Dead horses and compounded medications


21 dead polo horses in Wellington. Reports are that these horse were administered an IV "jug" of Vitamins and minerals....for what. Theses substances take along time to take effect, why give them pre-performance. Now these horses are dead. There is plenty of blame to go around here and I'm sure that we will hear a lot about that as more becomes known. The current report is that there was a mistake in the compounding of this product by Franks Pharmacy in Ocala Florida. The big question should be ...why were they making it in the first place. There is a similar combination manufactured in France by Merial called Biodyl: B12, potassium aspartate, magnesium aspartate and selenium. It is not approved for use in the United States. Apparently 14 horses died on site while 7 others died at the hospital. All for some voodoo pseudoscience that is given IV to help win. How about something like training and a better polo player. Legally Veterinarian prescribe compounded medications on a case by case basis where there is no commercially available product. In this case the doctor may be in the clear if each med was marked for each horse and not "batch dispensed". They may be at fault for giving the stuff in the first place but not legally. Franks pharmacy on the other hand has a serious problem. Other compounding pharmacies have been shut down for extended periods . Many of these are really lax in product quality and were making cheaper "generic" versions of commercially available products. Franks was always one that seemed better than the others.

Comments

Hua said…
Hi Dr. Weldon,

I am amazed with your knowledge about Equine Medicine. I'm Hua, the director of Wellsphere's HealthBlogger Network, a network of over 2,000 of the best health writers on the web (including doctors, nurses, healthy living professionals, and expert patients). I think your blog would be a great addition to the Network in the Animal Health community, and I'd like to invite you to learn more about it and apply to join at http://www.wellsphere.com/health-blogger. Once approved by our Chief Medical Officer, your posts will be republished on Wellsphere where they will be available to over 5 million monthly visitors who come to the site looking for health information and support. There’s no cost and no extra work for you! The HealthBlogger page (http://www.wellsphere.com/health-blogger) provides details about participation, but if you have any questions please feel free to email me at hua@wellsphere.com.

Best,
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4:44 PM
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