When Red Sox slugger David Ortiz says he didn’t knowingly use steroids and blames tainted supplements for his positive drug test in 2003, perhaps it sounds to you like blaming the dog for eating his homework.
Unfortunately, we have to consider the possibility that he is telling the truth, ludicrous as it may be.
Various studies have found banned substances in 15-25 percent of supplements tested. Tainted supplements endanger health and risk athlete eligibility.
USA Track and Field chief executive Doug Logan gave an impassioned speech in January to a gathering of the dietary supplement and healthy food industries, taking them to task.
“Performance-enhancing drugs are threatening to choke the life out of the sport that I serve and love,” Logan said. “And in many ways, the supplement industry has been assisting in braiding the noose.”
Most of the blame belongs to unscrupulous manufacturers, but the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act passed by Congress in 1994 is also at fault. Sponsored by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, whose state is home to several supplement companies, DSHEA allowed supplement makers to market products without prior approval of the Food and Drug Administration and without proving them effective.
Suddenly the burden was on the FDA to prove the danger of a product in order to take it off the market, as it did with ephedra.
Remember Mark McGwire and androstenedione? DSHEA made it possible to sell that over-the-counter “steroid precursor” at your neighborhood vitamin store. Andro isn’t a steroid in the bottle, but it is converted into one by the body, making an otherwise illegal substance legal on a technicality.
“There is no denying that some manufacturers of supplements, admittedly few in number and on the fringe of the industry, regularly spike their product with performance-enhancing drugs in order to give the incredible benefits that they advertise,” said Logan, who then reminded his audience about the supplement-related deaths of Korey Stringer and Rashidi Wheeler.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency takes the position that “an effective enforcement mechanism must be established to hold accountable those companies that are purposefully exploiting definitional technicalities and other loopholes to market steroids and steroid precursors as ‘dietary supplements.’ ”
So maybe Ortiz is telling the truth, laughable as it may seem on its face. Even if he isn’t, his case is an important reminder that a supplement doesn’t have to be safe to be sold.
