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Re: The great drug debate





On Tue, 27 Oct 1998, Cynthia Eyler wrote:

> But when does an administered drug (such as bute) cease to exist in my
> horse?  If he's coming off an injury and all seems to be well again, how
> long until there's no longer any bute in his system?

If you have ever administered bute to your horse it will always have some
bute in its system (rather like radioactive half-lives). To be
mathematical, it is a limit that approaches zero, but never actually
reaches zero.

I am a reminded of a joke my father told us when we were old enough to
understand it:

The men, a mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are put in a room
with a buxom woman on the other side and told that they may only cross
half the remaining distance at a time (i.e. first half, then a quarter,
then an eighth, sixteenth, etc.)

The mathematician throws up his hands and walks out understanding
immediately that he will never reach the other side.

The physicist covers half, then a quarter, then and eighth, and through
experimentation discovers that he will never reach the other side, throws
up his hands and walks out.

The engineer covers half, then a quarter, then an eigth, then a sixteenth,
continuing until he is "close enough for all practical purposes."


By defining the level of allowable drugs to be zero, the AERC, knowing
that the number never will actually reach zero has tacitly stated that
"for all practical purposes" zero is the same as "undetectable by drug
test" but realizing that drug tests are getting better and better, have
amended "practical purposes" to be determined on a case by case basis.

In other words...you have to guess what they are going to think.

kat
Orange County, Calif.



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