Round Table Reactions

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I have read the Jockey Club Round Table presentations (available at http://www.jockeyclub.com/roundtable_08.asp) and have a few reactions:

The drug testing recommendations are directed more towards empire building and combating an image problem than towards stopping cheating. Logical steps towards stopping cheating would include rewarding whistleblowers and focusing testing on \"move-up\" trainers.  I didn\'t see anything like that in the recommendations.  Instead the focus is on uniform rules and a national drug testing lab.  Uniform rules have merits (like preventing states from competing for horses through permissive medication rules), but I think uniformity is mostly about making it easier for trainers to ship from state to state or have operations in multiple states without inadvertently getting a positive (and blackening the industry in the public eye) because of rule differences.  Uniformity doesn\'t really address cheating, and in fact may make it easier to cheat because the trainer knows that if he can get away with something in one state, he can get away with it everywhere.

Aside from empire building, I don\'t see what a national drug testing lab could accomplish that cannot be accomplished within the existing infrastructure.  Most innovative science in this country is done by having scientists compete for funding by demonstrating an ability to make discoveries or solve problems.  Science also advances when scientists working in tangentially related fields interact with each other to figure out how new techniques from one field can profitably be applied in another.  Insulating the scientists in a newly-developed national thoroughbred drug testing lab from both competition and frequent interaction with scientists in other fields hardly sounds like a recipe for improved drug testing.  Instead, it sounds like a recipe for delay and expense in an industry that cannot afford either.  In his recent chat on Bloodhorse.com, Dr. Scott Stanley of UC Davis (admittedly with a vested interest) said \"I think the industry would be better served by supporting several regional Centers of Excellence. This approach distributes the work among a few laboratories and takes advantage of already existing facilities and the accumulated expertise. The equine industry should then assign each Center to investigate an area of concern and develop a resolution (e.g., developing threshold anabolic steroids).\"  His approach strikes me as superior to the Jockey Club\'s.

As for the presentations on the state of the breed and soundness, I have numerous doubts about the statistical and data collection methods they employed.  Anyone can play games with numbers. If the Jockey Club wants to be taken seriously, they should write up their analysis in a rigorous fashion, subject it to review by independent experts, publish it online, and make the underlying data publicly available.  Otherwise, their studies are about as credible as tobacco industry studies on the effects of smoking.