In other news, did anyone see the CNN/YouTube debate, or coverage thereof?

I thought it was really quite good. The format worked out better than I expected.

A semi-worker was totally all over all of it! Jon Stewart told her she could "do better" than her partner!

Huh? I'm confused.

Why is getting a blood transfusion cheating? I mean, it's not doping, per se. What about players, like football folks, who hang out in oxygen tents or use hypebaric chambers.

That's my thing, Kat. There's a lot in that vein that I really don't think should disqualify you. But the draconian outlook is pretty much destroying the sport.

I forget all the science, but the blood transfusion thing has been shown to be a huge boost. I've been wondering if it's cheating if it's your own blood.

I"ve been away from the computer all day, but let me see if I have this right - the stage winner has been kicked out two days in a row? That's almost worse than Landis.

I don't know where exactly my line is, but using someone else's haemoglobin to absorb oxygen is on the "Hey! Stop that!" side of it.

Homologous versus autologous
There are two methods of doping through blood transfusions: autologous and homologous. With an autologous transfusion, an athlete receives his or her own blood. An athlete donates blood, stores it, and then receives the blood at a later point in time. The advantages of this technique are the avoidance of diseases such as HIV or hepatitis, the reduction of the risk of detection through testing, and the alleviation of potentially deadly transfusion reactions.

The downside of autologous doping is that it takes time for the body to recover from the loss of blood that occurs during donation. It would be hard to train effectively while having to donate a supply of blood sufficient to enhance performance. In a homologous transfusion, the blood comes from another person. The benefit of homologous transfusion is no decrease in performance during the donation period. However, the disadvantages are the risk of contracting blood born diseases, the risk of transfusion reactions, and increased transfusion sensitivity.

Homologous transfusion is now the focal point of the current doping controversy. All individuals have a specific and consistent genetically programmed blood type. Each blood cell in the body has markers or antigens that hang off the cells. These specific antigens determine an individual's blood type. The major blood types are A, B, and O. The positive or negative value added to the ABO type refers to another antigen on the blood cell called Rh(d). If you have both the A antigen and the Rh(d) antigen, your blood type is A positive. In addition to these major antigens, there are numerous other "lesser" antigens that make up each person's blood composition. It is possible to test not only for one's major blood type (A+ or O-, for instance) but also for the lesser antigens on one's blood cell. By this test, we can define even more specifically the makeup of an individual's blood.

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I"ve been away from the computer all day, but let me see if I have this right - the stage winner has been kicked out two days in a row?

Yeah, except today's stage winner was also the leader of the race.

Put me in with crowd that doesn't think blood doping i s drugs. Sounds to me like it is using your body resources. of course, using someone elses blood is odd.

A semi-worker was totally all over all of it! Jon Stewart told her she could "do better" than her partner!

It's hilarious that you know them! I just watched it a few minutes ago, and thought, "Man, somewhere those ladies are jumping up and down because not only were they on the debate, they were on TDS too!"

What you really need is an identical twin who is willing to give you transfusions...

I don't think it's been stated that doping is drugs. Just that it's against the rules.

I don't know where, for instance, they draw a line between supplements and drugs--I can't see it being a bright line sort of a thing.

But you can have drugs like steroids whose aftereffects persist a fuck of a long time after you stop doping (I know at least two former steroids users who've been clean the years I've known them, but just fucking massive nonetheless) so you're not on drugs when you're competing and lines blur, but I think we can all agree on welcoming our Hello Kitty robot overlords.