Pittsburgh Steelers’ Ryan Clark, a labour representative to the NFL player’s union, has expressed dismay at his organisation’s decision to cede ground in recent lockout negotiations and comply with a new drugs testing policy designed to detect the abuse of human growth hormone (HGH).
NFL players have traditionally resisted any attempt to monitor abuse of the supplement, but as the LA Times’ San Farmer reports, Clark claims his reticence is due less to permissiveness than the ambiguous legal implications of the proposed testing policy.
“I think people wanted to get a deal done so badly that it was overlooked… In that sense, players kind of got screwed, for lack of a better word.”
The safety believes the blood test policy to be “way too intimate” and suspects the league could use the samples as a means of collecting medical information.
It might sound like a paranoid conspiracy theory, but many players, including Clark’s teammate Troy Polamalu, wonder whether or not the blood tests could be used as leverage in future contract negotiations.
NFL executive Adolpho Birch was quick to discredit the speculation, claiming that every aspect of a blood sample’s use, from collection to analysis, would be rigorously monitored by a centralised administrative body. He also claimed that the current tests, unlike those of the past, were completely accurate:
“The test that’s in use now is accurate, it’s reliable, it’s not subject in any way, shape or form to false positives.”
The method’s reliability may not be in doubt, but the time-frame within which one can accurately test for HGH can be as narrow as 36 hours after use. That means that a player can conceivably take HGH on a Friday and pass a test the following Sunday.
Nevertheless, the NFL’s decision to implement the policy means it has become the first major sporting league in the United States to actively test for the abuse of human growth hormone.
