RACING VIEWS : Researchers Revive Lasix Controversy

In 1973 Maryland racing fans began to observe phenomena that seemed to defy all logic. Some horses were improving, from one race to another, by 10 or 20 lengths. Fainthearted horses who had tired in sprints suddenly found the stamina to win distance races. The horses performing these miracles came from only a few stables, however. Only a few trainers possessed the magic power to transform thoroughbreds overnight.

Later we learned these trainers didn’t have magic; they had Lasix. The diuretic, originally intended for human use, had made its way to the track and it sharply improved the performance of certain horses--particularly those with respiratory problems. Its illicit use became so flagrant in Maryland, and gave such an advantage to the trainers who had access to it, that the state racing commission finally bowed to horsemen’s demands and allowed it.

That was the beginning of the Lasix era in U.S. racing. The medication was approved in state after state, after the pleading of horsemen and the assurance of veterinarians that it was a benign, therapeutic drug that wouldn’t alter horses’ form.

The horsemen’s lobbying always was strong enough to override questions from members of the betting public, who had observed the form reversals that Lasix induced, but who had no political voice. The pro-medication forces were such a steamroller that Lasix had been entrenched for a decade before the industry undertook the first serious scientific study of its effects.

The results of that study, commissioned by the Jockey Club and conducted by the prestigious University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, were made public Monday. The study confirmed what bettors have taken for granted: The drug makes horses run faster. In the study, horses who were not bleeders, and therefore had no need for the drug’s therapeutic effects, improved by an average of two lengths.

The stunning part of the study was its finding that Lasix isn’t terribly effective in helping bleeders. A high percentage of the horses treated with Lasix were found after a race to have blood in their trachea anyway--the very condition Lasix was approved to prevent.

These conclusions do not necessarily mean that the question of whether to keep Lasix legal is an open-and-shut case. I have played the horses extensively in California (where medication policies are very liberal) and in New York (where all drugs are forbidden) and I see plenty of ambiguities in the issue.

On half the days I have spent at Santa Anita, the air quality has been so bad that the nearby San Gabriel Mountains have been rendered invisible. I find myself hacking, coughing, sniffling even when I am sitting quietly in the grandstand. Under such conditions, does it make sense to deny a racehorse respiratory aid, even if it only helps some of the horses some of the time? Californians overwhelmingly favor their Lasix program, and I rarely have seen form reversals by horses to suggest it is being abused.

In contrast, there is no racing area in the country that generates so many justifiable suspicions about improper drug use as New York does. The prevailing attitude among some trainers may be that if they can’t use allowed drugs, they might as well use prohibited ones.

What the University of Pennsylvania study does demonstrate, however, is that the assurances given to state racing commissions by horsemen and veterinarians were false. It has exposed the dishonesty, the shortsightedness and the greed of those people in the racing industry who championed Lasix in the first place.

In every country but the United States, the prescribed cure for bleeding is rest. But here, trainers and owners argue that the demands of year-round racing necessitate the help of medication to keep the horses going. In other words, they don’t want to expend the time and money needed to give a horse a rest when a needle might do the job for them.

Veterinarians rushed to their support, extolling the virtues of Lasix, but their motives might generate cynicism too. Diagnosing bleeders and treating them with Lasix every time they run is a steady and significant source of income for race track vets. A Canadian journalist wrote that asking vets if horses should race on Lasix “is like polling kids to see if they would like more candy.”

What was most troubling about the movement to permit Lasix was that horsemen and vets were so narrowly concerned about their economic interests and so little concerned about the betting public or the perceptions of the public at large. As they whitewashed the issue, they argued that there was no need to inform the public about who was getting Lasix and who wasn’t.

As recently as the mid-1980s horses could run in the Kentucky Derby with no public disclosure of whether they were being treated with medication. And even today bettors can only guess whether horses shipping from one state to another were given Lasix in their last race.

Even more serious, however, is the perception of outsiders that horse racing is an inhumane sport in which the participants are drugged. The current issue of the Thoroughbred Times addresses this image question by quoting a Humane Society lobbyist who is leading an anti-medication charge in Iowa.

“Horse racing,” Antonia Russo said, “is carrying a ticking time bomb by failing to address . . . the drugging of horses. The industry is conducting an all-out campaign to recruit new fans and a younger audience (but) with increased concern with animal treatment in America, it is just a matter of time before horse racing becomes an animal rights issue. . . . If the industry cannot afford to race horses without medicating them, . . . then it will not survive. The public will not support it as a sport.”

Of course, the University of Pennsylvania study isn’t going to resolve the medication issue in America. It will enable the people who oppose the use of Lasix to counter the arguments of the horsemen and veterinarians. And it surely will harden their opposition.

But initial reactions from horsemen indicate that few of them have been swayed by this report. They insist that Lasix is such an effective and important medication that any curbs on its use would be a disaster.

Seventeen years after it began, the controversy over Lasix is about to start all over again.