Doping in Sports - A Different Perspective: A Conversation with Alexander Hutchison, Ph.D.

00;00;06;24 - 00;00;42;13
Mark Conrad
Hello and welcome to the Sports Business Podcast with Prof. C, the podcast that explores the world of professional, collegiate, amateur and Olympic sports. I'm Mark Conrad or Prof. C, from Fordham University's Gabelli School of Business, where I serve as Professor of Law and Ethics and the Director of the Sports Business Initiative. On this podcast, I like to explore alternative views and different angles on prominent issues in the sports industry.

00;00;42;15 - 00;01;10;25
Mark Conrad
So I was intrigued when a new book came my way titled “In Defense of Doping - Reassessing the Level Playing Field” by Alexander Hutchison. Doctor Hutchison is a fitness and wellness expert based in Dallas. He received his PhD in Exercise Physiology at the University of Houston. Welcome to the Sports Business Podcast, Doctor Hutchison.

00;01;10;27 - 00;01;13;05
Alexander Hutchison
Thank you for having me, and happy to be here.

00;01;13;07 - 00;01;42;06
Mark Conrad
And when I saw your book, you know, I was intrigued. And I read through it and I was somewhat honestly skeptical. So before we get into the details and the meat of the matter, just to give a background in your book, you take a position that's contrary to many, if not most athletes and just about all sports federations, and that is that doping, at least some doping, is not bad

00;01;42;06 - 00;01;46;13
Mark Conrad
and should not be banned. Is that a correct assessment?

00;01;46;15 - 00;01;48;29
Alexander Hutchison
That is a correct assessment.

00;01;49;02 - 00;01;55;22
Mark Conrad
And how do you feel? How did you come to this position and why do you feel so strongly about that?

00;01;55;25 - 00;02;13;23
Alexander Hutchison
It was a long evolution over a number of years, and I can tell you that, you know, I've been a lifelong sports fan. The, my initial position on this in the late 90s, when I was really paying attention to doping, for the first time, was that I was just like all the other people that you've mentioned.

00;02;13;23 - 00;02;31;29
Alexander Hutchison
I was very much diametrically opposed to doping in any way, shape or form until I started to actually do some more research during my graduate studies. And in addition to that, at the same time, I was competing a triathlon at a relatively high level, and I was started to deal with my own series of injuries and stuff like that,

00;02;31;29 - 00;03;05;10
Alexander Hutchison
that would come along when you start to do an endurance sport time after time. and you know, over the years of researching more and over the years of watching athletes compete at different competitions, namely UFC, boxing, football and road cycling, there were just a number of anecdotes that I started to pick up from different athletes about how difficult the time they had recovering between training sessions, between competitions, and some of the tactics that they would use to try to, well, hasten that recovery time.

00;03;05;12 - 00;03;27;13
Alexander Hutchison
And the only things that really worked in any meaningful way were drugs that were on the banned list. And these are typically steroids that we're talking about. In addition to that, I had my own experiences with, you know, competing in age group weightlifting, while also being on therapeutic testosterone. Getting a therapeutic use exemption is exceedingly difficult.

00;03;27;15 - 00;03;42;25
Alexander Hutchison
I went through the entire process, and I was rejected by USADA. And when I asked them, well, what's my next remedy for this problem? They said, well, you got to go off your testosterone for six months, and then we have to wait for three months thereafter to test you three consecutive months to prove that you were hypogonadic.

00;03;42;26 - 00;04;00;09
Alexander Hutchison
In other words, you don't make enough of your own testosterone and then you can go back on. So this is going to be almost an entire year process just for the purposes of competing in [...] weightlifting. I thought that's remarkably restrictive for somebody who doesn't really care about winning anything. I just want to have an organized competition to go to.

00;04;00;12 - 00;04;25;08
Alexander Hutchison
And then finally, the last, you know, straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, was during the 2021 Olympic trials. So this was officially the 2020, but it was postponed by year, obviously because of Covid. And we had Sha'carri Richardson, who was another Dallasonian like myself, who won the 100 meter dash, and then two days later, was - she tested positive for THC, obviously the active ingredient, marijuana.

00;04;25;10 - 00;04;48;21
Alexander Hutchison
And she was disqualified from that event and subsequently prohibited from competing in the Olympics in Tokyo. And having had my own experiences with marijuana for a number of reasons, but mostly recreationally, I can assert that there's no possible way that marijuana is a performance enhancing drug. And so as I looked more into this, because most people didn't know that THC was on the banned list.

00;04;48;23 - 00;05;14;02
Alexander Hutchison
You know, you run into WADA’s position that it's a a drug of abuse. And since it's illegal in many countries, they were also going to prohibit its use amongst athletes. That particular event, combined with my own frustrations with WADA, not being able to get a therapeutic use exemption, really drove me to start considering writing this book. And then I put the research in and my position became much clearer as I went through the process of running the book.

00;05;14;05 - 00;05;43;04
Mark Conrad
So just by background. for those who may not know, for the last 30 years or so, the World Anti-Doping Agency or WADA, W-A-D-A, has been charged with establishing the kind of substances that are banned from competition. And they published lists every year. Most sports federations have accepted their standards and have abided by the standards, and the punishment for being caught is fairly severe.

00;05;43;06 - 00;06;13;14
Mark Conrad
So Dr. Hutchison is correct that indeed, it could be a ban for two years, maybe more. And it's what's called a strict liability standard. So in other words, if you have certain excuses, they may not be complete defenses. [...] It's in your system, you've been caught, and generally speaking, the punishments are severe. But, to go back to Sha’carri Richardson's issue; she accepted the sanction,

00;06;13;22 - 00;06;41;12
Mark Conrad
she's competing now. And it leads to the fact that or the point that most athletes I've spoken with over the years are fairly happy with the WADA system, because if it wasn't for that system, wouldn't there be more abuse of, performance enhancing drugs by athletes in certain countries, certain sports systems and the like? So while imperfect, is it the best we have?

00;06;41;14 - 00;06;59;23
Alexander Hutchison
I don't know that it's the best we have. I mean, if you look at what you're saying is correct, and I'm sure that there's athletes who have you spoken with who they not only tell you that they like the way the system is, but I also have spoken to a number of athletes who said the exact opposite. Unfortunately, and I don't know if you had these conversations.

00;06;59;25 - 00;07;30;01
Alexander Hutchison
you know, you were expected to keep these things private and confidence. But I can tell you that when we when athletes are asked about these things up front, they put themselves in a very difficult position where the only really answer they can give is I'm in support of WADA, because if you have a dissenting view and you're an athlete, there is a lot of people who would be concerned that they would be picked on more so than normal in terms of their testing regimens, and maybe something goes wrong with the test, and then they're not going to be viewed in a favorable light.

00;07;30;04 - 00;07;56;00
Alexander Hutchison
The best evidence that we have is when we have anonymous survey data. And, there are a number of studies that have been published, the most recent one that I looked up, surveyed athletes who were track and field athletes, at a world championships and also the Pan Asian Games. And the number, the percentage of athletes who were surveyed who said that they had used or were currently using doping agents was between 33 and 50%.

00;07;56;02 - 00;08;30;26
Alexander Hutchison
So if you assume that there's a level of, you know, that's rather conservative, still, even in an anonymous survey, people are not going to necessarily want to be honest because they just don't trust it. Still a huge number that's admitting to the fact that they're taking something. If you contrast that with the NFL - anonymous surveys that were taken with the NFL specifically for steroid use - and it always hovers around 10 to 15%, a much lower number, with punishments that are much less restrictive and less and less punitive than what WADA turns out these days, and also some level of collective bargaining with the NFL.

00;08;30;28 - 00;08;48;11
Alexander Hutchison
That's really where my aim is going. So I'm not necessarily interested in just obliterating WADA. I think it does some good things. But the biggest problem with WADA is, is this is one organization who's telling all of the athletes, which is their labor force, exactly what they're going to do, when they're going to do it and how they're going to do it.

00;08;48;13 - 00;08;50;15
Alexander Hutchison
The athletes don't have any say in this whatsoever.

00;08;50;20 - 00;09;14;28
Mark Conrad
Well, is that a problem with the Olympic system rather than with WADA? Because the athletes cannot be unionized in an American sense, because one, it's an international sports federation, not just the IOC, but all the federations. And two, they're not employees. The NFL players are employees, and therefore they have the right, under the U.S. labor law, to form a union and negotiate this.

00;09;15;00 - 00;09;24;25
Mark Conrad
How do you clump together athletes of 200 countries in a sports federation trying to replicate the same situation?

00;09;24;28 - 00;09;43;02
Alexander Hutchison
Yeah, I don't know the ins and outs of the labor laws. What I can say is that Major League Baseball and the NBA both have teams in Canada. So there at least there's some level of cross-border negotiations that have to take place. It has been done for at least two countries. I understand that this would be a significantly larger feat than just the two.

00;09;43;04 - 00;10;04;10
Alexander Hutchison
However, I do think if there is a will, there is a way. It shouldn't be impossible to allow for for athletes to negotiate the rules of their own engagement and also be full time employees. What you mentioned there is one of the biggest problems I have with the international sports federations is they exist, is that they do not treat the athletes as though they are employees.

00;10;04;12 - 00;10;24;06
Alexander Hutchison
They're barely even contract labor. It's more along the lines of freelance labor. They don't necessarily get any [...] for the Olympics, they get no payment for winning. And in many instances, they get very little, if any, support from their own country's national federations for training purposes and to stay alive while they're trying to compete for the Olympics.

00;10;24;09 - 00;10;46;19
Alexander Hutchison
The long and the short of it is that when you think about a sporting event, that's entertainment. That's exactly what it is. And athletes are the product itself that are being put on the field, and they deserve to have a great deal more say in what it is that they are allowed to and not do, and also what level of punishment they're willing to accept for themselves and their fellow athletes.

00;10;46;25 - 00;11;12;10
Mark Conrad
Okay, let me throw a hypothetical then. Let's say there is an athlete's union of sorts, and there are a few organizations that have tried to do that, to be fair, and they’re international athletics. Now you have about 40 sports federations. How do you get athletes from all these different sports, trying to negotiate something that is consistent throughout that Olympic system

00;11;12;13 - 00;11;38;21
Mark Conrad
when the nature of competition, the nature of sports, the nature of compensation differs because these organizations have very different financial backing? Track is far wealthier than archery, for example. So how do you fit in, an all encompassing organization which would be much more difficult than, say, the NFL Players Association, where all the players play American football. So is that a challenge

00;11;38;23 - 00;11;44;24
Mark Conrad
that is so difficult that has to be impractical?

00;11;44;27 - 00;12;04;14
Alexander Hutchison
If you were to try to get every single sporting federation under the same umbrella I would say yes. But what I'm more interested in is having each individual sporting federations’ athletes have their own respective union and negotiate their own thing. So what may be legal in one sports may be not legal in another, and that's currently how the situation is. What you can do,

00;12;04;17 - 00;12;22;12
Alexander Hutchison
for example, and I put this in my book, what you can do in tennis, maybe very different than what you can do in cycling, specifically as it relates to cortisone injections, which is one of the big things that we've that's been around for many, many years. But cortisone plays a very important role in helping athletes recover from injury, particularly acute injuries

00;12;22;12 - 00;12;41;29
Alexander Hutchison
if they still have to perform. So let's let's get a hypothetical here. Let's just say that you have, you know, a twisted ankle and you got to go in there the next day and in and perform. What you may be asked to do or what you may ask your doctor to do is give you a cortisone injection to bring down the inflammation in the injured joints to last for that one more game.

00;12;42;01 - 00;13;01;20
Alexander Hutchison
There's a number of sports internationally, including tennis, where that would be allowed. If you did the same thing in cycling, you'd have to be out of competition for eight days straight. So let's say you're in the middle of a three week tour - Tour de France, Giro via the Vuelta - you go down real hard on stage ten. But you're, you know, all you need is a little bit of pharmaceutical assistance just to stay in the race.

00;13;01;20 - 00;13;31;14
Alexander Hutchison
You can't do it if it's cycling, you could do it if it's tennis. That precedent’s already been set. So having different sporting federations adjust their own rules and regulations as per their vote, that's the way we want it to be. So we don't necessarily have to have a blanket rule across all sports. It's already, that already exists. So all we're doing is going to be expanding the level of representation and say, instead of restricting it and not really providing the athletes with any type of representation.

00;13;31;16 - 00;14;01;14
Mark Conrad
Okay. Fair points. let me just try one more hypothetical. Let's say we have, the, athletes that represent a union of sorts and track and field, and then negotiate with international athletics, which is their governing body, and revise some of the WADA rules there or wish to do so. But what if the athletes that represent the union members, if you call it that, are in favor of the current system?

00;14;01;16 - 00;14;03;26
Mark Conrad
Let's say they say so. Great. Okay.

00;14;03;28 - 00;14;29;12
Alexander Hutchison
But that's fine if but again, it comes down to what do the athletes actually want? I'm presenting an opinion as an outsider. My opinion may be very different if I was actually an active athlete still at that level. but if the athletes who were voted in as representatives of their constituents then go in and vote to maintain things as they stand, that's their say.

00;14;29;12 - 00;14;52;17
Alexander Hutchison
And that's exactly the point. They will have a say. I would be surprised if everything remained exactly the same, like I think THC would be out immediately. I think there would be some looser therapeutic use exemptions for a number of different drugs, particularly during, recovery from injury. and and I but most and also I think they could also negotiate some level of additional compensation.

00;14;52;20 - 00;15;08;09
Alexander Hutchison
They have some leverage there in which is they can say, look, we'll, we'll keep the, the drug restrictions as they are in exchange for compensation because if this federation is making billions of dollars off the backs of the athletes, they should be spreading that wealth around just a bit.

00;15;08;11 - 00;15;30;13
Mark Conrad
A few international federations, ironically, have decided to compensate their athletes in the upcoming Olympics, such as track and boxing. So do you think that that trend could help, as you said, in possibly negotiating, an agreement regarding, drug use in return for at least some kind of compensation?

00;15;30;16 - 00;15;48;04
Alexander Hutchison
I hope so, again, I want this to be the decision of the athletes, the educated decision of the athletes. I did see the track and field is going to be compensating for, or at least rewarding, money for gold medals. At least I don't know about the rest of them. I didn't hear about boxing until you just told me.

00;15;48;04 - 00;16;12;05
Alexander Hutchison
That's a great positive. What I would say is that that is in direct response to the enhanced games coming online, and the enhanced games offering $50,000 for a gold medal. now, if you don't know what the enhanced games are, this is, it's going to be a parallel games to the Olympics, during which athletes will not be tested for performance enhancing drugs.

00;16;12;05 - 00;16;33;25
Alexander Hutchison
At least that's the framework that they have established now. And as soon as they announced that they were going to be awarding a cash prize for gold medalists, at the very least, I think it was two weeks later, World Athletics came through and did the same thing with track and field. I'm not sure what the actual amount of compensation is, but it's the fact that they're offering anything is in direct response to their being a change.

00;16;33;28 - 00;16;55;24
Alexander Hutchison
So let me let me parallel this. Give an analogy. If anybody is paying any attention to the XFL or the USFL when they merged to form the UFL, the secondary league is, you know, doing a lot of experimental things in terms of changing the rules slightly to increase the interest of the game and also the improved player safety.

00;16;55;27 - 00;17;14;18
Alexander Hutchison
The NFL is relatively slow to react until they get to see something on the field. And now they've already adopted three rules, and they're going to have to do a couple more. So when you have some level of additional competition for your league, so you're not the only dog in the shed, you are forced into a position if it's popular to actually make some modifications yourself.

00;17;14;18 - 00;17;20;28
Alexander Hutchison
So if the enhanced games accomplish nothing else, they have already accomplished this much. And that's plenty as far as I'm concerned.

00;17;20;28 - 00;17;27;26
Mark Conrad
Can you tell us more about the enhanced games? I don't think many listeners have heard about them.

00;17;27;29 - 00;17;53;17
Alexander Hutchison
So this is the brainchild of Aaron DeSouza. He is an Australian lawyer. I believe he went to Oxford and it's being backed by Peter Teal, who's the guy who, created PayPal. And his brainchild was that - it's pretty simple concept - they just they want to see how fast athletes can actually perform if not restricted on what it is that they can take.

00;17;53;19 - 00;18;19;00
Alexander Hutchison
Now, I'm sure that there's going to be some level of restriction on what they will and will not allow. So it's not going to be an absolute free for all where you can just take anything under the sun. That said, you know, the the expectation and the hope is that we see some athletes perform better than they could without those drugs because we want to see them perform at their highest possible level, even if that includes some level pharmaceutical assistance.

00;18;19;00 - 00;18;40;21
Alexander Hutchison
Now, the reason that I don't find a problem with this is because I don't look at the drugs as being anything different than the best equipment that you can get your hands on, the best nutrition changes and sleep habits. All of these things that have happened over the last 30 years that have made athletes significantly more competitive than they used to be, they would just be enhanced that much more with performance enhancing drugs.

00;18;40;23 - 00;19;21;23
Mark Conrad
But let's get to the elephant in the room and that is the abuse by governments or by governmental agencies. And we talk about RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency. We talk about allegations involving Chinese swimmers. we have allegations going back many years to East Germany. How do you protect competitive integrity if you deregulate the system to a point that a fair amount of PEDs are available and some coaches, not only in those countries, but in the United States too, as well as, policy planners do this by forcing athletes to take these medications.

00;19;21;26 - 00;19;45;25
Alexander Hutchison
Well, let's be clear. You can have a coach force an athlete to take a medication, whether there's a WADA in place or not. These types of things have happened in the past, and unfortunately, they will continue to happen in the future. How do you actually regulate it? You're going to have to have a list of things that you I suspect I don't think that you can have just an open system where anybody can take anything, including drugs, that have not been approved by the FDA.

00;19;45;27 - 00;20;11;19
Alexander Hutchison
But, you know, you have to have a system in a place where you can have whistleblowers call in to to report abusive behavior by coaches, trainers, managers, etc.. those systems are by and large, in place in a lot of federations. I know with my daughter who swims, we have safe coaching classes that people have to take in safe sport, courses that the athletes have to take, and there is a hotline to call in if you suspect abuse from your coach.

00;20;11;21 - 00;20;38;08
Alexander Hutchison
These things are not difficult to actually set up in terms of having a place for people to go. Whether the athletes will go and get that help is the question, but there's only so much you can do to lead that horse to water. You can't necessarily make them drink. But I'm not tremendously concerned that there will be an uptick in the level of abuse or coercion that coaches will do to their athletes, because by and large, if you have an unethical coach, they're going to do it whether there's rules in place or not.

00;20;38;10 - 00;21;07;21
Mark Conrad
But not many countries have a US safe sports system where the coaches could be banned and what do you think are the chances of an athlete from, say, Russia complaining about their coach, the doping, the athlete? And, is it impractical to adhere, have a system consistent around the world when there are many countries that have, a history of using doping to expand or enhance athletic results?

00;21;07;24 - 00;21;33;27
Alexander Hutchison
You're right. That's that's that is a very fair point. But what I would point out is that even, even with WADA in place, RUSADA, you know, if you get a chance to see Icarus, which is a documentary about doping specifically within Russia leading up to the Sochi Olympics, the athletes there [...] RUSADA, as you pointed out, you have WADA as the global entity which is run by the Olympic Committee

00;21;33;29 - 00;22;02;18
Alexander Hutchison
and then you have the international, the separate national doping agencies, which basically are the ones who were responsible for setting up WADA accredited clinics or labs in which the samples will be tested. So what Russia did was that they had their own accredited labs, [...] but they were taking tainted samples of urine, cracking open the unsealable bottles that were supposed to be unsealable, and then sticking it or just getting rid of it and replacing that with clean urine.

00;22;02;21 - 00;22;23;26
Alexander Hutchison
All, the vast majority of the athletes knew it, that they were being doped. And if you have a situation like that, then you already have no particular regulation over rogue countries if they're not going to participate in a meaningful way. So we can't have any idea what's happening in Russia or China or North Korea or any of these other rogue states.

00;22;23;28 - 00;22;42;15
Alexander Hutchison
The fact that we would loosen our own restrictions isn't going to have any impact on the level of cheating that's happening on those levels, because we can't control that. And obviously, WADA is rather loose in their interpretation of those rules because they knew exactly which athletes had been doped and they still allowed the majority of them to compete.

00;22;42;15 - 00;23;02;19
Alexander Hutchison
This is Russia, under - not the Russian flag - but the Olympic flag. That was the level of punishment they came up with is you can't represent your country. You know. Right. China, they didn't have anybody disqualified at all. And they had 21 swimmers who tested positive for - and I can't remember which drug it was - and they said it was just contamination

00;23;02;24 - 00;23;27;17
Alexander Hutchison
and all of their athletes were allowed to to compete. If Sha’carri Richardson had tested positive for THC, which has no performance enhancing benefit whatsoever, and is disqualified from the Olympics. So we're already dealing with this inequitable situation between ourselves and other countries like us who actually follow the rules and rogue states that do not. I don't know that it's going to make much difference whatsoever if we change the rules.

00;23;27;19 - 00;23;51;20
Mark Conrad
Well, in your book, you mentioned the history of certain substance issues, particularly in competitive cycling, and discuss Lance Armstrong, and I don't think we can really say Lance Armstrong is like Sha'carri Richardson - maybe a one time error - given what happened with Armstrong and how long it took for him to admit, that indeed, he was doping.

00;23;51;23 - 00;24;07;01
Mark Conrad
So, what do you think his case reflects? And what lessons can be learned from, the controversy that he and, invoked many, many years ago?

00;24;07;03 - 00;24;25;08
Alexander Hutchison
There's there's so many lessons that can be learned. But I will say you're absolutely right. What Lance Armstrong did is not the same as what we're talking about with Sha'carri Richardson. Sha’carri Richardson took a recreational drug to alleviate anxiety after being ambushed by a reporter who told her that her birth mother had just died, which she was not aware of.

00;24;25;10 - 00;24;41;28
Alexander Hutchison
This was a day before her race. That's not the same thing as systematically taking a performance - a series of performance enhancing drugs - for the purposes of trying to win a race, which is precisely what Lance Armstrong did for the better part of his career. Now, that said, around 19

00;24;41;28 - 00;24;42;22
Mark Conrad

00;24;42;26 - 00;25;03;10
Alexander Hutchison
93 or 4, Lance Armstrong was faced with the decision, knowing that everybody else in the peloton - this means the field of cyclists - was taking some form of performance enhancing drugs, if not multiple. His choice was either to continue doing what he was doing, which is not take anything and lose, or to do with what everybody else was doing and try to compete.

00;25;03;18 - 00;25;25;23
Alexander Hutchison
Now he, you know, everybody can ask themselves their own question, what would you do under those circumstances? But I always ask people to remember not much of an education beyond high school, no other real job skills that were available to him at that moment in time. And then the most important thing, remarkably competitive individual that most of us are not.

00;25;25;26 - 00;25;53;15
Alexander Hutchison
So it's difficult to empathize on that level until you really sit down and try to think about it. So what would any one individual do? He chose to go down that other route and join the rest of the peloton, who was doping. Now, he was also aided in this by the UCI - this is the federation for cycling around the world. In as much as they really turned a blind eye and looked the other way, because he was popularizing the sport at a time when it needed it the most.

00;25;53;17 - 00;26;21;09
Alexander Hutchison
So similar to what happened with Major League Baseball in ‘98, when we had the home run chase that really, catapulted baseball back into the mainstream. It made it so it wasn't a niche sport any longer. Cycling was desperate for a savior when Lance Armstrong came along and everybody was quite content to ride his back, knowing full well that he was doing something until such time as it became necessary for them to throw him under the bus as a sacrificial lamb.

00;26;21;11 - 00;26;46;07
Alexander Hutchison
So some of the lessons that I look at with that are, if you're not going to do anything to regulate drug usage within your sport, it's very difficult for you to then come back when the general populace decides that this is unpopular and say, well, we really had no idea this was happening. And then to get rid of all the cyclists who caused the problem, as it were, when you've made all that money off of their backs.

00;26;46;09 - 00;27;13;14
Mark Conrad
I'm here with Alexander Hutchinson, the author of In Defense of Doping - Reassessing the Level Playing Field. So continuing our discussion, if you liberalize some of the rules and basically, you're not there to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but if you liberalize some of the rules, what message, if any, do you think it may send to young athletes, say, teenagers in particular?

00;27;13;16 - 00;27;37;01
Mark Conrad
Do you think possibly it could create, a situation where they say, hey, you know, it may not be such a bad idea to use PEDs to get better results in competition? Maybe it's not as important or ethically less sound. Are you concerned about what effect liberalizing some of these rules could be on younger people?

00;27;37;03 - 00;28;00;03
Alexander Hutchison
There is that possibility. But in my research that I did, there were congressional hearings in 2005 and 7, I believe, for Major League Baseball specific to steroids in baseball. And that was, that specific reason was what was given by Congress as to why they were having these hearings. We have to protect the children.

00;28;00;06 - 00;28;21;03
Alexander Hutchison
So I went back and I looked at the number of deaths within teens that could be specifically ascribed to taking steroids, which was the big deal at the time, and I looked at for more research thereafter, tracking those same numbers after the hearings were done for the next ten years. The number of teenagers that died specific to that was the exact same.

00;28;21;05 - 00;28;44;26
Alexander Hutchison
The anonymous survey data from high school and collegiate athletes about their steroid use stayed the exact same. So legislating out bad behavior, as it were, is a very difficult thing to do with anybody, but particularly children. Now, let me come back to the point. I do not advocate for any child to take anything that is not prescribed by their doctor.

00;28;44;28 - 00;29;11;00
Alexander Hutchison
A child has a developing brain or is an adult - their brain is already developed. Developing body, same is true. but that said, children's athletics is different than adult athletics. We mandate specific rules within children's games to increase the amount of safety that takes place. Dimensions of the field are different. They’re shorter, narrower. The goals are smaller depending on what sport we're talking about.

00;29;11;00 - 00;29;28;12
Alexander Hutchison
The safety equipment is mandated and much safer than what you would see in an adult sport. So you mean let me give you an example like hockey. Hockey you have you have to wear a helmet with a visor, but you don't have to have anything that actually protects from your nose down. And people take pucks to the face all the time.

00;29;28;15 - 00;29;44;26
Alexander Hutchison
even then, if you look at it, hockey players in the NHL, when they're wearing their helmet, it's not strapped tight. If they take a hit, that thing's flying off and there's very little they actually protect their head. If we look at children's athletics within hockey, they have a full mask with face gear that's not going to allow for anything to smack them directly in the face.

00;29;44;26 - 00;30;06;19
Alexander Hutchison
And that helmet has to be strapped tight. So we we already see that there is differences between adults and in, children when it comes to how they participate in sports, this would be no different. [...] And the other thing that we make sure we do is the same thing we used to do in the 80s with PSAs for illicit drugs is educate them, don't touch this kid.

00;30;06;19 - 00;30;26;25
Alexander Hutchison
You don't need to. There's no reason to, unless you get yourself into a position where you're going to be an adult professional athlete. That said, will there be an uptick? It's hard to say, but I don't think that that can be your sole reason for preventing athletes from being able to make decisions for themselves as far as it relates to these particular drugs.

00;30;27;00 - 00;30;59;09
Mark Conrad
But in some sports, the children let's, define that as anyone under 18 often do compete in elite levels like women's gymnastics, that many competitors are under 18. Sometimes that's the case for swimming, and it could be for track as well. So you do find at least a cadre of quote unquote children in the elite level or professional level of athletics in certain sports because of the way the sport is made, how it evolves, etc..

00;30;59;12 - 00;31;09;19
Mark Conrad
So there how do you deal with the issue in a case of a 17 year old gymnast or 17 year old track and field star?

00;31;09;21 - 00;31;26;09
Alexander Hutchison
Yeah, I would do it the same way I do for anything else. The parents have got to be the, the primary screener for anything that's taking place with their kids. so, you know, when it comes down to this, at the thought of, of an athlete being a role model, and they have a specific responsibility to all the children across the entire world,

00;31;26;11 - 00;31;47;08
Alexander Hutchison
I don't agree with that. I have a 13 year old daughter. She has her role models. But I never abdicate responsibility for what she does to anybody else except for myself. So when it comes to these young athletes and we see the same thing in figure skating, they can be as young as 14. But they should have a parent there as a hawk, preventing anything from coming near their child that they don't want to come near their child.

00;31;47;15 - 00;32;05;09
Alexander Hutchison
That's as much as you can do. you know, if you have people who are going to be handlers of those kid athletes who have bad intentions, until you root those people out, it's very difficult to protect anybody from anything. But let's let's be very clear. We've had sex scandals within gymnast gymnastics. They have nothing to do with drugs.

00;32;05;12 - 00;32;25;07
Alexander Hutchison
Larry Nasser's your best example. And he had something like 50 some odd, victims, many of whom had their parents in the room with them when they were victimized. So to think that we can obliterate any type of bad behavior against children by just having 1 or 2 rules in place, it's it's it's foolhardy. It's not really going to happen.

00;32;25;10 - 00;32;53;04
Mark Conrad
You spoke about therapeutic use exceptions and how hard it is to get. But generally speaking, the United States has had the most therapeutic use exceptions in the WADA system. Do you think that does create a skewed environment as opposed to athletes, maybe poor countries or countries where, the attitude toward taking certain substances is very different than the United States.

00;32;53;07 - 00;33;14;25
Alexander Hutchison
It may, there may be a competitive disadvantage there if you came from come from a country that doesn't have means, that can actually afford these pharmaceutical drugs. the same may be true if you come from a country that's more restrictive just in terms of their culture, when it comes to taking drugs. But the same competitive disadvantage is going to occur anytime one country has more money than another country.

00;33;14;25 - 00;33;31;20
Alexander Hutchison
I put this in my book, the correlation coefficient between, the GDP of a country and how many medals they can win in an Olympics is right around point eight. So in other words, you can do a great deal of prediction of how many how many medals a country can win, depending on how much money they actually have in that country.

00;33;31;22 - 00;33;55;24
Alexander Hutchison
So money is the biggest tipper of the the scales of justice or balance in terms of competition than anything else. Those people, those schools, those states, those countries that have money will have athletes competing at a higher level than those who do not. I don't think that this is going to be the biggest problem of all, particularly when you think about the drugs that we're that we know for sure really work.

00;33;55;25 - 00;34;06;11
Alexander Hutchison
They're cheap and just about everybody can get them. And if there's a monetary incentive to allow this athlete to get that money or to get that drug, then they'll make it happen.

00;34;06;14 - 00;34;13;24
Mark Conrad
For those interested in, obtaining your book, where are the best places to buy it?

00;34;13;27 - 00;34;16;09
Alexander Hutchison
Amazon. [Mark Conrad: Okay.] That would be the best place to buy it.

00;34;16;09 - 00;34;23;17
Mark Conrad
Okay. In Defense of Doping - Reassessing the Level Playing Field. What is the best place to contact?

00;34;23;20 - 00;34;32;14
Alexander Hutchison
They can find me through my website, which is goodegg.fitness, and goodegg is one word just like it sounds: G-O-O-D-E-G-G.

00;34;32;17 - 00;34;45;08
Mark Conrad
So you do say when all is said and told that there should be some kind of regulation, but the WADA system is way too restrictive and unfair.

00;34;45;11 - 00;35;08;23
Alexander Hutchison
Yes. So I'm not openly advocating for there to be just an open system where we you can take anything you want. There's too many drugs out there that are relatively popular, but have not been approved by the FDA. We just don't know what the long term ramifications of those drugs are. But a lot of athletes are turning to those drugs because they can't take the ones that they would prefer, which are the ones that have been out there in the market for a million years.

00;35;08;26 - 00;35;30;04
Alexander Hutchison
And I'm referring to drugs like cortisone, testosterone or any other type of anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and oh my goodness [...], so in a we can go over what each of those drugs does, but just in general, we have a list, a very short list of drugs that we know for sure have a big impact.

00;35;30;06 - 00;36;01;16
Alexander Hutchison
If athletes had access to those drugs, they would probably stick to those and not worry about taking something that's not approved by the FDA. So, yes, I do think that there is some level of regulation that should happen. but I do think that it should be the athletes who are making these decisions after being consulted by those who are in the know, in terms of what it is that they want their to be able to want their their fellow athletes to be able to take if they need it, as opposed to what we currently have, which is a system that really doesn't work.

00;36;01;18 - 00;36;18;10
Alexander Hutchison
It works really well in a country like ours, where USADA follows the rules of WADA, you know, straight up. But if you have if you're competing against another country where they're not going to do that and they're actively going to flaunt the rules and cheat, then how is this working for anybody?

00;36;18;12 - 00;36;30;24
Mark Conrad
But then even if you liberalize it, how is it going to work for anybody too? But, even if you do have, say, ten PEDs listed, it still may not work if those countries are going to cheat right?

00;36;30;26 - 00;36;47;26
Alexander Hutchison
Nothing's going to be perfect. If they find it, if they find an extra special, better drug that they make themselves is going to be better than anything that we have on our approved list, they'll have a competitive advantage. I mean that that is the proxy war between nations when it comes to sportswashing. That's just what they do. This is what they've done for generations.

00;36;48;03 - 00;37;05;02
Alexander Hutchison
It's what they will continue to do. That's the separate, you know, conversation that's really outside the scope of what I'm talking about. And it's something that I certainly don't have a solution for. What I'm really talking about here is that the biggest level, making sure that the athletes get more of a say in what it is that they wish to do.

00;37;05;05 - 00;37;35;27
Mark Conrad
And on that note, unfortunately, we have to come to a close on behalf of Fordham University, the Gabelli School of Business and the Sports Business Initiative, thanks to Doctor Alexander Hutchinson for an engaging and informative discussion. His book In Defense of Doping is available on Amazon. And thanks to my producer, Victoria Ilano, for her great work. And thanks to all of you for listening in. For the Sports Business podcast at Fordham's Gabelli School of Business, I’m

00;37;36;00 - 00;37;39;27
Mark Conrad
Mark Conrad or Prof. C, have a great day.