Click on the picture to go to Blood Doping 101

I mentioned blood doping in an earlier post Markets, Money and Genes last October after the Armstrong confession. Now an interesting 3 part article, A History of the Use of Blood Transfusions in Cycling, part 1 with separate links for part 2 and part 3, has been published by cyclingnews.com. To quote from the article’c conclusion:

Why does the role played by transfusions in the years before Gen-EPO matter? Why does the role played by transfusions during Gen-EPO matter? It matters because it alters our perception of what happened in those years. Many cycling fans have a somewhat rose-tinted view of doping in the years before Gen-EPO, comparing the two eras to pop-guns versus howitzers. Doping is an arms race, and in an arms race you move from pop-guns to howitzers and on past intercontinental ballistic missiles. If blood transfusions were part of the armoury the pop-guns versus howitzers view needs to be reconsidered. You can compare EPO to howitzers if you want, but you cannot say that transfusions were just pop-guns.