Quote:
Originally Posted by Riot
Lasix decreases the incidence and severity of EIPH in the race horse. Proven effective beyond a doubt no matter how often you call "BS". So essential to the health and welfare of the horse, that it's the only therapeutic drug the united veterinary world says should be allowed to be administered on race day.
You're right. It's about a powerful few in racing angry that the veterinary world has the audacity to tell them they are wrong. How dare the underlings speak up! They pay our salaries!
Yes, it's all about our "convenience". Not about the horse. Same old "discredit the messenger" straw man.
When being lasix-free causes horses to suffer, we'll be sure to point directly. at. you. Who will you blame then? The medical world is on record, publicly saying you are wrong. Who will you blame? Hey!
I'll bet it will be those horrid trainers, and their evil veterinary accomplices, using all those "illegal drugs we can't detect"!
After all, you eliminated "scourge of steroids" three years ago, and look at how the sport has changed ... oh. Whoops. Never mind. Guess that's why lasix is being attacked now.
Hint: maybe go after illegal drugs, but more importantly, abuse of currently legal drugs. Through .. testing! Yeah! Testing! Rather than picking on drugs that help horses?
But wait, that costs money ... guess we'll just go back to eliminating lasix. Damn! Racing would be so perfect for the rich, old powerful white men, if only it were not for the trainers and veterinarians and public bothering them.
Oh, yeah - there are living creatures, horses, involved, too.
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It's not like eliminating lasix is an experiment and we don't know what's going to happen. How many years has there been horseracing in the United States? I don't know the answer but I think it has been well over 100 years? How many years have we been racing with lasix, maybe 30 years or so? So what is it going to be like with no lasix? It will probably be like it was 30 years ago. Is there any reason to believe that bleeding is worse now than it used to be?
By the way, just because a drug has been determined to have a statistically significant effect on a problem, that doesn't necessarily mean that the drug should be taken. For example, let's say that we test a group of people that say they have a hard time falling asleep. We test these 500 people and we determine that the average length of time it takes them to fall asleep is one hour. So then we give half the people a placebo and we give the other half a sleeping pill. We determine that the placebo group shows no improvement. It still takes them one hour to fall asleep. The experimental group shows a significant improvement. It now only takes them 50 minutes to fall asleep. So on average, the sleeping pill got people to sleep in 50 minutes instead of an hour. They fell asleep 16% faster with the sleeping pill.
So that is a statistically significant improvement. But does that mean that it is worth it for these people to start taking this sleeping pill every night? There is no right or wrong answer. It's just a matter of opinion. Some people would say that it's worth it to get to sleep 10 minutes sooner. Other people would say that there is hardly any difference between 50 minutes and an hour and there is no reason to take the pill.
It would be one thing if the sleeping pill saved the person 45 minutes. That is a huge improvement. That would be a 75% improvement. I think you could make the same argument with lasix. It would be one thing if lasix had these amazingly dramatic effects that practically eliminated bleeding. But that is not the case.