Anabolic Steroids

[Profidia]

[QUOTE=danceronice;5029342]
Why would you inject CORTICOsteroids? Genuine question. In humans, at least, they are the polar opposite of performance enhancer, except perhaps in that it’s hard to compete at anything when your own immune system is trying to kill you (as corticosteroids are immunosuppressants given for anything from allergies to MS to RA to my own fun little disorder, where my immune system destroys my platelets.) The side effects make you feel like crap, and you definitely don’t gain any muscle mass from them. [/QUOTE] Here’s a pretty good read
http://www.animallawcoalition.com/horse-slaughter/article/1372

And could you (if you are in fact the OP’s sockpuppet) or the OP link to Mountaineer’s new policy so the rest of the class can see if it’s changed? “To my understanding” isn’t a citation.
Ok, How about this one
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20090502/SPORTS08/905020451/Eight-Belles-death-at-Derby-spurred-safety-reforms

OP: Totally ignoring a post is ducking. See above–where is Mountaineer’s new policy? Or would you care to address Ghazzu’s point that there’s a place for everything, or On The Farm’s that apparently you’re against any veterinary treatment developed in the last seventy years or so, since sulfa and penicillin are also drugs so they must be contraindicated in performance animals.

I just love it when the druggies (refer to themselves as “chemists”) chime in and try to defend the indefensible:lol:
Read those two links then get back to me:)

[danceronice]

The Animal Law Coalition? Right, an anti-“cruelty” lobby group. Certainly an unbiased source. That is not an “article” in the journalistic sense, it’s a lobbyist press release. Particularly absurd is the idea there was some happy time when horses ran on oats, hay, and water. More like oats, hay, water, cocaine (Sir Barton reputedly had to be ‘coked to the gills’ to run) and whatever else they could pump into them that no one noticed because there was no testing. Not to mention running horses on injuries WITHOUT treatment because treatments didn’t exist. And in any case the legislation they’re talking about is primarily a human-consumption slaughter ban, and two HIGHLY unscientific clauses about “welfare”. I’m not even a vet and I can think of several ‘naturally occuring substances’ that are used as medications. Banning whips? Why don’t they go worry about the spurs, dressage whips, spade bits, and 101 kinds of crops on show animals before worrying about racing whips, that honestly don’t even hurt THAT much on human skin, never mind horsehide.

The second article even points out problems with the first, or did you the miss the part about “There’s no indication that steroids contributed to Eight Belles’ injury. No anabolic steroids were found in her body.” Big Brown is mentioned as having been giving steroids, though–oh, wait. He never broke down. Crap feet, but that’s not steroids, that’s shitty breeding, like Eight Belles. (And the first article mentions Barbaro, who also wasn’t running on steroids and is pretty much universally believed to have been a freak accident. He broke down for the same reason horses snap legs playing in pastures.) Pretty much EVERY incident mentioned in the article about an actual breakdown has nothing to do with any sort of drugs–you have inbred glass ankles like Eight Belles and Ruffian (where at least neither ever lived to breed) and you have a runaway horse slamming into another during a work. What in the world does that say about your “argument”? What most of those injuries say is 1. horses are good at killing themselves, 2. Inbreeding to lines that demonstrably produce crap legs when crossed on each other is a bad idea and 3. steroids might give an unfair advantage (they took Big Brown off and look what happened.)

Plus–that article is from May 2009 and the only mention of Mountaineer is that last year’s WV Derby could lose graded status if they didn’t officially ban steroid use. So, in August of 2010, that means what? You STILL haven’t shown anything that says Mountaineer is permitting anabolic steroids willy-nilly as you allege in your first post.

[Profidia]

[QUOTE=danceronice;5031032]

Plus–that article is from May 2009 and the only mention of Mountaineer is that last year’s WV Derby could lose graded status if they didn’t officially ban steroid use. So, in August of 2010, that means what? You STILL haven’t shown anything that says Mountaineer is permitting anabolic steroids willy-nilly as you allege in your first post.[/QUOTE]
Admittedly most of that article is irrelevent to the subject being discussed. Salient point of it was this:

“Today, the steroid ban is in place in 34 of the 38 racing states. Idaho, Montana and Nevada have no ban; West Virginia says anabolic steroids are banned there, but it does not test for them”

That was the thing you conveniently forgot to mention. There is a policy but is no testing. Why is there no testing? What in the world good is a policy with no testing?

Also, funny thing about the racetrack grapevine. Anybody who’s ever hung around the backside much can tell you that if somebody at Belmont breaks wind they’ll smell it at Santa Anita.

Word on the track spreads like fire in a haybarn. In my time I’ve found racetrack scuttlebutt to be factual and true. Demanding proof of this and proof of that is pretty ignorant in such an environment.