From USA Today, August 15, 2001

Proper use is key

By John Cordaro

Performance-enhancing dietary supplements are safe and beneficial if consumers use good sense and follow label directions for use. The use of these products among youths or college and professional athletes raises issues of ethics and fair competition, in addition to basic health concerns. A rush to judgment based on recent tragic events not yet shown to be related to supplements would result in bad policy.

It is also important to remember that sports-nutrition products account for less than 10 % of the dietary supplement market. Vitamins and minerals have always been and still are the most commonly used supplements, accounting for about 45% of sales.

The supplement industry must reassert responsibility for all products. We need to provide timely and useful information on the appropriate use of these products, including any exclusions that may apply to youth. Likewise, vigilance on the part of parents, coaches, trainers and others must always be a key component of athletics.

This fall, the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) is co-sponsoring, with the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements, a national conference on the science and policy of performance-enhancing products. Information about this conference is available at www.crnusa.org. In addition, I urge President Bush to convene a White House conference on performance-enhancing products to bring together all affected interests in an objective dialogue based on sound science, so that reasonable participants can develop rational policy.

Contrary to frequent media pronouncements, our industry is rigorously regulated at the federal and state levels and is committed to self-regulation as a complement to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Federal Trade Commission oversight. CRN developed good manufacturing practices in the mid-1980s; our members continue to adhere to these practices while awaiting the FDA's official rules. Also, CRN commissioned the most complete safety assessment of ephedra supplements to date and petitioned the FDA to issue mandatory regulations on informative and cautionary labeling. We call on the FDA again to respond immediately and positively to this petition and to take swift enforcement action when it determines any product presents a threat to public health or safety.

John Cordaro is president and chief executive of the Council for Responsible Nutrition.

Coaches, Congress put young athletes at risk

Iowa State's football team was called together Tuesday for a special meeting – and a word of caution from the team trainer about taking potentially dangerous nutritional supplements: Don't.

That's advice every coach and trainer should be issuing. Instead, many athletic officials are pushing such stimulants, diet potions and alleged muscle-builders on athletes as young as 14.

In an NCAA survey of 21,000 male and female college athletes released this week, nearly 60% said they were using diet supplements. Most started in high school or even junior high. More than 15% of users said a coach, trainer, team physician or other college official was supplying them.

For parents of student athletes, this means there's a risk their child will be pushed by an irresponsible adult into taking unregulated, untested and potentially dangerous supplements to improve team performance.

There should be no excuse for trusted adults to expose young athletes to potentially harmful substances. Yet they have one. If diet supplements pose a hazard, they ask, why are so many of them easily available at nearly any grocery store or neighborhood pharmacy?

The unsatisfying answer is that unlike drug makers, the $16-billion supplement industry is largely immune from requirements to prove its products safe or effective. Thanks to a pliant Congress, supplements based on substances occurring in nature, such as herbs and other plants, are exempt from food and drug laws.

When the Food and Drug Administration tried in the early 1990s to bring more consumer protection to this world of amateur medication, the industry won protections making it even harder to get a dangerous product off the market. This in spite of the fact that many popular supplements gobbled up daily not only by athletes but also the public at large contain ingredients linked to serious illnesses and death.

Teammates of three football players who died recently – at Northwestern and Florida State and on a Utah-based indoor professional team – say supplements containing ephedrine were used by their fallen colleagues. The stimulant has not been tied to their deaths, but the National Collegiate Athletic Association bans it. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recorded more than 1,000 cases of adverse side effects from ephedrine, including heart attacks, strokes and death.

Other supplements are linked to similarly dangerous problems. Several big-league athletes endorsed creatine, the red-hot muscle candy of recent years, and high school coaches were recruited to push it on their players. Yet creatine's also known for causing diarrhea, dehydration, muscle cramping and tearing – and has been suspected of worse.

There are signs that the NCAA study combined with the spate of high-profile deaths may be sounding an overdue warning that the public isn't getting from the federal government. The National Football League announced Tuesday that its players will now be banned from endorsing such products.

That's a start. But until Congress ends its pandering to supplement makers and responds to these risks, the advice of Iowa State's trainer regarding supplements is good for the all: Don't.