NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Dick Pound, the former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), has accused the National Football League Players' Association (NFLPA) of using stalling tactics to block the introduction of tests for human growth hormone (HGH).
After years of pressure from anti-doping crusaders and the U.S. government, the NFL and NFLPA agreed to start blood testing for HGH when they signed a new collective bargaining agreement in August.
However Pound, an outspoken critic of North American professional sports that have been slow to embrace doping tests and impose punishments, said the players' union was now trying to delay the procedure by wrongly saying the tests were unreliable.
"The NFLPA have turned to their ubiquitous lawyers to throw as much sand as money can buy into the gears of an effective testing program," Pound wrote in a column on the WADA website (www.wada-ama.org).
"So, the lawyers, in a feat of self-generated alchemy, have turned themselves into scientists and now spout supposedly principled concerns about the reliability of scientific tests for HGH."
The NFLPA issued a sharp rebuke to Pound's remarks, arguing that the tests had not been independently validated and neither Pound nor WADA had provided satisfactory answers.
"The players are not going to let the Dick Pound self-promotional tour derail the principles we believe in related to a clean and fair game," NFLPA spokesman George Atallah told Reuters.
"Our players and scientists have asked WADA for information and transparency. The response from WADA and Dick Pound has been limited to childish public statements that are thickheaded and false."
INDEPENDENT SCIENTISTS
Pound, one of Canada's members on the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said the tests had been validated by independent scientists in 2004 and any suggestion they were unreliable was false.
"The knowledgeable scientific community is satisfied with the reliability of the HGH tests," Pound wrote.
"WADA does not approve anti-doping tests until there is consensus among experts in the particular field that the tests are scientifically reliable and replicable.
"No one wants any athlete to be sanctioned on the basis of a false positive test."
The NFL declined to comment when asked by Reuters although the league has previously been critical of the players' union.
In September last year, a NFL spokesman said: "Although the CBA (collective bargaining agreement) reflects a commitment to implement HGH testing by the start of the regular season, it is apparent we will be unable to do so because of the union's continued refusal to accept the validity of the tests."
The league had heralded the agreement in August, saying it would have made the NFL the first major U.S. professional sports league to use blood testing for HGH.
Pound, who published his column less than two weeks before the Super Bowl, North America's most watched and scrutinized sporting event, said it was time to end the delaying tactics and start testing.
"It is time for the public at large to recognize that it is being manipulated as part of the effort to avoid testing for performance-enhancing substances," Pound wrote.
"If the NFL players claim they are drug-free, they should be ready to prove it and stop hiding behind phoney claims that good science is bad science."
(Additional reporting by Gene Cherry; Editing by Clare Fallon; To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)
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