The ice skater Claudia Pechstein made international news year after year, winning world records and gold medals. But recently, just before the Olympic winter games in Vancouver, she was under investigation for blood doping. What was diagnosed was a higher amount of certain young red blood cells, called reticulocytes, and the international sports court CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sports) expelled her from national and international competitions immediately. But Pechstein insisted, that she was not involved in any doping practice, and tried a number of courts to be able to attend the winter games – her presumably last Olympic games, due to her age. She lost every single trial, and after so many cases of trusted sportsmen and -women, who were finally convicted of doping, not many people had the courage to trust her. But this week, a group of scientists revealed at a press conference (where Pechstein attended), that the unusual amount of reticulocytes in Pechstein’s blood may be due to a natural, well, pathological syndrome, called Hereditary Spherocytosis.

This is one of the (rare?) occasions, where science journalism (but not necessarily science journalists) makes the front pages. To understand the case, people need to understand the disease, learn about blood cell development, and that the use of forbidden proteins like erythropoetin (epo) raises the number of reticulocytes, the precursors of red blood cells, which transport the oxygen through the body. More reticulocytes make more red blood cells, which carry more oxygen, which leads to a better performance. Die Zeit (Dagny Lüdemann, Ulrich Bahnsen) provided such a summary of the facts. Hereditary spherocytosis forces the blood cells into a pathogenic ball-like shape and renders them for a quick replacement – raising reticulocyte levels. Patients with the full-blown syndrome won’t be able to do high performance sports, but the German scientists, the heads of the German society of hematology and oncology, diagnosed Pechstein and her father to have a light version of the hereditary disease. The article explains well, that the dominant genetic defect causes a relatively low level of hemoglobin (the oxygen transport protein) per red blood cell, which would be significantly higher after doping with epo. However, the scientists do not have a genetic test to be completely sure, that a mutation is the cause of the unusual high amount of reticulocytes. But they raised enough doubts, and it looks like “in dubio pro reo” might free Pechstein from her ban.

By now, one might ask: Why is the Pechstein case important for science journalists, why do I mention it here? Doping and the rules of CAS and WADA and other anti-doping associations should be watched much more closely by science journalists. Careers like Pechstein’s could be destroyed by weak, unscientific thresholds. On the other hand, who could really blame the scientists from CAS and WADA, who established this threshold, that they did not know about Pechstein’s syndrome. This is biology. Almost always there is an exception of the rule. And there are a couple of examples, that the likelihood of certain (positive) mutations is higher in sportsmen than in average people. But how to deal with this in sports? Or should we call it sports forensics? It’s hard for scientists, it’s hard for science journalists, but almost impossible for journalists with no background in biology.

Most articles are very cautious about claiming a victory for Pechstein, for good reason. In an interview (FAZ) a prominent doping expert makes clear, that even with the syndrome Pechstein might have taken illegal drugs to improve her performance. Ulrich Bahnsen (Zeit) expresses it as an “eternal doubt” in his commentary. Spiegel-Online (Peter Ahrens) addresses the problem not like Bahnsen with words like “doubt”, but headlines “The two truths of Claudia Pechstein“. The article (like many others) judges the facts as if they are independent and equally support the “two truths”, the guilty and the innocent Pechstein. Five or so arguments from supporters, five or so from the opponents. It’s a good way to read the story, but also the easy way, because it keeps the author from going into the details: What fact weakens another fact, making a certain conclusion more likely. The better part is, where the author explains the weaknesses of the doping control system, that led to the current situation.

Other stories: Welt, Focus, Frankfurter Rundschau, Tagesspiegel, NZZ, and lots more ink…

- Sascha Karberg

This entry was posted on Friday, March 19th, 2010 at 10:36 am and is filed under ETC (grab bag), German Language Media, Health & Medicine Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.