Medical Authorities Differ on Effectiveness of Blood Doping

Blood doping, also known as blood packing or blood boosting, involves transfusing one or two pints of blood into an athlete between six hours and six days before competition, the purpose being to increase the oxygen-carrying capacity and, consequently, endurance. The total volume of blood in the recipient’s body is temporarily increased by the amount of the transfusion.

The transfusions may be of blood originally taken from the athlete or, as reported in the majority of the current cycling cases, from relatives or others with the same blood type.

Taking one’s own blood is regarded as less risky, medically, than taking it from others. In cases of the athlete’s own blood being used, the blood must be removed weeks in advance and kept in cold storage.

Medical authorities differ on the effectiveness of blood doping.

The medical commission of the International Olympic Committee has defined “doping” as “the administration of or the use by a competing athlete of any substance foreign to the body or of any physiological substance taken in abnormal quantity or taken by an abnormal route of entry into the body, with the sole intention of increasing in an artificial and unfair manner his performance in competition.”