Current HGH Test Has Caught No One

For the past eight years, the current blood test for HGH has caught a whopping zero people using the banned substance...that's correct, zero positives. Either no one is using the product or the test is ineffective in it's current state. I'll go with the latter.

In an article in the NYT, over 8,500 athletes have been tested for HGH since 2000 yet not one has tested positive. Osquel Barroso, the senior manager of science for the World Anti-Doping Agency, believed that out of competition testing would lead to positives. The current test will only come up positive if the user has used HGH about 30 hours after it is taken, a serious limitation on the effectiveness of the current test. "Barroso also said that another reason more athletes had not tested positive was that the threshold for a positive test was fairly high. When drug tests are first implemented, the level of detection is often high to avoid false positives, then lowered after thousands of tests have been conducted." The anti doping experts have said that athletes receive the most benefit from HGH when they use it several times a week while training.

Per the course, the MLB baseball union is feigning ignorance. Gene Orza, the general counsel for the players union said, “We are not going to jump to that conclusion that there is a test today. At best, the science is murky today and there are people invested in the test’s development.” Not jumping to the conclusion that there is a test today...a test that is administered at the Olympics?I've heard that rational thinking from the MLBPA before...we do not have a drug problem, etc. It's time to stop the "deny, deny, deny" game and be proactive. You might actually turn some fans back on to the sport.