There is plenty of proof you just choose to ignore it. The vet that testified in front of congress is an animal rights activist who was brought in specifically to preach. I have 30 years experience with thoroughbred racehorses and it has been my experience over those 30 years that lasix helps considerably with horses who bled and was a far better method of controlling bleeding than what we used prior to its use. Of course there might have just been a few decades worth of coincidences and maybe we just lucky all those years???

And Rafael Palmeiro also is in the congressional record as stating that he never took steroids....


I think what so many people miss here is that bleeding is not a big problem anymore because we have the ability to use lasix to combat it. No lasix means that the problem will worsen and a whole cottage industry will rise consisting of things that will be used to try to tackle the issue. In the end the lack of lasix will have a detrimental effect on the horses.

Assuming for a moment that you are correct that there is some enhancement to horses performances with Lasix despite the lack of medical evidence to support that contention, there is still a disconnect to the banning of the drug. Almost all players understand that Lasix can move a horse up (regardless of whether it is a performance enhancer or the horse has now been able to perform to its ability due to the medical benefits of the drug).

As you pointed out earlier in the thread, the move up of horses is about as quantifiable as any other handicapping angle. Since all horses are allowed to use Lasix, clearly the playing field is leveled and the handicapper is provided with known information to work with.

I don't believe for a second that any relevant segment of the general public refuses to bet on horse races due to a perception that Lasix is part of the stigma that the game cannot be trusted because horses are surreptiously drugged to win therefore rigging the results of the contest.

What I would love to hear from the proponents of banning Lasix is exactly what good for the game they believe they are accomplishing by banning it. Saying that the breed has been watered down and trying to link it to the use of Lasix is nothing more than pure speculation without any scientific evidence to back it up and is just as likely to be a coincidence with regard to timing. Forcing horses to race with blood in their lungs, shortening their careers, creating disincentives to ownership, etc. is not only cruel, but bad for the game in the short and long run.

At the end of the day, knowing that it without question has medical benefits to race horses, what is the harm in allowing horses to race on it under the current rules?

As an attorney who does significant personal injury and medical malpractice in addition to criminal law, I can assure you that with the right money you can find a doctor or vet to say just about anything.

There will be conclusions generally on both sides of an issue like this, you just have to wade through them and determine where the majority seem to lean and the ones that make more logical sense.

Prevention is not the only purpose of the drug, reduction is just as important if not more than prevention.

Yeah.. That must be why they wait until halftime to shoot them up in the NFL.

now, pointman, that is a good question. wonder if you'll get a good answer?


no joke!!

:rolleyes:

yeah nobody gets pain meds injected in sports!

IMO Lasix enhances performance by allowing the horse to run to its best natural ability without being hampered with blood in its lungs.

Is a horse going to run faster with Lasix and no bleeding from the lungs compared to running and bleeding? Yes

But I do not believe Lasix will cause a horse to outrun its natural ability (compared to a horse racing on anabolic steriods)

So while I do believe lasix will make a horse run better, I actually agree with Riot (dont tell anybody) that it's really a performance enabler... compared to an actual enhancer like racing on roids.

Of course I didn't say that. I said imagine if EVERYBODY did. Reading is fundamental.

Every player gets shot up Steve? You know better than that. I should change that to about 99% to keep it equal with horses. Do you think 99% of NFL players get shot up on game day?

Again, those that need it, sure. 99%, I don't think so. Even so, that is a contact sport so I'm not sure it is a good comparison. How about track and field. That seems A LOT more reasonable. How many of them are injected on the day of competition? 99%?

What is track and field? Never heard of it...

I find it hard to understand that if you believe lasix is a performance enhancer that you would want a small percentage of horses to benefit. The entire reason that the standards were relaxed is that pretty much every horse has some degree of bleeding at some point. Well that and the racing commissions love to save money so it is easier to not have the state vet check every bleeding episode...

Like I said, as a bettor, I don't care. All I am saying is it isn't the easy decision that both sides seem to think it is. I find it hard to believe that every horse has bleeding and that all bleeding, no matter how microscopic, is an issue.

Let me ask you this, while it does help with bleeding, doesn't dehydrating a horse before sending it out to race have some negative effects? I can't imagine there is another sport where the participant is dehydrated before competing.

The very reason I pay no attention to weight assignments. How much water weight is shed by each horse? Sure drugs have slightly different effects on horses just like they do people.

The dehydration effect of 1 injection of lasix is only about .5 to 1.5% of body weight.

Rarely clinically significant or of concern, and it matches the body weight loss in horses overseas that do not get lasix and sweat more, losing buckets of weight in sweat.

When the veterinary medical community tells the racing industry that lasix should be allowed for the health and welfare of the race horse, you'd think they'd listen to the horse health professionals.

Sad some simply choose to simply ignore that.

So as you point out that is between 6 and 18 pounds on a 1200 lb animal, which is entirely gone before the race even begins as opposed to sweating it out along the way as well as after the race is well over. So how much does a pound in the saddle really mean?

First, no that weight is not "entirely gone" before the race begins. The horses continue to sweat weight out during the race. That is post-lasix race weight hours after the race (which includes urination after the race)

What does a pound in the saddle have to do with blood volume?? They are two different things. The horse isn't losing muscle mass.

We could look at the results of the scientific study where they ran the horses replacing the weight the horse lost due to lasix, to see if "weight loss" due to lasix changed anything.

Would you like to see that?

I'm talking about weight and nothing more. Got my own feelings about where that water loss comes from when it is drug induced vs sweating from practical and observational experience, but am no vet and am not going to argue on one side or the other of this agenda driven debate.

This debate is agenda-driven by the welfare of racing horses, and what is best for their health, as far as I am concerned.

Lasix a loop diuretic that acts on the kidney. It makes you form urine via osmosis.

We have a very long history and frequent common use in people and animals, with reams of pharmacologic research. We know virtually everything about this drug. So have lots of experience in exactly what water is lost when a person or animal gets a lasix shot.

It is first intravascular water from blood plasma, and as that is lowered, extracellular water is drawn into blood plasma. That's "free water" sitting in tissues between cells. Not within the cells. But one shot of lasix doesn't affect extracellular water, and barely affects plasma water.

That is why lasix is used for lung edema and hypertension in congestive heart failure in humans, to decrease lung secretions in some pneumonias, and to decrease EIPH in race horses.

Here's the thing: as soon as the businessman leaders of racing start talking about the pharmacologic medical effects of lasix, and using those as arguments, they have to defer to the far more educated medical veterinary world to tell them how the drug works. Some refuse to do that if the medical facts go against their goal or opinion. That's absurd. The only interest the veterinary world has in this fight is the welfare of the horse.

Vets sit at the sidelines of this fight, puzzled, offering up the scientific truth to the horse world about what lasix does and doesn't do when they are asked, and giving results of the hundreds of thousands of dollars of research on lasix in race horses we have done - and then sit while lay people unhappy with the results science has found argue with what they learn as if it's debatable, as if simply denying it can make it false, and using animal rights activists and personal opinion as counters to science.

There is opinion. There is fact. They are different. There is considered opinion formed after full exposure to the facts. But denying facts exist in order to continue to hold an opinion is exactly what some in the racing industry are doing now, and that's stupid.

How much does it cost annually to treat horses with lasix on raceday? The estimate is somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million. That's ignoring lasix administered for morning workouts. That's ignoring all post-race endoscopy. That's ignoring all post-workout endoscopy. That's ignoring all adjunct bleeder medication. That's ignoring all "pre-race bleeder" treatments.

How many practicing racetrack veterinarians are there in this country? Perhaps as many as 3,000 (sitting on the sidelines...puzzled).

That's like $10k a year per person.

What's the median income of an equine veterinarian? Maybe $85k. That's a 12% hit.

Is that a lot?

Let's not even talk about public perception because the public relations implications are debatable. Let's just talk about the drug itself. It sounds like you are saying that lasix has these great medical benefits and there is nothing bad about taking lasix. I would totally disagree with that. There are all kinds of negative side effects and we may not even know the long term negative consequences of using the drug. That one article said that there is concern that long-term lasix use reduces calcium and may lead to brittle bones.

All drugs have negative effects. When deciding whether to use a drug (on either an animal or a human), you have to weigh the benefits and the risks. With lasix, maybe the benefits outweigh the risks. That would be a legitimate argument. If you said that, I wouldn't argue with you. But for you to say that there are only benefits and no risks is ridiculous. I don't think there is a single drug out there (for humans or animals) that has no risks.