General Nutrition Centers or GNC, as it is known by the public, is one of the leading and reputable companies that distribute herbal and dietary supplements and is very popular among athletes and health buffs. No wonder, the company was adamantly defensive at the allegation of football player Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez—who has been recently mired in a steroid scandal—that supplements sold in the past by GNC could have possibly triggered a false positive in the steroids testing results of some athletes.

Rather than acknowledge the issue and directly deny A-Rod’s claim, however, a GNC spokesperson stated simply that GNC does not sell illegal anabolic steroids. He further stated that GNC has always been troubled when athletes get caught in scandals involving illegal performance enhancing drugs and find a scapegoat in other people or organizations, attempting to blame someone else for their terrible lapse of judgment, even if they were “young and stupid” at the time. GNC is confident, he said, that the public can understand the difference between illegal drugs that has to be injected into the body and the legal and safe products that GNC sells in their stores.

Alex Rodriguez made his interjections involving GNC with ESPN’s Peter Gammon where he also admitted to his having used banned substances; however, he never outright claimed that GNC sold “illegal anabolic steroids” and simply referenced GNC in context to supplements sold in the past which contain ingredients that have been found to trigger false positives in today’s steroid testing technologies. A-Rod said that there are products that have been pulled out from GNC’s stocks that would trigger a positive test today. He said that back then, you could walk in GNC and get four or five different products that would probably trigger a false positive today. You had to understand that it was a different time, people were taking a number of different things “from GNC to what,” he said.

Perhaps, what was probably foul about those statements was the inevitable implication that their dietary supplements could have caused Rodriguez’s own positive results in steroid tests. However, there was nothing new about Rodriguez’s “allegations.” It has been well-documented in the past that a number of dietary supplements that used to be sold legally over-the-counter in sports or health stores could well trigger a false positive steroids test. In addition, some of these dietary supplements have been banned explicitly by most anti-doping organizations.

For instance, the product Novedex XT by Gaspari Nutrition contained the substance androstatriendione (ATD), while legal, is prohibited as a performance enhancer and considered a banned substance by anti-doping organizations. Novodex XT, which is sold in GNC stores, was allegedly responsible for the false positive of two professional soccer players. Another product, Ergopharm’s 6-OXO, supposedly sold in GNC and used by Major League Baseball Players Sergio Mitre and J.C. Romero, contains an active ingredient that is listed on the label, which is known to cause a false analytical positive for the banned substance adrostenedione. The Anabolic Steroids Act of 2004 reclassified dozens of over-the-counter dietary supplements as anabolic steroids and some of these were purportedly sold at GNC stores prior to their banning.

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