Over 1,200 horses dead in '08!

[fmhealth]

Number seems unbelievable, until you compare them to '07. Never realized that so many of these animals met such an unsavory end. Doesn't appear that Poly has helped much, if at all.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090906/ap_on_sp_ot/rac_euthanized_horses_1

[Greyfox]

Number seems unbelievable, until you compare them to '07. Never realized that so many of these animals met such an unsavory end. Doesn't appear that Poly has helped much, if at all.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090906/ap_on_sp_ot/rac_euthanized_horses_1

The article is interesting and purports to tell the truth, according to Associated Press.
But doing the math says over 3 horses are dying per day in races across America.
All of this begs the question, and I don't know the answer, is there a significant difference between:
How many horses are racing and dying each day across America
vs How many are dying in fields on farms across America per day
At the tracks that I play, I seldom see a horse put down, not saying that it doesn't happen every year or two. But as my Scottish Grandfather would say:
"I have me doobts" about the figures.

[samyn on the green]

This is like the idiotic story today I read about ground zero workers. 800 of them have died since 2001 and they are demanding million from the federal government. This includes heart attacks, cancer, car accidents, suiicide and murder. While some of them might be sick from working in a polluted environment, in any given 7 year period 800 people out of 50,000 workers are going to die. In the same way 1200 horses are going to die out of 120,000 race horses in this country.

[Java Gold@TFT]

The numbers really need to be reported in deaths per 1,000 starters which seems to be the industry standard for reporting fatalities. As the report pointed out there have been many variances from state to state and year to year in the racing scene. The report also doesn't mention whether these are fatalities in races or just all track fatalities. Pretty poor job of reporting in my opinion.

[PaceAdvantage]

No matter how you slice it, that kind of headline isn't something I'd want to see if I had any skin in this game...

[andymays]

I agree with Java that it's probably poor reporting but having said that I highlighted the California excerpt and I sent the article to the CHRB anyway just to chap their a**es.

I wonder how they'll like it? :eek:

[kenwoodallpromos]

"Accidents can happen," Thompson said, "but if an accident happens, let's see if we can make the results of that accident as minimal as possible."
Another example of poor racing PR leadership from NTRA.

[ryesteve]

This is like the idiotic story today I read about ground zero workersDenigrating 9/11 first-responders is pretty classless. Maybe you'd be more grateful if you knew people they helped pull out of the rubble. What next? Do you have any "idiotic" stories about veterans with PTSD you want to complain about too?

[ManeMediaMogul]

Eight percent of the population of the US dies each year.

Less than seven percent of the Thoroughbred racehorse population dies each year on the racetrack.

Like John Maynard once said, "In the long run, we are all dead."

[Greyfox]

Eight percent of the population of the US dies each year.

."

I don't think so. Try .8 % and you are closer to the mark.

Death Rate: 8.27 deaths/1,000 population

[samyn on the green]

I was denigrating the story about how 1.6% of them died in 8 years. (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/toll_still_climbing_for_heroes_OB99nMJ8JIitcAhMF6A Z7M) I certainly respect a man that puts in a hard days work but I have to call a spade a spade too. Take any group of 50,000 adult males and at least 1.6% of them are going to die in a given eight year period. Even if they spent every day bathing in a warm beach and every night enjoying a full body massage by a sultry 22 year old female masseuse, you would still have about that many deaths and the masseuse wouldn't be so sultry after eight years.


Denigrating 9/11 first-responders is pretty classless. Maybe you'd be more grateful if you knew people they helped pull out of the rubble. What next? Do you have any "idiotic" stories about veterans with PTSD you want to complain about too?

[ryesteve]

Take any group of 50,000 adult males and at least 1.6% of them are going to die in a given eight year period.You can conjure up inapplicable mortality stats all night long, but that's not going to change the fact that you're choosing to be ignorant if you willfully ignore the fact that these were young, healthy people, who now have cancer rates and respiratory illness rates that are completely off-the-scale. Many oncologists and epidemiologists, who I have to assume know a lot more than you do, attribute this to the exposure to the toxins that we know they were breathing. For chrissakes, even all the rescue dogs died young. It really boggles my mind that the notion that breathing glass, asbestos and lead will directly cause health problems, somehow fuels your skepticism.

I understand your original point was to poke holes in the horse data, but using this as your analogy was completely inaccurate, as well as needlessly offensive.

[samyn on the green]

How are the death stats inapplicable but the other stats off the charts? It seems like you are very close to this 9-11 clean-up issue and I have touched a nerve. Sorry if I offended you.


It seems that the numbers of dead horses and dead 9-11 workers seemed in-line with normal death rates and I wanted to point that out that sometimes big numbers are used to shock people.

[ryesteve]

How are the death stats inapplicableBecause

a) you're quoting mortality stats on "adult males", rather than mortality stats on those males who were young enough and healthy enough to be police officers, firefighters, EMS workers and construction workers.

b) mortality rates are not even the proper metric at this point because these are diseases that kill slowly. The full impact won't be seen until later.

That said, I don't disagree with your original point about the horse statistics, so it's best to leave this sidebar and head back to that issue...