WADA
Tokyo 2021: Japan, medical experts disagree over safe Olympics
Japanese infectious disease specialist Atsuo Hamada wants to see the Olympics happen in Tokyo this summer, but admits if they were being held anywhere else, he’d probably support a cancellation. “Even without the coronavirus pandemic, the Olympics as a mass gathering fosters all sorts of infectious diseases,” Hamada, a professor at Tokyo Medical University, told AFP. With less than six months until the pandemic-postponed Games, organisers say they’re confident the event will be safe. But some medical experts aren’t so sure, and think cancellation is safer. “I do understand the athletes’ sentiments,” said Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at Britain’s University of Southampton. “But I think from… the global public health point of view, there’s nothing about the Olympic...
WADA: United States report misleading and inaccurate
Getty Images The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has released a formal response to a United States government report which threatens to withhold funding if WADA doesn’t make what the United States deems sufficient reform. In a letter to James W. Carroll, director of the office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) on Friday, WADA president Witold Banka said it was “with great disappointment” that he read the 19-page ONDCP report. “Given that, during our 12 June telephone meeting, we discussed a renewed spirit of cooperation, I would have expected your office to have consulted us on the Report; or, at the very least, to have verified the factual veracity of the allegations being made against WADA,” read the letter. “Instead, in the days before publication, you informed us of the impending...
