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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
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3 1 - 0 3 - 2 0 0 5 Transcript of '60 Minutes' report 'Steroids and the NFL'
Produced by Andy Court, Keith Sharman
Anderson Cooper: "The baseball season opens Sunday under a shadow cast by allegations of steroid abuse. The National Football League, by contrast, has been widely praised for having a tough steroid testing program. Which is why we were surprised when an investigation we began last year led us to a list of prescriptions obtained by current and former NFL players. On the list, the names of NFL players who had prescriptions for steroids filled shortly before they played in the 2004 Super Bowl.
Super Bowl 2004 turned out to be one of the most exciting Super Bowls ever. When the Carolina Panthers took on the New England Patriots, 140 million Americans tuned in to watch. Among the Panthers starting offensive linemen, these two players had prescriptions filled for advanced steroids within a week and a half of the game, according to the list we obtained. So did the Panthers' star punter, one of the best in the NFL.
The list says the Panther players had prescriptions filled at a South Carolina pharmacy. It doesn't say whether they actually used the steroids but all three players repeatedly refilled their prescriptions. In one case, 10 times.
The NFL says it tests players randomly, without warning, throughout the year. And yet, there is no record of these players ever testing positive.
David Black: "Apparently players are not intimidated by the program."
David Black is a forensic toxicoligist who helped the NFL set up its drug testing program in the late 1980s. We showed him the players prescription information without telling him their names. "I must confess before looking at this information I really could not imagine that someone could use drug as is represented here and not be indentified in the program."
Anderson Cooper: "You though they would get caught."
David Black: "Certainly."
Cooper: How members of the Carolina Panthers came to our attention is a story in itself, a story that begins near an airport on the outskirts of Columbia, South Carolina. The office of a self-described longevity physician, Dr. James Shortt, who as we reported in January, was accused of killing one of patients.
Dr. Shortt: "I didn't hurt that woman, Anderson. I didn't kill her."
Cooper: The county corner said a controversial intravenous therapy the doctor administered was responsible for the death of patient Katherine Bevo. Dr. Shortt said she died of other causes.
Dr. Shortt: "All of a sudden, it's like I've become a monster. And I'm not a monster. I think I'm a pretty nice guy. I like me, I think I'm OK."
Richard Gergel: "He's a dressed-up snake oil salesman, with an MD after his name."
Cooper: Attorney Richard Gergel told us last year that he was suing Dr. Shortt on behalf of the patient's family. Gergel also sued the neighboring Congaree Pharmacy that filled some of the doctor's prescriptions. In response to a routine request for documents, the pharmacy lawyers provided Gergel with this list, showing all the prescriptions the pharmacy filled for Dr. Shortt and his patients from January through October 2004, including the prescriptions for three Carolina Panthers.
Cooper: "Never a dull moment in Dr. Shortt's office."
Mignon Simpson: "Never ... truly never."
Mignon Simpson is one of two former employees of Dr. Shortt who helped us coroberate information on the list Richard Gergel gave us.
Cooper: "When you watched a Carolina Panthers game and said to yourself, 'I've seen that guy in the office.' "
Simpson: "Super Bowl"
Cooper: "And some of the Carolina Panthers players ... you had seen in Dr. Shortt's office?"
Simpson: "I recognized some of the players."
Cooper: Marguerite Meyer, a former patient, said she saw one of the Panthers in Dr. Shortt's office in the summer of 2004.
Meyer: "He was just very big. He was, I think, the biggest person that I had seen."
Cooper: She says she asked Dr. Shortt's nurse who he was.
Meyer: "Kathleen said, that was Todd Steussie."
Cooper: Offensive lineman Todd Steussie, 6-foot-6, 320 pounds, an NFL veteran and two-time pro bowler. Out of 190 games, he's missed only one because of injury, a remarkable record. His prescription record, however, tells a different story. Eleven prescriptions of testosterone creme over an eight-month period.
Cooper: "Is testosterone a steroid?"
Black: "Yes. Testosterone is the, ah, original base chemical, or the starting chemical for all the anabolic steroids.
Cooper: "Are NFL players allowed to take testosterone?"
Black: "Ah, no." Cooper: Todd Steussie now plays for Tampa Bay, but when he was a Carolina Panther, he was reportedly close friends with fellow lineman Jeff Mitchell, number 60. The list says Mitchell received seven testosterone prescriptions, more than a six month supply. Todd Sauerbrun, the NFL's top-rated punter two years in a row, got more than just testosterone, according to the list. He also obtained syringes and an injectible steroid called stanozolol, at one point receiving 2500 milligrams in 21 days.
Black: "Honestly, in my wildest expectations I could not imagine someone using 2500 milligrams of stanozolol and competing in the NFL."
Cooper: Stanozolol is the same steroid sprinter Ben Johnson was caught using in the 1998 Olympics. Like other steroids, it is used to increase muscle mass. But toxicologist David Black said it can also be used at the time of competition to give athletes a psychological edge.
Black: "I would read this as being used for a competitive advantage."
Cooper: "Would it give him an advantage?"
Black: "Yes."
Cooper: Black speaks from personal experience. While directing a drug-testing lab at Vanderbilt University, he took some stanozolol for research purposes.
Cooper: "What did you feel, when you got injected?"
Black: "Let's see ... I must have been around 40 when I was injected with stanozolol and I pretty much felt like I was 18 again."
Cooper: But Dr. Harry Fisch of Columbia University Medical Center says the long-term risks of steroids far out-weigh the short-term benefits.
Fisch: "If you take too much testosterone, you could have heart disease, heart attacks, you could have strokes. There are psychological issues such as rage or depression, and actual depression when you remove the testosterone."
Cooper: Dr. Fisch says he gives testosterone to men who are deficient, but not in the dosages some of the Panthers were receiving.
Cooper: "The amounts of medication being used are much more than you would prescribe?"
Fisch: "Oh absolutely. We prescribe very small amounts to men who need it. These people are taking megadoses of these medications, well above what we would prescribe and at levels that could result in testosterone levels that are sky high."
Cooper: If that's true, why wasn't it detected?
Paul Tagliabue (on tape before Congress): "We test players on all teams each week of the season, conducting more than 9,000 tests a year for steroids and related substances."
Cooper: NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue told Congress last year the league spends $10 million annually on steroid testing and education. The NFL says it tests all players for banned substances before the season starts and then randomly tests 7 players per team every week during the season.
Tagliabue: "Over the past five seasons, we've only had 25 players who have violated our program and been suspended. This is far below one percent.
Cooper: NFL officials declined to give us an interview but at the NFL team owners meeting last week, Tagliabue said the league was looking into the situation with the Carolina Panthers.
Tagliabue: "Ah, we have our security people are investigating that, and uh, I know they are cooperating closely with the Panthers."
Cooper: In a statement to 60 Minutes, the NFL said, 'Is this a widespread problem?' ... 'We doubt it.' " But toxicoligist David Black says there is a problem, that the NFL's testing program didn't catch players receiving so many steroid prescriptions for so long.
Black: "If this can continue to go on under the umbrella of that program, then that program needs to be reevaluated, and some substantial improvement."
Cooper: Testing for testosterone is difficult. Men naturally produce it in their bodies, but the levels very widely from one man to the next. So in the NFL, only players with testosterone levels six times above normal are flagged as potential violators.
Fisch: "It's almost like saying if the speed limit on a highway is 55 miles an hour, you're going to give a ticket to only those that are speeding over 100 miles an hour. You could be missing a tremendous amount of steroid use below that level."
Cooper: The NFL says it plans to toughen its screening for testosterone, to bring it in line with recently stiffened standards for Olympic athletes. But there's one banned substance the NFL doesn't test for at all -- human growth hormone, or HGH. Like steroids, HGH can make big athletes even bigger. The NFL is supporting research to develop a urine test, but there isn't one at the moment. Which means, if you're using HGH, it's very had to get caught.
Unless, of course, the woman who mails it to you decides to got on national television.
Cooper: "Do you know for a fact that professional football players from the Carolina Panthers were receiving human growth hormone?"
Simpson: "Yes."
Cooper: "How do you know this? How do you know they were receiving human growth hormone?"
Simpson: "Well, because I shipped it out. Some of it.
Cooper: "How many professional football players got the human growth hormone from Dr. Shortt?"
Simpson: "Possibly a half dozen."
Cooper: Mignon Simpson said the growth hormone wouldn't show up on any pharmacy list because she shipped it straight from a refrigerator in Dr. Shortt's office.
Simpson: "The amount and dosage I don't recall. But I know when things cost thousands, a couple of thousand dollars, that's not a little bit."
Cooper: "This wasn't just once, or twice. This was ..."
Simpson: "On a fairly regular basis."
Cooper: She says she quit working in the doctor's office because she grew suspicious about some of the medication the athletes were receiving.
Simpson: "If this is good, why aren't the others receiving it as well? Why isn't this ... why didn't the coach load up the bus and send them all down?"
Cooper: In September 2004, a year after Mignon Simpson quit, state and federal investigators raided Dr. Shortt's office. The State newspaper in South Carolina has reported the Drug Enforcement Agency wants to interview nine current and former Panthers about Dr. Shortt.
We tried to talk to Dr. Shortt about the Panthers last year. But we didn't get very far.
Cooper: "You treat professional football players, too."
Shortt: "Ah, I do nutritional work and detoxification."
Lawyer: "I don't think we can talk about any particular that he treats."
Cooper: That's Dr. Shortt's lawyer, who told us the federal health information privacy act, HIPA, limited what the doctor could say.
Cooper: "But in general, professional football players come to you for what?"
Shortt: "I really think that goes beyond HIPA."
Cooper: Dr. Shortt declined to be interviewed for this story, so did Todd Steussie and Jeff Mitchell. We did have a brief phone conversation with punter Todd Sauerbrun. When asked about Dr. Shortt, he said, 'I like the guy very much.' Ten minutes later, he called back and said, 'Dude, we got our communications confused. I don't know this guy.'
At his office in South Carolina, Dr. Shortt is still open for business, despite the DEA investigation into his prescriptions of steroids.
Black: "This is bad medicine."
Cooper: "For a doctor to prescribe this amount of medication in this combination...?"
Black: "It's not good medicine. It's not even medicine. This is better athletes through chemistry."
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