A must read.

[Chief Stipe]

11 hours ago, Joe Bloggs said:

I never pulled a blood either, when foreman for the greatest trainer of 2y0's Oz ever saw, he told me ''the only time I want to see a vet in here is to sign a death certificate' ! He reckoned that between us we had well over a hundred years of experience so should know more than any vet!....he was right of course.......He was the original stallion maker, he forgot what most learnt in a lifetime, one Angus August Armanasco.

Yet you want more "blood pulled" more frequently to find the cheats that you know exist but for which there is no circumstantial evidence?

[Chief Stipe]

9 minutes ago, curious said:

Can't imagine there's many that never use them?

@Joe Bloggs apparently has "never pulled blood".

[curious]

36 minutes ago, Chief Stipe said:

You might find that Professor Tobin has adjusted his thinking.

But speaking of Professor Tobin his view and mine are very similar with regard to race testing which are at odds with many who post here. To quote Tobin:

Finally, given the very high sensitivity and specificity of this testing procedure, it can be used to detect parts per trillion or picograms per ML of drug in relatively small sample volumes, such as a one milliliter plasma sample, as set forth in Reference 9 below.
  
This very high and continually increasing sensitivity of drug testing techniques and instrumentation brings with it the problem of detecting more and more minute traces of drugs, including therapeutic medications used legitimately and appropriately to protect the health and welfare of the horse, traces that are clearly pharmacologically and forensically irrelevant.  As such, the extremely high sensitivity of current analytical techniques has created significant problems, and perhaps has made the so called “zero-tolerance” concept or approach to equine drug testing irrational and irrelevant when applied to therapeutic medications and dietary and environmental substances.

I agree with you and Prof Tobin on that. Needs sorting. Witness the ridiculous cobalt debacle.

[Chief Stipe]

5 minutes ago, curious said:

I agree with you and Prof Tobin on that. Needs sorting. Witness the ridiculous cobalt debacle.

I heard that there were promises made to address the issue but as with most things nothing has happened.

No word on the whip rules either.

[Joe Bloggs]

37 minutes ago, Chief Stipe said:

Yet you want more "blood pulled" more frequently to find the cheats that you know exist but for which there is no circumstantial evidence?

I wasn't going to 'go there'......but you're such a dick, I just had to......FFS, pulling blood to see how your horse is doing/not....is a tad different to having blood pulled pre-race to detect a top up, or something more sinister....you think? If you can get your head around it.......and, to add, we used to watch on as our next door neighbour had bloods done regularly on his huge string and AAA would say '' you'll see that vet in a Roller [Rolls Royce] shortly'' and the owners at the soup kitchen......I wonder if some trainers with huge teams that have blood pulled every month to see how the horses are going receive an 'incentive from the pathology co, or from the vet? Would that be possible? Nah, ethics and all that, no one would consider that......silly me.

[Chief Stipe]

1 hour ago, Joe Bloggs said:

.I wonder if some trainers with huge teams that have blood pulled every month to see how the horses are going

Where did I say to "blood test every month to see how the horses are going"?

I said it was a very useful tool in the kit for maximising performance at the top level.  A situation where modern science can play a practical proactive benefit using the same technology used to catch the cheats.