Jareem Gunter, a college baseball player with dreams of playing professionally, thought he had found a “diamond in the rough,” a safe and legal dietary supplement that would make him healthier.
Instead, he told Congress on Tuesday, “It gave me liver failure.” Gunter said the experience with Superdrol four years ago, when he was a student at Lincoln University in Missouri, left him hospitalized for weeks. He said that although he’s OK now, his doctor told him the condition could come back at any time.
Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, told the same hearing of the Senate Judiciary crime and drugs subcommittee that Superdrol is a brand name for an anabolic steroid and that Gunter’s experience illustrates the problem with steroids making their way into dietary supplements.
“He woke up in a hospital bed with the doctor explaining to him that he had suffered acute liver failure, a textbook effect of taking steroids orally,” Tygart said in prepared testimony.
Tygart said more regulation of the multibillion-dollar dietary supplement industry is needed, and the subcommittee chairman, Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter, said that was worth exploring.
“The question arises whether there needs to be a change in federal law,” Specter said, specifically raising the possibility of dietary supplements getting clearance from the government before they are sold. “The whole area is really pretty much off the radar screen,” he told reporters later.
