Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Now we are getting to a different and very interesting area of discussion.

 

All of my posts were directed to What is the present rule?  and What does it mean? Also remember that the original question revolved around the possible use of herbal products just prior to and during a race (essentially 0 days withdrawal)

 

 

Perhaps someone can suggest a better rule that can protect our horses.  I suggested a few years ago that perhaps stated residual levels of common useful horse drugs could be used.  I was soundly trounced in this forum for suggesting something that would lead to lots of cheating, protests etc.

 

I am open to suggestions for different rules that may be better.  Until that happens, I strongly contend that a moral competitor must adhere to the intent of the rule and make sure that their horse is not under the influence of any performance enhancing substance during the race.  Yes, scientifically developed drugs approved by the FDA include a data package that allows calculation of withdrawal times (assuming you know what levels are permissable), but it is very different with over the counter herbal products.  Most of them have not been studied therefore the half life is not known.  The packagers of the herbal concotions do not test them for amounts of active ingreedients (if indeed they even know all of the active ingreedients) so the amount of active ingreedient undoubtedly varies from lot to lot.  That alone  makes calculation of withdrawal times harder.

 

It has been suggested that I am advocating that one can never use drugs on an endurance horse.  That is not true.  I am just reminding people that, especially with unknown herbal concotions, one has to be sure that the blood concentration on race day is way below active levels.  As has been pointed out on this forum, in the past, if your horse is tested and any amount of a useful drug is found, even way way below levels that should have a clinical effect, you will at the very minimum have to explain publicly how this happened.  This public process, including publication of your name in Endurance News would be very embarassing to most riders.

 

Lets assume that the herbal concotion happens to have chemical compound (the actual active ingreedients in herbal concotions are chemical compounds, even though not man made.) that stays in the horse a relatively long time, and is detectable and detected, 48 hours after you used the herbal concotion for trailering to the race.  Let's further assume that since this compound is well known to science to have a performance enhancing effect combined with no useful role in equine medicine (caffene is a good example), I beleive that the committee would be very likely to decide on a sanction in addition to embarassment.

 

If you are getting the impression that I am against the use of herbal preparations, you are right.  Metabolicly active compounds that have not been proven safe and effective, and at unknown concentrations are dangerous.  There are very good reasons why the FDA and pure food and drug laws were enacted 100 years ago.  People were dying from the effects of the dye "butter yellow".  Women were adicted to narcotics (opium, a nice herbal remidy for what ails you) for "female complaints".  Soda fountain drinks were sold that contained addicting stimulants (the original formulation of Coke contained small, but useful amounts of cocane).  We would all be better off if we used only approved, regulated drugs on ourselves and our horses.  Yes we would miss out on some benefits of plant drugs not yet investigated and proven, but we would also miss out on the harm that comes from using dangerous drugs in unknown amounts.  I think that is a good trade off.  If you think I am silly, think about the herbal diet concotions that were reformulated last year because people were dying. (sorry I can't remember the names of either the preparations or the removed ingreedient)

 

Ed

Ed and Wendy Hauser
Sisu West
2994 Mittower Road
Victor, MT 59875

 

(406) 642-9640

 

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