I heard about this on NPR a couple weeks ago and meant to post something on it, but spaced it out. Anyway, there are a couple studies out that show that aspirin can reduce the risk of cancer and lower the spreading of it if taken on a daily basis.

This is pretty big news on the cancer front. The study was done at Oxford and was actually trying to establish the benefits of aspirin in relation to heart attacks.

The problem with the whole situation is that aspirin is nearly free compared to other drugs. And that there isn’t a way to make any money from its use to treat cancer, thus, there are not going to be any people/drug companies jumping to do any more long term studies to validate the findings. That seems completely wrong. This would be a good time for our government to spend some funds for the benefit of the people.

Here’s a link to a New York Times article on it.

Michael Ashenden, one of the experts overseeing the biological passport on cycling, resigned because of a clause in his contract that would essentially make it impossible to express his own opinions about doping in the sport. He did a pretty in depth interview with NYVelocity.com that goes on to explain a lot of what goes on in the testing and doping arenas in cycling. It is pretty serious reading, but if you what to expand your knowledge on the subject, it is pretty good. The article goes into depth about the Contador case and the underlying facts.

He thanks Floyd Landis a couple time for giving him information on what lengths the riders will go to stay under the radar. They aren’t just carrying around hematocrit centrifuges like the old days, they have transportable blood analysers that followed them around and allow the riders to constantly monitor their reticulocyte levels.

It goes on to explain that EPO is more of a masking agent now and that the blood transfusions are the way they use to gain the oxygen carrying advantages. Man, it just gets more complicated and crazier every time something comes out.

Anyway, after reading the article, it is apparent that he is one of the “good guys” and that the sport needs more people like him around. I guess he is going to be associated with WADA some still, but it sounds like he isn’t going to be the go to guy to try to clean the sport up. It’s a big loss.