New designer drug uncovered
The new steroid is designed to avoid detection in standard doping tests, but there's no evidence that it's being used by athletes.
Canadian scientists uncovered a new steroid designed to avoid detection in standard doping tests, but say they found no evidence it was used by athletes.
The World Anti-Doping Agency said on Tuesday the substance — called desoxy-methyl-testosterone, or DMT — was identified after a tip from an anonymous whistleblower.
WADA science director Olivier Rabin said the drug had similarities to THG, or tetrahydrogestrinone, a drug at the heart of the BALCO steroid investigation in the United States.
Several athletics stars, including sprinters Kelli White and Dwain Chambers, were banned after THG was unmasked in 2003. Four men face charges of distributing steroids to elite athletes in the case involving the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.
Rabin and Christiane Ayotte, director of Montreal's anti-doping lab, said there was no evidence DMT has been used by athletes. They touted the finding as a pre-emptive victory against drug cheats.
'Probably in this case we are ahead of the dopers,' Rabin said in a conference call from WADA headquarters in Montreal. 'This shows to the dopers how serious we are.'
The investigation began last year after Canadian customs officials seized substances coming across the border from the United States. WADA received an anonymous e-mail in June tipping off the agency to the material seized in the raid.
Officials of WADA and the Montreal lab got in touch with Canadian customs and worked together to identify the substance last summer.
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