It’s coming into focus now.
With doping its always 2-3 or 5 years down the line that it all makes sense. Of course, by that time, the products have been tipped into the urinal, or in one special case, down the sink.
We learn from this article, some little facts about HemoPure.
I remember some bee lining to South Africa by a certain Team named _______, how about you?
At the time the drug was approved for human use in South Africa only, and like a honeypot there was a beeline there for ‘training’ purposes. Hmmmm.
Hemopure was on the Australian Institute of Sports researchers ‘hit list’ of drugs back in 2001 to be investigated before the Australian Government banned their project despite already having WADA funding to develop tests. But that’s another story.
Hemopure is an oxygen based therapeutic drug derived from chemically stabilized bovine (cow) hemoglobin. It has been developed for potential use in humans as a substitute for blood. A similar product from BioPure — Oxyglobin – was released earlier for veterinary use to treat anemia in dogs (so anyone ‘cocking’ their leg since 2001 while giving a urine test would be suspected of using Oxyglobin!)
Hemopure is stable at room temperature and does not require blood typing which offers great advantages over traditional blood doping by transfusion because human blood needs to be constantly refrigerated, typed before infusion and screened for infectious diseases. There is great potential for harm due to incorrect blood typing and transmission of infectious diseases such as mad cow disease both of which can cause organ failure and death in some cases.
Hemopure carries the same amount of oxygen as the hemoglobin in red blood cells. However, these linked hemoglobin molecules circulate in plasma, and are smaller, have lower viscosity (resistance to flow) and more readily release oxygen to tissues than red blood cells. Consequently, they can carry oxygen at low blood pressure and can carry oxygen through constricted or partially blocked blood vessels to areas of the body that red blood cells cannot reach due to their larger size.