Posted sans comment.

[TGJB]

http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/77448/baffert-horses-big-part-of-sudden-death-spike

[touchgold]

wow.

[Boscar Obarra]

I was just going to post that, touchgold.  What else can you say?

[Fairmount1]

Baffert\'s horses collapsing on the track?  Seven of them?  

Are they talking about last year\'s [2012] Breeders Cup?

[rcondrey]

One of the many mind-boggling elements is that (according to Paulick) all the deaths occurred at Hollywood, not Baffert\'s base at Santa Anita. Virtually impossible for that to be a coincidence.

Hollywood also is the track Jerry has referenced recently where Frankel had most of his horses when he was on fire, and his barn there was fairly isolated, and the stalls were inside. That was not the case at Santa Anita, and the same applies to Baffert\'s barns at SA now. Just something that came to mind.

Also, hard to look past the fact most of the horses were owned by Kaleem Shah.

[sighthound]

Remember the 21 polo ponies that died?  Instead of purchasing the regular electrolyte supplement, a compounding pharmacy created one - overdosed on selenium, the horses collapsed and died.

[Fairmount1]

Sounds like you have details I had not read yet.  Regardless, this is from a DRF.com article about Shah, I\'ve bolded the two parts most interesting if your statement is true. The three deaths described below are all from....2011.  The article posted today concerns 2012.  
________________________________________________

http://www.drf.com/news/owner-kaleem-shah-racing-blood

Such experiences of "close but no cigar" rarely sits well with a competitive racehorse owner. Shah has the advantage learning patience from a father who warned him of the pitfalls, and then quickly grew a thick skin of his own.

"If you don't have one you shouldn't be in racing," Shah said. "But what really bothers me is when horses die."

Shah's stable suffered through three casualties in 2011. Global Exchange, a half-million-dollar son of Tiznow, sustained a fatal training injury, while Naseeb, a 4-year-old daughter of Belong to Me, broke down on the backstretch of a five-furlong turf race at Delaware Park in July. Naseeb made headlines because of her jockey, Rosie Napravnik, who fractured her arm and was sidelined three months. Naseeb could not be saved.

Then on Nov. 26, with his family present, Shah cheered on his best sprinter Irrefutable to a second-place finish in the Vernon O. Underwood at Hollywood Park. Upon returning to be unsaddled, the handsome gray collapsed and died on the spot, of apparent cardiac failure.

[Flighted Iron]

Environ Health Perspect. 1977 August; 19: 159–164. PMCID: PMC1637401Articles
Metabolic interrelationships between arsenic and selenium
Orville A. Levander
Copyright and License information ►
Copyright notice
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.
Abstract
In 1938, Moxon discovered that arsenic protected against selenium toxicity. Since that time it has been shown that this protective effect of arsenic against selenium poisoning can be demonstrated in many different animal species under a wide variety of conditions. Antagonistic effects between arsenic and selenium have also been noted in teratologic experiments.

Early metabolic studies showed that arsenic inhibited the expiration of volatile selenium compounds by rats injected with acutely toxic doses of both elements. This was puzzling since pulmonary excretion had long been regarded as a means by which animals could rid themselves of excess selenium. However, later work demonstrated that arsenic increased the biliary excretion of selenium. Not only did arsenic stimulate the excretion of selenium in the bile, but selenium also stimulated the excretion of arsenic in the bile. This increased biliary excretion of selenium caused by arsenic provides a reasonable rationale for the ability of arsenic to counteract the toxicity of selenium, although the chemical mechanism by which arsenic does this is not certain. The most satisfactory explanation is that these two elements react in the liver to form a detoxication conjugate which is then excreted into the bile. This is consistent with the fact that both arsenic and selenium each increase the biliary excretion of the other. Several other metabolic interactions between arsenic and selenium have been demonstrated in vitro, but their physiological significance is not clear.

Although arsenic decreased selenium toxicity under most conditions, there is a pronounced synergistic toxicity between arsenic and two methylated selenium metabolites, trimethylselenonium ion or dimethyl selenide. The ecological consequences of these synergisms are largely unexplored, although it is likely that selenium methylation occurs in the environment.

All attempts to promote or prevent selenium deficiency diseases in animals by feeding arsenic have been unsuccessful.

Over 30 years ago it was suggested that industrial hygienists use arsenic as a tonic to prevent or cure selenium poisoning in workers exposed to this hazard. Organic arsenical feed additives were tried as partial antidotes against selenium poisoning in livestock raised in seleniferous agricultural areas but were not found to be practical.

Full text
Full text is available as a scanned copy of the original print version. Get a printable copy (PDF file) of the complete article (1.0M), or click on a page image below to browse page by page. Links to PubMed are also available for Selected

[TGJB]

To me the most interesting thing about that rat poison is it contains an anti-coagulant.

[sighthound]

Whoa ... let\'s not do pretend \"reachy\" fake science - let\'s stick to what\'s applicable here.  Nobody is talking about rat poison, arsenic.  

Selenium is a needed micronutrient added to many feeds and supplements.  So are calcium, potassium, sodium, magnesium, etc.  Several of those can profoundly affect cardiac rhythm and cause sudden death if a supplement was formulated incorrectly.

[sighthound]

It is easy to find arsenical compounds with testing at necropsy, plus there is physical, visual evidence of their presence.

[TGJB]

They found rat poison in 2 of the horses, not the kind that was being used on track. It contained an anti-coalgulant.

[sighthound]

Those compounds are easily transferred (from groom to horse) at levels that would be found on necropsy.  

If cause of death was any of the available rat poisons, that is physically, visiably apparent on necropsy (as is physical evidence of non-lethal but affective doses)  Doesn\'t seem to be the case here, with the exception of the 2 horses that had evidence of use, but wasn\'t attributable to cause of death.

If that were the case (doesn\'t appear to be) someone could have been attempting to deliberately harm those horses out of spite, revenge, insurance scam, etc.  Which doesn\'t make much sense (would be stupid) as it\'s easy to find the different currently available rat poisons on necropsy.

[TGJB]

My point was not that the rat poison caused their deaths. There is no logical reason someone would give a horse poison. There might be a reason someone would give them an anti-coagulant.

[sighthound]

Anybody who thinks an anti-coagulant would increase a horses performance is a complete idiot, obviously unable to read google and learn the coagulation cascade, physiology 101A for undergrads.

Anybody who wanted to give a horse an anti-coagulant, and chose rat poison, is beyond a complete idiot.

That, of course, doesn\'t mean somebody didn\'t do that, of course.  Cheaters are not rocket scientists by a long shot.