While not a cycling related article, it should make anyone considering taking EPO reconsider.

Last month, research studies in the New England Journal of Medicine found that patients who received higher doses of anemia drugs died or suffered heart attacks and strokes more often than those who received lower doses.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-amgen7dec07,1,4417339.story?coll=la-headlines-business

But their quality of life was much higher, and mortality rates were still not that high especially considering the poor health of the study population. Makes the choice a little more difficult.

They also fail to account for baseline healthy HCT levels in the subjects [difficult since in many cases it would be a decade or more prior] so you can have 1 person who born to have a 35 HCT and another 45 both raised to 45. I think it's fairly reasonable to conclude the guy that dies would be the former rather than the latter.