Jobe Watson’s admission last night he took a banned drug is unlikely to cost him his Brownlow Medal.
The star onballer said he took the drug AOD-9604 last year by injection after signing a consent form.
Watson also told Fox Sports that he was surprised when the drug was confirmed last month as a banned substance.
The AFL’s anti-doping code gives Watson room to move in pleading “no fault”, “negligence” or “no significant fault”.
It would be Watson’s way out if charged and found guilty of a technical violation of the Code.
Also in the Essendon captain’s favour is the research of Adelaide University Professor Gary Wittert into AOD-9604 and his findings that it has no performance enhancing qualities.
The AFL Anti-Doping Code of Conduct makes it clear that players who take banned drugs should get a minimum two year ban from playing.
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But it’s the exception clauses that give Watson and his fellow Essendon players some comfort and may explain why Watson told Fox Footy’s On the Couch program last night: “I don’t have a feeling of guilt and I don’t believe I’ve done anything wrong.”
The code states that “if the player establishes that he bears No Fault or Negligence for the violation, the otherwise period of Ineligibility shall be eliminated”.
“The player must also establish how the Prohibited Substance entered his system in order to have the period of Ineligibility eliminated.
“If a player establishes in an individual case that he or she bears No Significant Fault or Negligence, then the otherwise applicable period of Ineligibility may be reduced, but the reduced period of Ineligibility may not be less than one-half of the minimum period of Ineligibility otherwise applicable.”
The exception clauses come into play if an admission has been made, or the AFL has been able to prove the player took a performance enhancing drug.
That itself may be difficult given the findings of Professor Wittert that AOD-964 has no proven anti-obesity or muscle repairing effects.
The Adelaide University Chair of Medicine was the chief investigator in a series of clinical trials of the drug conducted on behalf of the manufacturer Metabolic and which were completed in 2007.
Wittert led a team which conducted three human trials into AOD 9604 including a final three month testing.
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“We designed a six month study properly powered to look at the outcome of ‘would it be a drug suitable for weight loss’ and the outcome from that was a definitive no,” he told InDaily last month.
Wittert said after that, he had “assumed the company had stopped developing the drug”. “Now it’s been in some cream and just about every journalist has called it an anti-obesity drug, which it ain’t – it’s a failed anti-obesity drug at best.”
The drug was based on beliefs that a portion of growth hormone molecules retained the properties of breaking down fat without breaking down muscle.
In a statement to the stock exchange in March 2012, the company said cartilage and muscle cell-based trials in Canada had revealed the drug “may help to repair damaged cartilage and muscle tissue”. In a later statement on April 26 this year it said work had only been done in pre-clinical studies and that there was no evidence AOD9604 increased the number of muscle or cartilage cells.
The April statement also stated there was no “clinically meaningful weight loss outcome”, with the obesity trials stopped in 2007.
Metabolic no longer manufactures, distributes or sells AOD9604 but the company says that Australian registered doctors can legally prescribe the drug.
The April statement also said AOD9604 had been sold on the black market, which Metabolic says is in contravention to its patent position. It said the market was mostly gymnasiums, weight control centres, clinics and individuals including athletes and the obese.
Wittert said there was no clinical evidence that it helped with tissue repair or had any other benefit in people.
In April this year AOD9604 was declared a banned substance by the World Anti Doping Agency under the S0 category for non-approved substances. It has not been approved for therapeutic use in humans by any government in the world.
Watson’s admissions have however opened up the Essendon practices beyond that admitted by the club earlier this year.
Just last month an Essendon spokesman said: “The club certainly does not accept that the signing of the consent forms means that the supplements were administered, and this kind of speculation is just unnecessarily harmful to the players.”
It’s not the speculation that was harmful – the notion that a sports scientist rejected by other clubs should inject players with an unproven anti-fat pill is not a good look for an AFL club.
