FDA fines bodybodybuilding.com $7,000,000 for selling steroids masquerading as dietary supplements and their president gets personally fined $600,000. First let me address those of you who are mad at the FDA because you WANT to buy supplements laced with steroids. Ask yourself this, if bodybuilding.com didn’t notice something as obvious as steroids in the supplements then what are the chances they would notice supplements laced with lethal substances like mercury, lead, or arsenic? They wouldn’t! Your trust in the supplement industry and retailers like bodybuilding.com is foolhardy, you are gambling with your life. Below are the products sold by bodybuilding.com that caused the 7 million dollar fine:
- I Force Methadrol
- Nutra Costal D-Stianozol
- I Force Dymethazine
- Rage RV5
- Genetic Edge Technologies SUS500.
Note that bodybuilding.com is a distributor, they don’t manufacture anything but they are still responsible for the products they sell just as Walmart would be held responsible in court if they sold exploding toaster ovens.
“What’s the big deal” you say, steroids are safe and ‘everybody’ wants them. Lets look at how bodybuilding.com endangered the lives of thousands. First of all, we have no idea what kind of steroids were put into these supplements nor do we know in what dosages. Since the intent was to give people incredible gains so they would continue to buy the products and tell all their friends about it, I suspect a very high dosage. There is a reason that steroids are not legal, its because of the potential for abuse and the serious harm it can cause in certain individuals. If you hide steroids in a supplement without telling people, its 100x worse! Why? Steroids can be a serious health problem for those with high blood pressure. People with liver problems from hepatitis, alcohol, age, or other medical issues could have seriously injured from taking these ‘supplements’ too. If these people with the compromised livers had know the products contained steroids they never would have taken them. Some of you are thinking that the warning labels probably had the normal CYA disclaimer that only healthy people should take the product, but most people ignore those because “its just a supplement!”. Even people who were healthy and young could have been hurt by these products, how? Since these folks were unaware they were taking anabolic steroids, many of them probably didn’t bother to cycle but rather just stayed on them year round. How many guys today have shrunken packages or are sterile and unable to have kids because of products sold by bodybuilding.com? I would not be surprised at all if we see a flood of civil lawsuits against bodybuilding.com in the coming years.
And speaking of people getting hurt, the pain is not limited to health problems. What about all those people whose employment requires random drug testing? How many police, firemen, pilots, bus drivers lost their jobs from testing positive for steroids when all they did was take what they thought was “just a supplement”? These peoples lives may have been ruined. How many people worked their butts off for years to get ready for natural bodybuilding contests only to be disqualified, ridiculed and shamed when they failed a drug test? This IS a big deal!
Congratulations to the FDA for doing the right thing. In this era of cynicism about government’s ability to function effectively, this is a perfect example of government working as it should. Big corporations do irresponsible things which endanger the lives of Americans and the government slaps them down. Unless the supplement industry gets serious and self-regulates very quickly with independent testing agencies like USP Verified, then this is the wake up call that they will be fined out of business or squashed with regulatory agency oversight. Bodybuilding.com only has itself to blame if the supplement industry becomes regulated and they have nothing left to sell.
So ask yourself, so what supplements are tainted now? How sure are you that the supplements you took this morning have not given you dangerous amounts of lead or mercury? The fine against bodybuilding.com was for products sold back in 2009, what’s in what they are selling now? My recommendation, until the supplement industry gets its act together and self-regulates with voluntary third party batch testing, either limit your supplement purchases to those tested by USP Verified or a similar testing agency or give natural bodybuilding a try. In my opinion people seriously overestimate the gains you can get with supplements, I would estimate that even the *best* supplement can only increase your gain rate by 5%. I challenge any supplement maker to provide published, peer-reviewed research showing more gain than this.