sincere desire to change at a time the
Olympic movement is facing a sobering scandal over ethical practices
surrounding the selection of cities to host the Games.

Catlin's concerns were echoed by Christiane Ayotte, chief of the Montreal
IOC-accredited lab at the University of Quebec, who said Wednesday that the
focus is shifting away from the suspected athletes to the scientists.

``It's now coming to a point where the labs and directors are seriously
being attacked,'' she said before leaving for Europe for the conference.
``We feel we don't have the proper support to win the cases.''

As some athletes have switched to undetectable hormones such as
testosterone, the human growth hormone and erythropoietin (EPO), drug
experts have had to develop undependable tests that measure levels to
determine what is acceptable.

Two recent U.S. track cases involving testosterone, the muscle-building
male hormone, highlighted the problem.

Middle-distance runner Mary Slaney presented studies showing the measuring
ratio to determine a positive case is unreliable in women because it can be
skewed by conditions such as menstrual cycle, use of birth-control pills or
the possible onset of menopause.

Dennis Mitchell, an Olympic gold-medal sprinter, had an even better excuse.
He presented scientific evidence in an appeal before USA Track and Field
saying that having sex with his wife and drinking six bottles of beer had
caused his body to produce extra quantities of testosterone. His two-year
suspension was lifted.

``There's no perfect test,'' Ayotte said. ``You can always find an expert
who will say (a test) is flawed.''

Tired of defending the tests before volunteer appeals panels from sports
organizations as well as international courts, Catlin is considering
proposing a new program during the conference Tuesday through Thursday in
Lausanne.

The IOC is expected to accept a uniform drug policy for all international
sports and establish an independent drug-testing agency, two acts that
could dramatically change the way athletes are tested.

Catlin, an associate professor of medicine and pharmacology at UCLA since
1972, welcomes those changes but is wary that not enough will be done to
safeguard a flawed system.

``We need a real cultural revolution in sport,'' he said. ``We've been at
this for 15 years, and look where we are with testosterone. We haven't got
a legal, bullet-proof test. When are we going to have a perfect test for
growth hormones and EPO, and many of the things to come?''

Catlin suggests a better approach might be establishing a program for
athletes who want to show the world they are clean. He said officials could
open files when the athletes volunteer to join the program, then follow
their blood and urine chemistry as they undergo invasive testing. He said
athletes' results would establish acceptable levels, and ``if you don't
stay within the guidelines, you don't lose a medal, you just can't be in
the honor program anymore,'' he said. ``It would be public.''

Catlin, who directed the testing at the L.A. Olympics in 1984, said the
idea took hold at Seoul when he helped defend Stacey Augmon, formerly a
UNLV basketball star, who tested positive for testosterone at the 1988
Olympics. The result threatened to strip the United States of its bronze
medal.

But Catlin and members of the U.S. Olympic Committee's medical team argued
that Augmon's long-term chemical profile showed an elevated testosterone
level, proving he naturally produced more than the IOC-accepted maximum.
The United States won its appeal and averted a major drug scandal.

Catlin hopes his concept would help avoid other drug controversies.

``Where are we going to be in 20 years?'' he asked. ``Are we just going to
have more escalation of testing and getting away with things, or is there a
way to shift it and get on a different plane? I can't be sure, but it is
certainly worth a try.''