The daily newspaper L’Equipe has in its online edition a long interview with Professor Jean-Claude Alvarez, director of the toxicology laboratory at the University Hospital Garch. He talks about the 4-year ban that Simona Halep received and makes a clear conclusion: “We condemn the innocent.”

L’Equipe has given a lot of attention to the doping case involving Simona Halep, and an extensive interview with Jean-Claude Alvarez can be found in the online version of the French daily.

Alvarez explains several aspects of the doping process, talking about the samples taken from Simone, another patient, where roxadustat was found, and why he believes WADA convicted an innocent person.

What Jean-Claude Alvarez says, according to an interview with L’Equipe

• I thought we were dreaming. In this case, we are in the process of convicting an innocent woman. She always advocated doping-free sports. This is a mistake.

• Given the concentration of the substance in her hair, she cannot effectively take roxadustat (not a product that stimulates the production of hemoglobin and red blood cells).

• Roxadustat is a molecule that is largely absent in Europe, is not available in the United States, and has been contaminated twice, according to the ITIA. This is irrational! We found one source of pollution, but we also found another. Look for hallucinatory items.

• Simona’s roxadustat level is 0.2 nanograms per milliliter (absent in urine). It doesn’t mean anything anymore. You may have them if you take dietary supplements. It’s a load of shit, it’s ridiculous!

• I identified the source. Her collagen (not the powder you mix with water for physical pain) contains roxadustat. Collagen is made from Chinese ingredients. In China, roxadustat is extremely common. The source of pollution is very obvious.

• There was a patient in France who was being treated with roxadustat and I took a sample of her hair. We found a concentration in this woman’s hair 100 times higher than in Simone’s hair. This is outrageous from WADA (not the World Anti-Doping Agency).

• We say there is roxadustat in the collagen, but the US lab says there is none. Simone contacted me because I am a legal expert at the Court of Cassation and work at the University of Paris-Saclay.

• She came to the Harsh University Hospital toxicology lab and I took a hair sample. It was very low, less than 0.5 picogram per milligram in hair.

• So I went to get a sample from the only patient in France who was taking this drug (without roxadustat three times a week due to kidney failure) and tested one of her hairs and found a concentration of 50 picograms per milligram.

• So someone who actually takes it for treatment has 50 picograms. This proves that she was taking completely ineffective doses. You have to explain to me why they are taking the product in ineffective doses.

• When I saw it, it smelled like pollution. So I asked Simone to give me everything she had taken a few days before the test. We tested everything: proteins, food additives… We analyzed everything to see where we could find contamination. And I found it in the collagen powder that he used.

• I repeated the experiment 14 times and it was positive 14 times. I sent these results to an American WADA-accredited laboratory, but when they repeated the tests, they found nothing.

• I also sent my results to Pascal Kintz (who works in a toxicology lab in Strasbourg) and he also found nothing. This is because we use different methods.

• So I took the collagen powders to Strasbourg and repeated the analyzes using my detection method. Then Pascal himself repeated the analysis according to my method, and I found roxadustat in Simone’s collagen powder.

• There is no longer any doubt that two well-known laboratories in France found the same result. We say there is roxadustat in the collagen, but the US lab says there is none.

• An independent tribunal (not set up by Sport Resolution, which was mandated by the ITIA) accepts that there was contamination, but does not consider it sufficient to lead to a positive result, and therefore there is another source.

• I did an experiment with a colleague, having her take the same collagen powder as Simone for six days. I took urine samples from day one to day six. Out of 35 samples, 7 were positive. This proves that taking this powder can make you positive for roxadustat. This is very clear. It cannot continue like this.

• I am not a supporter of doping, it is very important to fight it, but you have to admit that you can get infected. A recent study shows that 60% of food additives are contaminated. Athletes no longer have to take supplements!

• Six months later they said the September test was minor doping (no minor positive) when six months ago it wasn’t. When the experts found out that she had taken roxadustat in the tests, they changed their interpretation. I just can’t understand.

• Roxadustat should increase hemoglobin. So in this case with this setting, they thought it was too strong. The test gave a positive result on August 29 (No. 2022). He had a negative test on August 26. But when you take these molecules, they stay in your urine for at least 15 days. This means that she would have taken roxadustat between the two dates (August 26th and 29th) and would have only 0.2 nanograms left on the 29th.

• So he must have taken a completely ineffective microdose, and it’s incredible that no one wants to admit it. This is impossible from a pharmacological point of view,” explains the professor Jean-Claude Alvarez for L’Equipe, reports gsp.ro.

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