University of Kentucky Drug Testing Scandal
Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2024 2:47 pm
I think this is big enough to deserve its own thread... the former director of the University of Kentucky's equine drug testing program has lost his post and is under federal investigation for lying about his lab's testing capabilities and results.
There's a lot to unpack, but long story short, the guy was billing for tests that were never performed and failed to report flagged or positive tests. His lab was responsible for samples coming from both Kentucky and Florida jurisdictions (USEF sports as well). The story gets crazier the more you read, but here are some "highlights" courtesy of the DRF (https://www.drf.com/news/hiwu-report-fi ... or-stanley) and the Paulick Report (https://paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-pa ... -takeaways).
(for those interested in further reading, the reports themselves are here: https://assets.ctfassets.net/6mwruzwftv ... -FINAL.pdf and https://uknow.uky.edu/sites/default/fil ... tions_.pdf)
There's a lot to unpack, but long story short, the guy was billing for tests that were never performed and failed to report flagged or positive tests. His lab was responsible for samples coming from both Kentucky and Florida jurisdictions (USEF sports as well). The story gets crazier the more you read, but here are some "highlights" courtesy of the DRF (https://www.drf.com/news/hiwu-report-fi ... or-stanley) and the Paulick Report (https://paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-pa ... -takeaways).
In one glaring instance, according to the report, HIWU delivered an out-of-competition sample to the Kentucky lab in November of last year with the direction that the sample be tested for erythropoietin, the powerful blood-doping drug. In late December and again in January, Stanley told HIWU personnel that the sample had been tested and retested, with no detection of the drug.
However, after the investigation began in March, HIWU personnel discovered that the sample had never been tested and was in fact “still sealed in [the lab’s] storage refrigerator.” Investigators later discovered that the lab did not have a verified method to detect EPO and that its equipment to perform the test was “inoperable.”
The report also said that an audit of the lab’s testing results under the ADMC program discovered that the lab had found evidence of a possible controlled or illegal substance in 146 samples that were instead reported as negative. Under normal circumstances, the samples would have been subjected to a confirmatory test, but the results were never subjected to additional testing, the report said.
Because many of the samples had been discarded, had degraded, or did not have enough material for retesting, HIWU was only able to retest 36 of the 146 samples, the report said. Of those 36, HIWU found two samples that had evidence of controlled medications, both of which would not require suspensions. Both cases will be “adjudicated,” HIWU said in the report.
The lab was following an “outdated testing specification” when testing for methamphetamine, and Stanley ordered staff not to do confirmatory analysis for meth, declaring any flagged samples negative. The lab was only testing for cobalt on “limited days per month” and “did not perform cobalt testing on samples from all racetracks from which UK-EACL received samples,” according to HIWU. It was also not testing to standards for the banned substance glaucine.
When the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium sent a double-blind proficiency sample that contained the corticosteroid triamcimolone to Stanley’s lab, a screening test did detect the drug, but Stanley ordered staff not to do further analysis and reported the sample as negative.
The lab also apparently found evidence of furosemide at concentrations that were too high for certain types of races (stakes races and 2-year-old races prohibit furosemide closer than 48 hours prior to post time), and also reported those as negative without further confirmation.
HIWU’s report also indicates the lab didn’t have positive control samples for detomidine, butorphanol, xylazine, diclofenac, and omeprazole, among others, which means they didn’t have known samples of those drugs to compare a sample against during confirmatory analysis.
Evidently there were two false positives and two false negatives that will be rectified by HISA/HIWU, but many of the samples are gone forever. So... what now? Is there even a point in trying to untangle the downstream effects of this guy's negligence? And does anyone out there still think federal oversight of drug testing was a bad idea?Prior to his move to the University of Kentucky, Stanley was head of the Kenneth L. Maddy Laboratory at the University of California-Davis, which was responsible for testing California post-race and other samples and which is now part of HIWU’s network of labs.
It's unclear at this point what issues may have started when, but both reports certainly raise likely-unanswerable questions about what other tests may have been compromised.
(for those interested in further reading, the reports themselves are here: https://assets.ctfassets.net/6mwruzwftv ... -FINAL.pdf and https://uknow.uky.edu/sites/default/fil ... tions_.pdf)
