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Health

Rapid healing trick falls foul of anti-doping rules

By Andy Coghlan

11 May 2005

PROFESSIONAL athletes who opt for an emerging treatment called “blood-spinning” in the hope of healing their injuries faster could fall foul of the World Anti-Doping Agency. The agency ruled last week that the procedure, based on concentrating and re-injecting a person’s own blood, could introduce banned substances into the body.

But proponents of blood-spinning argue that the ruling may deny injured athletes access to a technique that could heal their injuries faster than existing treatments and potentially with fewer complications.

WADA, based in Montreal, Canada, already bans the concentration, storage and re-injection of an athlete’s own red blood cells just…

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