Does EPO cause memory loss?

I think it might or it causes selective memory retention. I'm no expert. However, I was going back through my memory bank and came to the conclusion that Mauro Gianetti might not be as misled as Mr. Millar believes. A few articles blasting from the past.

Most recently. David Millar: Cyclingnews 17 Jul 2008
However, Millar believes that Mauro Gianetti, Saunier Duval's team manager, has good intentions and Riccò was more likely misled by others.

I think that Mauro Gianetti has been taken advantage of and he is someone I have a lot of respect for," said Millar. "He does not deserve this and he has a good heart. He has perhaps put a lot of trust in people that he shouldn't have and he will learn from this.

I guarantee - you watch Mauro - he will have an independent anti-doping programme within the team by the end of the year. He was close to doing it last year, and now he is going to have to extend his budget and get that programme in place. It is by doing that the sport will change.

Not as innocent as it seemed back in May 11, 1996, cyclingnews.com
Team Polti Offers Itself As EPO-Test Guinea Pig

With biochemists working with the UCI unable so far to isolate EPO from urine samples, a new approach is being pursued which would involve blood samples being compared with urine samples. Until now all the teams that UCI president Hein Verbruggen has approached have refused to cooperate with experiments to try out this analysis technique. However Team Polti has come forward and agreed that blood samples can be taken from its riders, starting in the Tour de Romandie currently being run.

This is said to have been as a result of a personal demand from Polti rider Mauro Gianetti. Team trainer Giosue Zenoni says: "We're absolutely certain they won't find anything amiss in our team, but if by collaborating we can contribute to exposing cheating, I'm all for it."

A Canadian drugs-detection specialist has arrived in Ferrara to work with Prof Francesco Conconi on the comparative method which it may be possible to institute in time for the Tour de France.

Interesting historical note a fews year later in 1998

The first artificial oxygen carriers belonged to a class of synthetic perflourocarbon-based emulsions. PFCs, which are quite similar to Teflon, are insoluble in water but can absorb huge quantities of gases--some products can dissolve more than 100 times more oxygen per volume than blood plasma) and are yet biologically inert. In 1966, the capability of PFCs as an oxygen transport medium were spectacularly displayed when a study in Science showed that a rat immersed in the solution could survive for hours--it literally breathed liquid.

A PFC, which is taken in an injected emulsion, stays in the bloodstream for only a few hours before dissolving out and expiring, chemically unaltered, through the lungs. This raises the somewhat comic and, at the same time, disturbing image of anti-doping officials combing finish lines with breathalyzer kits.The first suspected use of a PFC in cycling was at the 1998 Tour de Romandie, when Mauro Gianetti collapsed mid-race and was rushed to the University hospital in Lausanne, where Gianetti spent two weeks, some of it in intensive care where his body battled against anaphylactic shock and near-total organ failure. Gianetti "almost died," said hospital physician Gerald Gremion in news reports, "probably following an injection of PFC." Gianetti denied he had taken the drug.

What cyclists who took PFCs either did not know or care about was that not one of the various types of PFC had ever been approved for human use by the medical governing body of any nation. The drug was strictly reserved for clinical trials and known adverse effects included everything from mild flu-like symptoms to the kind of near-complete organ failure that Gianetti suffered.

And then they tout his return, 1998

VALKENBURG, Netherlands (Reuters) -- Five months ago Mauro Gianetti was fighting for his life in a Lausanne hospital for the second time in three years. On Sunday he captains Switzerland in the elite world road race championship over 258 kilometers. Last May Gianetti collapsed during the Tour of Romandy. His kidneys failed and for three days doctors feared that he might die. But once again, the Swiss rider has surprised everyone with his power of recovery.

However Sunday's race, the blue riband of the world road championships, has been hard hit by the absence of several leading riders. Among them are the Swiss trio of Alex Zuelle, Laurent Dufaux and Armin Meier who were suspended following the Tour de France when they confessed to using the performance-enhancing drug EPO (erythropoietin).

And technically, it's really the start of stage 13 in France.