Dueling Vet's on Lasix
 

Amazing how many opinions are bandied about on the % of horses that bleed, require Lasix and its PED value.

Here is Dr. Cohen's take OBVIOUSLY in the vocal minority:

http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com...just-said-yes/

“The reason I put him on Lasix is that I had to in order to compete,” he said. “He won an allowance and a maiden race without it and at that lower level he would have been fine without it. But once we got to the graded stakes level we were at a huge disadvantage, maybe by 12-15 lengths, not being on it. Lasix is a stone cold performance-enhancer. It was horrible that I had to do this. It tortures me.”

PED + a masking agent.

Despite reams of research over the last two decades that conclusively determined that Lasix has no properties as a 'masking agent', this lie gets repeated over and over. Feel free to identify it as a product that can enhance performance and be against it being administered on race day, but stop with the falsehood that it masks the presence of alleged nefarious administrations.

:tro:

This is a ridiculous Op-Ed piece. From the article itself:

You do understand, Bill, (may I call you Bill?) that these things are not mutually exclusive? I run faster when I'm not bleeding in my lungs, too.

And:

Soooo.... horse by a horse known for siring late-bloomers improves after being given to a A+ trainer, but come on, it has to be the Lasix!

And, this:

The key word here is, "really." I am assuming by the use of "really," that Cohen only counts it as bleeding if it's a 3 or 4 (the good doctor may mean something else, but in context, that's what I'm taking from it). No one disputes that bleeding from the nose is rare. Doesn't mean there isn't still minor bleeding going on and the damage from that is cumulative.

I like Finley's writing, but this is a piece for people who are already anti-Lasix. It's thoroughly unconvincing as an argument.

And the worst part:

A paragraph like that makes it sound like that for Cohen, winning money trumps a horse's health and welfare. Nice work there dissing your subject, Finley. Not cool. (Dr. Cohen, if I were you, I'd totally block him on Facebook.)

Boo, Finley. Back to Argument 101.

I can hardly wait for your second post.

Awesome first post cab!!

:tro:

and then the study done that showed lasix does indeed help with what it's supposed to help with, EIPH.

but yeah, people have a right to their own opinion, but not their own facts! hard to have a legit discussion when falsehoods get promoted as truth.

Dr. Cohen called Lasix "a stone cold performance-enhancer". Masking? nobody believes that much anymore BUT horses simply run faster with Lasix, its pretty hard to deny years of figs

His opinion is hardily a scientific brief by Dr Cohen, its anecdotal at best. Horses do run faster when given Lasix. I am not necessarily against it in fact I lean way more towards keeping it in use. It is certainly over prescribed and it is over used because it does aid horses in running faster.

I don't think it's disputed that a horse can run faster when he's not bleeding in his lungs, and study after study has shown that the vast majority of race horses bleed in their lungs at some point in their careers. Is something that, at best, enables horses to run to the limit of their ability (as opposed to below it) a performance enhancer? I mean, it's not like it can make a slow horse fast.

Dr Cohen suggests the following:


“I don’t care what anyone else says, 99% of all horses run on Lasix and 99% of all horses do not bleed,” Cohen said. “Period. End of story. I have been scoping horses for 30 years and the percentage of horses that really bleed is less than 10%. Do not listen to any veterinarian tell you differently.


Strange that there is such diversity in Vet's opinions on a fairly simple condition to substantiate?

His math is dubious at best. But besides that, if he has been scoping horses for 30 years....and 99% of the horses he is scoping are on Lasix, and thus 99% of horses don't bleed, what point exactly is he trying to make? That it works?

How could he possibly know that less than 10% of horses actually need it if 99% of his test samples are on it?

As I said earlier, he says, "That really bleed." Now, it's hard to tell exactly what is meant without hearing the tone, but in a lot of situations, "really" means "a lot." Like, "It's really hot out," or "he's really cute," or "that was a really bad op-ed Bill wrote there." If he means "really bleed" as in, bleed to where you can see it with the naked eye because it's coming out the horse's nose, then sure, I'll give him that only ten percent of the horses he's scoped "really bleed."

Rudeboyelvis also pointed out something I missed: that if the horses the vet is scoping are running/training on Lasix, then yes, it would stand to reason that most of them wouldn't bleed. Because that's what Lasix does, makes them not bleed.

I think you are a little bit confused. If a horse bleeds a drop, that is not going to affect their performance. I've been with vets while they are scoping horses after races on numerous occasions. They will tell me whether the horse bled, and if so, to what extent, and whether or not it affected the horse's performance. In most cases, the horses don't bleed. In maybe 10-20% of the cases, the vet will say the horse barely bled, that there was a drop of blood in the horse's throat. In these cases when I asked whether or not this affected the horse's performance in any way, every vet has always said, "No." Occasionally there will be a case where they can see a decent amount of blood in the horse's throat and they will tell you that the horse did bleed enough to have affected his performance. That happens maybe 5-10% of the time at most.

Don't get me wrong. When your horse bleeds, it is never a good thing. Even if it is only a drop, there is always a chance the problem could get worse. You need to pay attention to it.

Anyway, my point is that if your contention is that the only reason that horses run faster with lasix is because it stops them from bleeding, you are totally wrong. Lasix does lessen the chances of a horse bleeding. You are correct that if you stop a horse from bleeding, he will run faster. That is true and that is one of the reasons that horses run faster with lasix. But that is not the main reason. If you take horses that have never bled and you put them on lasix, most of them will run faster. Practically any vet will tell you that.

The World Anti-Doping Agency has it on the top of their banned drug list for one reason and one reason only.......it's ability to mask other drugs.
And that includes Equestrian events(Olympics etc...) where the horses are tested also.


http://www.marsing-sa.com/shop/furosemide/

http://list.wada-ama.org/list/s5-diu...asking-agents/

http://www.doping-prevention.de/subs...ng-agents.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2962812/

:zz:

Lasix can't hide the presence of other meds in blood testing. Period.