For those who have not done so, this interview with Rick Arthur is worth a read:
https://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/its-a-cat-and-mouse-game-chrbs-rick-arthur-on-indictments/
TGJB: Freezing samples would be expensive. Biologists actually have three main types of freezers, -20, -80, and liquid nitrogen (around -180, all temperatures in centigrade). Which freezer you use depends on what you are freezing and how long you need it to last. As you get colder, the cost gets higher. Among biologists, competition for freezer space is fierce. If you are gong to freeze samples, I think you need to couple it with some kind of profiling, focusing on horses with big jump-ups. (Have you and other figuremakers have ever considered collaborating in publishing a database of huge jump-ups as a means of focusing attention on trainers who get them? Figures would be a lot more valuable without the jump-ups.)
The other significant point in testing, as Rick Arthur points out, is that testing gets a lot more difficult when you move from drugs to things to that are produced naturally in the body.
I am really curious about what\'s in SGF-1000. Collagen is not a big deal. It is the most abundant protein in the human body. Growth factors could be a big deal, but I wonder why fibroblast (connective tissue cells) growth factor and hepatocyte (liver cell) growth factor would be. I can see that fibroblast growth factor could be performance-enhancing by improving joint health, but are we against joint health? Maybe it has off-target effects. I suspect that even the providers don\'t know what is in SGF-1000 and that it probably varies from batch to batch. Protein purification is difficult and expensive.
https://www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-paddock/federal-indictment-highlights-tangled-web-woven-by-illegal-drug-makers/
The Arthur interview was covered previously in this thread:
https://www.thorograph.com/phorum/read.php?1,118011,118059#msg-118059
Private vet injections are the problem here! There should be NO private vet injections! All thoroughbred racehorse injections should be supervised and executed by a system of track, state and federal teams working together. Perhaps at an “Injection Barn†Everything entered into the blockchain with complete transparency to the public. Private vets may still diagnose and advise all they want. But they can’t inject. We’ll do it for them.
It’s all done much like how we go through security at the airport. With people supervising! Gasp!
Caradoc -
Sorry. I missed that.
Frank -
Thanks. I had seen this article before, but went back and read it more carefully after you posted the link. Natalie Voss does good work, going deeper than most horse racing writers. Even here, however, the discussion of SGF-1000 is mostly about what claims are made, not about evidence of what it contains or does. People seem to be treating it as Jason Servis\'s \"juice.\" Rick Arthur expresses skepticism about how effective it is in his interview, and Chuck Simon seemed to do the same on Steve Byk\'s show yesterday.
One possibility is that it is like chondroitin and glucosamine, which are natural chemicals found in joint cartilage and also marketed in supplements. A lot of people swear by the supplements as a means of reducing joint pain. The evidence seems to be that, in most cases, the supplement is no more effective than a placebo.
Another possibility is that SGF-1000 contains the growth factors described in the indictment and that those growth factors enhance performance by improving joint health.
A third possibility is that either the growth factors mentioned or some other unidentified components improve performance or endurance by another means. I am reminded of a friend who had prostate cancer and opted against a doctor-recommended treatment (due to virility effects) in favor or an herbal concoction that brought his PSA levels down. It turns out the herbal concoction had something in it that only affected detected PSA levels and not the underlying cancer, which metastasized to his brain.
I am not trying to defend Jason Servis or to deny that he got improbable jump-ups. I\'ve never been on a backside, but I get the impression that a lot of random experimentation with poorly understood treatments goes on there. A more controlled environment, with a better understanding by all of what is and should be used and what effects result, would be preferable.
More in Bloodhorse article:
https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/239041/rmtc-fda-played-roles-in-navarro-servis-investigation
Not sure why people are focusing on this SGF-1000 when “Monkey†Epogen is the real issue. One the Baffert’s of the world are accused of using.
I agree with you. SGF-1000, although not legal, seems relatively benign. It seems to have been the jumping-off point for the investigation, and, if I read the indictment correctly, that\'s all they\'ve really got on Servis or Maximum Security. They tie Navarro and the other defendants to the other, more abusive, drugs, but the commentary I\'ve heard seems to be painting both trainers with the same brush. As the investigation proceeds, I wonder whether they will be getting other trainers for SGF-1000 or the other things.
I have talked to a couple of trainers I know that have said they have used this stuff without seeing any benefit. Its clearly not this stuff, by itself.