A new phenomenon is sweeping the sporting world; in-house drug testing. But is it one borne of guilt, motivated by preservation or protection or the altruistic notion of keeping drug cheats out? Time will tell.

The strategy of in-house drug testing by sports teams and sporting organisations and to go-it-alone is fraught with danger, though. While some say that this initiative should be commended, indeed be heralded as a brave move for what they may find, equally there has to be nothing less than full transparency for it to gain any credibility in the public eye. While some are only interested in testing for illicit drugs, it matters not because they are now classed as banned drugs also.

We have seen it all before though. No greater example of the lunacy of in-house testing was the East German doping machine. Their doping world fell (along with the Berlin Wall) in 1989. Even in the preceding year only ten positive doping cases were found (reported) among 6,600 in-house tests. This was remarkable, unbelievable even, given the systematic nature of its steroid doping programme. How many false negative cases were there, though!

Even more remarkable that the ten positives were announced (obviously ten athletes who weren’t medal potential) because not one East German athlete tested positive for steroids at the 1976, 1980, 1984 and 1988 Olympics. And in Australia, in-house drug testing at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) during the late 1980s incurred the wrath of the public and the politicians to the extent that a parliamentary enquiry (the Black Enquiry of 1990), which waded through countless hours of testimony, was scathing of systemic problems within the AIS not only with testing procedures but transparency, or the lack of it.

Without full transparency, the likely public perception will be one of suspicion and scepticism and that in-house testing will mean nothing more than an early-warning system.

To say that professional cycling teams such as Team CSC and professional sporting bodies such as the NFL and Australia’s AFL and ARL are undermining the ‘real’ testing bodies such as the WADA, UCI, USADA and ASADA is an understatement. These statutory and independent drug-testing agencies are in danger of becoming the caretakers of the caretakers. They would be in a sense throwing good money (and resources) after bad money.

Unless the public are told what tests are done, how often, by whom, how they are evaluated and interpreted, how and who the results are reported and subsequent penalties, then how can we believe what comes from the mouths of the spin doctors?

A sporting team or organisation which is indelibly influenced these days by the corporate dollar is sure to exert influence over how in-house testing programmes are managed (or should that be controlled). And because the ‘owners’ are so much closer to the athletes, rather than at arm's length like the WADA, USADA and ASADA, then what price that data may be manipulated, controlled even destroyed?

Remember the controversy surrounding the ‘mismanagement’ of positive doping tests at the LA Games in 1984? Even the Australian AFL has already sought suppression of the identities of three transgressors revealed from in-house testing. It seems that that, like the IOC, who battled for decades to protect the image of the Olympics in relation to drugs until the WADA was formed in 2000, others are also falling into the same trap of keeping the cheats out while trying to protect the sports image. It hasn’t worked before and it won’t now.

In case anyone has missed the point, this emerging pattern of in-house testing parallels doping itself. It is a dangerous path to tread and the public is being led up the garden path unless there is total disclosure.

In the 1990s, professional cyclists implemented their own blood-testing programme on a sophisticated and grand scale to keep in check their blood-doping drugs like EPO, not because they might get caught (because there was no EPO test at the time) but rather to prevent being killed by the drug. It was ‘controlled’ doping. Without complete probity the same in-principle testing or monitoring programmes being touted by various teams and sports then undoubtedly troubled times lie ahead. It is concerning that teams are taking matters into their own hands and the public remains mute on the subject. Perhaps this is another sign that the public have had an absolute gut-full and are more focused on winning performances rather than concerned about drug-induced performances.

The die is being cast that doping and doping testing now will go even further underground. Agencies like the WADA, UCI, USADA and ASADA are in danger of becoming empty bureaucracies should this phenomenon engulf the sporting world. And many sporting teams have the financial clout to launch such programmes totally circumventing what a drug-testing programme should do; expose the cheats not the addicts.

It has been shown over and over again that test results cannot be hidden forever; not even the East Germans could hide them and as sure as eggs things get out eventually. Where does that leave the individual, the team, the sport and the testing programme? However, if the public really does not care it could turn out to be a ‘win-win’ situation for them. If that were the case then we, the public,c would have been totally deluded.

The announcement that a cycling team led by 2006 Tour winner Floyd Landis and Lance Armstrong also plan to introduce regular in-house testing and monitoring is, I guess, not surprising. And let’s face it, whether it’s about protecting the team or weeding out the cheats, Landis and Armstrong will face the same dilemma as other in-house testers at some stage because they know only too well the scandal of doping. Their reputations are as much on the line (again) as their team.

While we should frown upon false positive tests by the ‘real’ testing agencies, maybe we should be even more concerned about the potential for false negative results by in-house drug testing.

Without open and transparent protocols, in-house drug testing will be a farce - as has been in the past.

Robin Parisotto is the author of Blood Sports and a former Australian Institute of Sport Researcher.