Or, consider that the causation could have been the other way around. The EPO could have made him more susceptible to cancer.

There is a mountain of evidence that the drug cheating was systematic. You can read The Secret Race, or draw your own conclusions from the $5 million false claims act settlement.

He was on steroids post treatment as well. Chemotherapy likes to cause anemia. In fact I think that’s where I first heard of EPO. Some survivor crowing about the efficacy at making them feel human again.

And they’ve discovered in more recent studies that steroid use has effects that last about twice as long as it’s detectable in your body (2 vs 1 year?). If sports weren’t such a young person’s game, I’d worry about people taking off for “surgery” and coming back built like a linebacker but testing clean.

Lance Armstrong never failed a drug test. The CEO of the insurance company responsible for underwriting bonus payments for Tour de France wins had read a book full of circumstantial evidence of the US Postal Service team doping and contested paying out the bonus. He knew they'd lose, but wanted to force the hands of some investigative body with real power to actually look into it. Federal prosecutors took up the case for a couple years, but then dropped it. Then USADA finally got a bunch of his former teammates and medical staffers to testify against him. Lance didn't even contest the finding because the evidence was so overwhelming, he figured his best course of action at that point was trying to keep the report confidential and winning in the court of public opinion instead, convincing all of his adoring fans that he was the victim of a witch hunt.

Obviously, that didn't work, but I guess he was just ahead of his time. These days, he could have run for president.