Doping, stimulants, performance enhancing drugs and Chinese herbs

The recent doping suspicion raised by Ye Shiwen’s stunning swimming performance has brought doping into the spotlight again. Many people use words doping, stimulant and performance enhancing drug interchangeably.  For example, in China, stimulant (兴奋剂) is almost the only word used to refer to doping drug.  This is wrong.   These phrases need to be clarified.

Doping is a legal term with a precise definition.  It means the use of any drug or method on the prohibited list given by the World Anti-doping Agency. The long list has the following categories:

1. Anabolic agents (increase protein synthesis hence muscle buildup).
2. Peptide  hormones,  growth factors and related substances (e.g. EPO – blood doping)
3. Beta-2 agonists (believed to have an anabolic effect).
4. Hormone and metabolic modulators (enhance skeletal muscle function)
5. Diuretics and other masking agents (modify body weight, mask illegal drugs) 6. Enhancement of oxygen transfer
6. Chemical and physical manipulation
7. Gene doping
8. Stimulants
9.  Narcotics
10.  Cannabinoids
11.  Glucocorticosteroids (its performance enhancing effect has not been scientifically proved).

Stimulants are only a part of performance enhancing drugs, and not all performance enhancing drugs are illegal.  This makes Chinese herbs and their extracts a very interesting player in the picture.

Back in late 1980s when I was a graduate student at China Institute of Space Medico-Engineering (CISME or 507 Institute), the Chinese human spaceflight program was put on hold partly due to the Challenger explosion resulting in the suspension of Sino-US collaboration.  CISME was supported by various non-space projects. For example, I was studying the combined effects of fighter cockpit environmental factors on humans.   A team, which was a part of the spaceflight nutrition group, was working on performance enhancing supplements.  I heard the Bayi sports teams (Chinese army teams) increased their medals significantly after taking the supplements extracted from herbs.  I do not remember it was a secret though CISME always pretended to be secretive (we had to frequently changed to plain clothes from uniforms when there were foreign guests).  The researchers probably published their work on this.

I believe using these supplements is legal under the current code of World Anti-doping Agency (WADA). However, is it ethical for fair?  I do not believe the long term effects of using these supplements have been studied, so we do not know if the athletes taking these supplements have sacrificed their long term health.  Also, is it fair to win medals with substance aid?  Is it right for a national institute to research on substances for one team?  Is there a loophole in the WADA’s policy?