Trial puts spotlight on steroids

Next up? Barry Bonds. But the San Francisco slugger won't be stepping up to the plate next Thursday.

Rather, he will be the next top athlete to appear in a San Francisco courtroom. The topic: A Bay Area company accused of producing steroids.

As the circle of athletes called to testify widens - Olympians, Major League Baseball stars, NFL players have all been called before the federal grand jury - suspicion mounts that use of performance-enhancing drugs is common among athletes in high-stakes sports. Just as troubling, many sports observers say, is the apparent inability of leagues and governing bodies to take effective action to curb the trend.

"How can anyone, in good conscience, say they're doing enough? They're not," says Dick Pound, an International Olympic Committee member and chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Though his words are directed at Major League Baseball, Mr. Pound is quick to assert that drug problems pervade all sports. "The feeling now is this is the way you approach all sports," he says. "You cheat."

Players' unions, the leagues, and other sports organizations counter that it's their job to ferret out cheating athletes - and that they are doing so. But others who monitor drugs in sports are beginning to offer more radical ideas for ridding sports of steroids, andro, ephedra, ephedrine, and the previously "invisible" performance-enhancing drug, THG.

One potential solution - governmental oversight - seems unlikely. The Food and Drug Administration declared THG illegal last month. Sens. Joseph Biden and Orrin Hatch have been voluble critics of performance-enhancement drugs. The senators recently proposed legislation banning andro and THG and enacting stiffer penalties for possessing them. They have not, however, called for federal oversight at the expense of pro leagues.

"It is time we started being honest and calling andro and other steroid precursors what they really are: drugs," Senator Biden said upon introducing the bill last month. "... They should be controlled in the same manner as other anabolic steroids."

But the leagues and their players unions see no need for governmental oversight. Experts, such as Don Catlin, a UCLA molecular pharmacologist who led the discovery of THG last summer, are ambivalent. Federal oversight brings benefits as well as limitations, experts say.

Dr. Catlin believes the doping scandals could be solved within five years, if the leagues and sports- governing bodies around the world work together to create more expansive and accurate testing.

"It can be done," he says, "but there is a cost. And I don't know if anyone will want to pay for the research and grants necessary. This should be a wake-up call for sports."

He ticks off a list of concerns: designer drugs, growth hormones, and more. The issue grows even murkier when leagues disagree on penalties, testing methods, and which substances are verboten.

The subpoena of Bonds, who has not been charged in the investigation of dietary-supplement manufacturer, BALCO, nonetheless underscores the more difficult terrain pro athletes tread.

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