Vetting the Vets

[Thehoarsehorseplayer]

At a funeral repast a few weeks ago I was talking with a woman with a daughter, a veterinarian, who, though she had trained under Dr. Dean Richardson at the University of Pennsylvania, is now employed as a  researcher for a pharmaceutical company.

Which raises the question in my mind, how do the veterinarians feel about their records being listed in the past performances? Most of these guys have other choices in life; they don\'t have to work at the track.  So, what they think is going to matter, whether a reformer acknowleges their professionalism or not.  You can always replace trainers, you can always replace jockeys, veterinarians I would think a rarer breed.  And since there alreadys exits a shortage of big animal veterinarians in this country I would think it unwise to enact reforms which might discourage their presence on the backstrech.

And I\'m not talking about allowing cheaters to continue to cheat here; I\'m talking about the law of unintended consequences: how an ethical doctor of record could get his reputation tarnished by a drug positive he was in no way responsible for.  And you know, a trainer might have to answer to a Racing Commision; a veterinarian might have to answer to a medical board.  At what point is it not worth the hassle?

And there is another professional reason veterinarians as a group might reasonably object to having the records of their charges listed.  Namely, such records don\'t reflect their professionalism.  A trainer is expected to win races, a jockey is expected to win races, a veterinarian is there only to attend to the medical needs of the horse.  But when a vet\'s \"win\" percentage becomes public, does his professional reputation then depend upon how many wins his charges have?  Does this then dissuade the vet from tending to cheap claimers or horses with serious ailments knowing he could get labeled as a low percentage vet?

This is all conjecture, of course.  Maybe the vets would welcome their names and records being publically listed.  Maybe they would then think themselves entitled to ten percent of the purse like the jockeys and trainers.  However, if they don\'t, all I\'m saying is by taking on the vets you\'re opening a can of wiggly, wiggly worms who, because they\'re learned, don\'t have to squirm.

[miff]

Horse,

Your points are excellent.Some people actually believe that ALL races are fixed or have runners that are illegally medicated.I dealt with two vets for many years,became friendly with one. No amount of money could make her inject a horse with an illegal substance.There are some vets/trainers that are blatantly using illegal stuff and not being detected.There has to be a relentless effort to catch and ban them.The vet thing on the program is overblown because you do not need to be a vet to do lots of illegal stuff with a needle or pill or whatever.The shots at Allday may or may not be justified. There is no evidence of widespread positives of horses he treats.Lots of innuendo, no proof.

Still,it is dangerous to put everyone in the same category. Most of the people in the game are honest and slowly but surely the game is getting serious about the illegal drug problem.

Mike

[fkach]

All excellent points. I suppose it\'s complications like this that make the issue so tough to solve even when people have good intentions.

[slewzapper]

Since we\'re discussing problems with cleaning up the game, here\'s a statistics problem to solve:

Currently in California, all horses undergo total CO2 testing pre-race to identify horses that may have received \"milkshakes\". The threshhold for a test to be considered positive is three standard deviations over the mean level (remember, this is a normal substance in blood, unlike looking for presence of banned exogenous substances). Trainers that have horses with levels above the threshhold are now considered to have committed a Class 3 violation, subject to purse disqualification, payment of fine, 30 days of running horses out of the detention barn, probation and possible suspension.

By definition, three standard deviations excludes 0.27% of the population tested; since ultra low levels are not subject to punishment (the outliers in the opposite direction), the current arrangement will identify 0.13% of the normal, \"unadulterated\" popoulation as having excessive levels, in addition to identifying those who had those levels elevated by interventions (intentional or unintentional). There currently is no way to separate individuals truly guilty from those who are arbitrarily deemed \"excessive\" by definitions of the threshhold - both groups are presumed guilty (the official term is \"responsible\")and subject to punishment.

If approximately 160 tests are run in California each racing day, with roughly 250 race days per year, what is the estimated number of tests each year  identifying \"excessive\" total CO2 levels in horses that were not altered by any intervention? Or, given the automatic link between excessive level, presumed guilt by trainer and  increasingly harsher punishment, how many \"honest\" trainers each year are painted as cheaters (\"collateral damage\") in the current program to prevent milkshaking?

[fkach]

I believe someone suggested charting each horse\'s normal CO2 range. That way, if it typically tests outside the normal range, it wouldn\'t be flagged. Of course, to know what is normal for the horse, you would have to test it under controlled conditions. We\'d also need to know whether CO2 levels vary widely in individual horses from day to day. I don\'t know the answer to that.

[imallin]

Good post.

Here\'s the situation. If a vet tends to a racehorse, they need to be on the program. If they don\'t want to be on the program, they don\'t have to be. There will always be someone who\'s willing to make a ton of money to administer a shot of this or a shot of that. Just don\'t do anything illegal and you won\'t have to worry.

I know what you are saying, that if a vet is on the pgm, someone could \'sabotage\' the horse and the vet is screwed because you can\'t get your reputation back.


I also think that if a horse has a procedure.....not just geldings...it has to be listed. If a horse has throat surgery, or chiropractic work, or gets scoped, the fans need to know.