Common consensus needed to go forward: Expert

London: Top sports organizations need to agree on a common solution for testing their athletes for performance-enhancing substances like human growth hormone (HGH), a veteran anti-doping authority told reporters.

Dr. Don Catlin, chief executive of Anti-Doping Research Inc, said the National Football League, Major League Baseball, World Anti-Doping Agency, US Anti-Doping Agency and other agencies should meet and discuss where drug testing is headed. Catlin, who began his career in anti-doping by founding the Olympic drug testing lab for the 1984 Los Angeles Games, is hoping to organize the summit. "If we can get together the key people in the same room and speak frankly about the issues we all face we can agree on solutions and move things forward," Catlin said during a telephone interview. "We came up with the idea (for a summit) after I kept seeing the articles with all this rancour and reasons why things weren`t getting done. I think if we can put those things aside, we`ll be able to make progress."According to Catlin, any interested parties need to make an effort to cut through the roadblocks, financial challenges and bickering that he said has hampered the quest for a HGH test that can be administered by all sporting organizations. Currently, a blood test is the only way to detect HGH. The Olympic sports use it and the Australian Football League said they will soon use it as well. North American professional sports leagues do not test for HGH. Catlin, who gained fame for his work developing tests for previously undetectable steroids and forms of erythropoietin, or EPO, -- a blood booster -- said developing a test to be used to sanction athletes has two distinct stages.The first step, he said, is establishing scientific proof that the athlete has taken a prohibited substance. The second step is validating that test so it is considered "bulletproof" by the legal community. "It can`t just be the courts who decide whether or not a test is valid," Catlin said. "The science has to be solid. You can`t have any ambiguity or ways for lawyers to raise doubts." Bureau Report