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.

Anyone who thinks vets are pro-lasix for monetary reasons is just plain wrong. Lasix is hardly a big revenue source especially when one considers the time consiumed giving shots and filing paperwork (well except in MD where you seemingly can do whatever you want). If a vet makes $15 profit a shot and gives 10 shots a day, 4 days a week (probably high numbers) you are talking $600 a week. Of course this assumes that they have 10 horses in on a given day and that they treat horses in a jursidiction that races year round. For instance vets working at CD dont treat clients horses with lasix at Keeneland or Turfway or Ellis Park. If they have a large enough practice they may have a secondary vet that covers that track but most dont bother. However long it takes to run a days card is approx the time a vets day is disrupted giving lasix since everyone wants to be treated close to 4 hours out. That time takes away from far more lucratitive activities like xrays, scans, injections, etc. A set of xrays might cost you $500 at the big tracks and take 20 minutes to do with the new digital machines. When you add time spent doing prerace (day before) shots which also must be done in a time specific (24 hours pre post cutoff) and post race jugs and such you see why some practice hire young kids just out of vet school to do lasix and post race stuff. Surely hiring an additional vet is more costly than the money that can be earned giving $20 lasix shots and $25 electrolyte jugs?

What puzzles me about the financial argument is that people dont seem to understand that the elimination of raceday lasix wont cause horses to stop bleeding and actually will make trainers even more hyper-sensitive about scoping, pre and post race. It will make trainers more apt to use meds in workouts to try to prevent an episode (lasix isnt the only thing used for bleeding in morning workouts) and more likely to use other supplements in order to try to prevent bleeding. Obviously more horses will bleed and some minor incidents will turn into more serious ones. When a horse bleeds you are looking at 2 scopings (post race and before going back to work and probably after most workouts from then on), anti-biotics (to prevent infection and are expensive), clenbuterol (helps clear lungs) and a number of other treatments such as immune builders.

Most vets hate having to give lasix and fill out the paperwork. They dont make much money at it, have to run around from barn to barn within a short period of time, and prevents them from attending to the important part of their jobs. However they almost universally realize that it is the best solution to EIPH that we currently have hence the support for its usage.

Oh yeah I have no idea what the median income for a racetrack vet is across the country (especially since many vets are operating solo versus some practices that might have 4 or 5 vets) but at the larger tracks 85k is not even remotely close.

Where did I say there are no negatives? Of course it is a benefit vs. negatives analysis. I have just yet to here a cogent argument based on factual or scientific evidence instead of speculation that comes close to making the negatives of its current use outweigh the positives.

The long term consequences? The average horse may get 6 shots a year. Being that people keep confusing the issue by using human analogies they forget that horses are very infrequently treated with lasix especially compared to humans who take it every day for long periods.

Does it cause minor dehydration? Doesn't standing in a stall when it is 95 degrees do that as well? I have never heard of dehydration as being listed as a major issue for racehorses.

Let me be on record as saying that I dont believe that lasix is some magical drug that does all these things good or bad. For the most part it just makes them pee. If there was something different that could be used to help prevent bleeding, lessen incidents and hold confirmed bleeders I would kick lasix to the curb in a minute. But that doesnt appear to be on the horizon so IMO stopping its raceday usage because a few bluebloods (and Barry) feel better about themselves using a bogus PR claim (Rupert you cant seriously think that a lasix ban is going to have any effect when a STEROID ban didnt do you?) and a threat of the Feds coming is completely counter productive.

And for those who dont own horses and think they have no dog in the fight because they are just bettors if the Feds do come guess whose money they are going to tap into to fund the bureaucracy?

http://www.drf.com/news/crist-lasix-...hat-you-preach

If I thought that banning lasix would help horseracing I would be content to try to figure out ways to deal with EIPH without it. But I dont think that those who are in favor of banning it are: a. being truthful about their true intentions, b. have little understanding of what the betting public wants, c. understand the ramifications and potential negative reactions that will come with the elimination of it. The PR bounce has zero chance of helping, the breeding factors are laughable and when you realize that all these industry leaders are the same ones wo have gotten us to this point of near irrelevancy perhaps like PG1985 you will figure out that simply going the other way will increase your chance of success greatly.

Here was your quote, "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?"

That question sounded to me like you didn't think there was anything bad about the drug. Anyway, I will let this guy answer your question:

http://thoroedge.wordpress.com/2011/...lous-nonsense/

By the way, with regard to the PR debate I think it would be positive PR if they banned lasix. Let's just say that for our sport to be really successful that we need public perception of the sport to improve by 80%. I'm making that number up just for argument's sake. You could use any number. But if we pretend that we need public perception to improve by 80%, do I think that the elimination of lasix would improve public perception by 80%? Of course not. But I think it could improve it by maybe 5-10%. I think it would certainly help a little bit. I think the banning of steroids helped a little bit. I don't think it was a dramatic improvement but I think it helped a little bit.

Seriously? That is the guy you are going to use as your source?

After steroids were banned handle dropped for 2 straight years. Tracks continued to cut race days, the same trainers won and the same ones lost. It was such a rousing success that the NY Times stated that virtually no progress has been made in the area of equine drugs!

How about using your numbers that there was a .5% improvement? Then is it worth the collateral costs? The horses immediately retired? The horses with careers cut short? The added expense of trying to use other means which surely will cost more than $25? The potential of shorter fields? The 47% trainers continuing to win 47% or higher? The public not seeing ANY changes just as they didnt when steroids were banned? You see that is the point that you and others miss. This isnt like baseball where they cracked down on roids and HR totals dropped dramatically. People wont see anything different so they will continue to believe whatever they want to believe. And after viewing this thread, others elsewhere and listening to the prattle it is readily apparent that some people will believe anything for awhile.

I'm not sure which part of the article you want me to respond to. With regard to his main message, I would simply say that the reason most of these guys continue to use the drug is because they think they would be at a disadvantage if they didn't, and not so much because their horses would bleed, but because they think it makes most horses run better, even non-bleeders.

The PR part, hello? If every trainer felt this way than why are 98% of trainers in favor of keeping it including fairhaired boys who surely would have an advantage without it like Motion, Clement and Mott?

Is that guy not credible? I don't know who he is. I just found the article and the guy sounded like he knows what he's talking about. We know what the drug does to an animal (and a person). What this guy is saying has to have at least a small amount of merit to it, even if it is overstated and/or exaggerated.

I'm still not convinced that the advent of lasix (and other drugs) over the last 25 years, is not one of the reasons why horses are more fragile today. The reason you gave about more horses being bred might be a big part of it too. There may be a number of reasons but I am not convinced that the advent of lasix is not one of them.

All of these trainers have a "program". Lasix is part of that program. These guys don't want to change any part of their program. Why would they? Their programs work. They are having a lot of success. What would they want to change anything?

So this the solution? I would love to credit the author if I could find his or her name. Concerned about calcium stunting growth and maintainence then why not give the horse calcium supplements? Or is that performance enhancing too? And that is some source they have to to back up that argument.

If Austrailian horses are built much sturdier than U.S. horses, then why aren't these faster beasts loading the starting gate for the Derby or the Met Mile?

If you are an owner than why don't you answer Crist? How about backing up your arguments with actions, start all your horses without Lasix, prove us doubters wrong.

Perception? What do you think the public perception is going to be when horses are choking on their blood and bleeding on the racetrack?

If you had read my earlier posts up to this you would have seen that I weighed a negative against a positive regarding the argument that Lasix enhances performance. I have not argued that using it is all good, I have just argued that ban is misguided and supported by misguided and speculative arguments without scientific evidence.

I thought that you were a pretty smart guy. I am afraid I may be mistaken.

Are you kidding? Eliminate lasix, and every equine veterinary practice in the country will be making 10-15 times that amount treating EIPH. That would be a veterinarians dream scenario!

And your insulting passive-aggressive attempt to say that vets care more about money than the horses is duly noted.

Uh no he isnt.

Do people really think that other drugs werent used before the last 25 years? There is a good possibility a 70's TC winner wasnt clean. There was a trainer in NY that moved up horses 15 lengths in 4 days. The 1967 winner of the Derby was DQ'ed for a bute positive.

No other species gets less healthy with modern medicine. Why would thoroughbreds? Harness horses have improved by leaps and bounds and believe me they are FAR more aggressive with drugs, legal or otherwise.

In the last 20 years we have had people tell us toe grabs were no good, so we got rid of them. We have had people tell us steroids were no good, so we got rid of them. The told us we needed synthetic tracks so some tracks got rid of them. They have cut the allowable level of bute by more than 50%. They are testing to picograms levels. They have banned milkshakes.

Has a single one of these moves helped appreciably?

Wrong. We know virtually everything about lasix, and have for decades. It's a very simple, easy-to-understand drug with a predictable and well-defined mechanism of action, and side effects which are dose-dependent and well-documented and very predictable.

Not even remotely possible at the doses horses get racing.

Yet veterinarians are encouraging the American racing industry to eliminate all drugs from race day - except lasix. Because the benefit is overwhelming.

Do you really think that trainers like this wouldnt have a bigger advantage without lasix? Do you even give things a minute of thought? Do you honestly believe the trainers in question couldnt develop a training "program" that didnt give a horse a shot of lasix on the day they run considering the resources they have access to? Really?

With regard to your comment about Australian horses in the Derby, "sturdy" and "fast" are two totally different things. Our horses in the US are definitely fast. Nobody is denying that. Our horses are "fast" but they are also very fragile.

I would rather that my trainers did not use lasix. But as I said in my prior post, most trainers consider lasix to be part of their program. Most of them don't like to be told what to do. I put my foot down on certain things and others I don't. If the horse has never run before, I try to at least get the trainer to run the horse without lasix for at least their first lifetime race or two.

I agree with you that it will be bad PR when a horse comes back bleeding through the nose. We see that occasionally right now even with horses on lasix. If they ban lasix, I'm sure the incidence of this will increase somewhat.

I admit that I haven't read all your posts in this thread.

Then buy a box of FLAIR nasal strips, and drop it off at the barn, and see if your trainer will still train for you using those. I'm serious - they have proven efficacy for EIPH. You can get them for $10-15 a strip (single use).

By the way: if we eliminate lasix, I imagine that many will go back to what they used to use before lasix - removing water from the horse for a day or two. That type of severe forced dehydration (which is unlike the diuresis induced by lasix for multiple reasons) is NOT a scenario I'd like to see.

Wasn't my intent. Nevertheless, there is a monetary aspect to the debate that doesn't disappear into thin air simply because everyone claims to be in it for the horse's health.

In addition, if lasix were to be banned raceday, it would set a precedent for reassessment of all other medications, which one way or another, will force a major disruption to the attending veterinarian's economic niche on the racetrack.

Neither did I say that lasix administration is a major revenue source for vets.

On the hand, do you think $30 million annually is a major expense for racehorse owners collectively?

I understand at an individual level it may seem like small potatoes, but just because lasix shots are potentially spread amongst several different practices, does that mean that the revenue generated simply vanishes?

So, between roughly 8:00am and 12:00pm, veterinarians are doing nothing else but administering lasix shots? No chance within the 30 minute intervals to do anything else? A second ago, you said, being generous, vets might be responsible for only 10 lasix shots per day. Now you make it sound like they are performing 10 lasix shots per race.

This presumes that trainers are willing to do costly diagnostic tests on their horses in the first place. I think you're being a little bit disingenuous as to what horsemen are willing to spend, and what income is being "lost" by racetrack veterinarians by doing raceday lasix shots.

By the way, if it takes only 20 minutes to do a digital radiography study, wouldn't a hustling vet be able to bookend that half-hour with a couple of $30 lasix shots?

So now the main veterinarians aren't even doing these lasix shots. It's the associates they've hired. I guess they actually do have the time to do all that other lucrative stuff. Problem solved.

Is it a given that trainers will become hyper-sensitive to scoping? Are they not already? What percentage of horses are scoped following a race?

No doubt a lasix ban will result in a more episodes of performance-significant bleeding. However, whether the majority are for or against a lasix ban, I don't think it's realistic to presume that the economics of the issue do not affect the veterinarian segment of the racetrack industry. They are not simply custodians "on the sidelines" keeping an all-knowing eye on the little ignorant kiddie horsemen rough-housing with their toy horses on racetrack playgrounds. They've got dirt under their fingernails, too.

Of course they could develop a training program without lasix. I wasn't saying that they would have any trouble changing their program. I was simply saying that they would rather not change their program. Why would they possibly want to change things when things are going so well for them? Not only that, lasix is somewhat effective in lessening (and even preventing) bleeding. Most traines use it. They think it works. It's part of their program. I wouldn't expect that many of them would want to get rid of it.

Racehorses injest a lot of calcium.
http://horse.purinamills.com/product...2-0032711.aspx
Many also supplement along with the feed
http://www.mannapro.com/products/hor...l-information/

ITTP is one of the biggest rumored "hops" in racing. Made in France.

Here is a story which refers to "blue magic" which a pretty famous US trainer was rumored to have used in his rise to prominence.
http://www.thecourier.com.au/news/lo...nz/650748.aspx

I know they are a little off tangent but the other idea that racing is so clean in foreign jurisdictions because they dont use lasix on raceday is false.

This may be a scam but from Aussie backpage.com an ad for ITTP for $950 US dollars
http://brisbane.backpage.com/MiscFor...e-race/2304216

UK
http://www.tradett.com/products/u315...orse-race.html