Steroids Prescribed To NFL Players

Report: 3 Carolina Panthers Filled Prescriptions Before Super Bowl

(CBS)  In a statement to 60 Minutes, the NFL said: “Is this a widespread problem? We doubt it.”

But Black says there is a problem if the NFL’s testing program didn’t catch players receiving so many steroid prescriptions for so long.

"If this continued to go on, under the umbrella of that program, then that program needs to be reevaluated and have some substantial improvement," says Black.

Testing for testosterone is difficult. Men naturally produce it in their bodies, but the levels vary 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.

"It's almost like saying if the speed limit on a highway's 55 miles an hour, you're gonna give a ticket to only those that are speeding at over 100 miles an hour," says Fisch. "You could be missing a tremendous amount of steroid use below that level."

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 hard to get caught.

Unless, of course, the woman who mails it to you decides to go on national television. "Do you know for a fact that professional football players from the Carolina Panthers were receiving Human Growth Hormone?" Cooper asked Mignon Simpson.

"Yes," says Simpson.

How did she know that they were receiving HGH?

"Well, because I shipped out some of it," says Simpson, who adds that "possibly a half dozen" professional football players got the Human Growth Hormone from Dr. Shortt.

Simpson says the growth hormone wouldn't show up on any pharmacy list because she shipped it straight from a refrigerator in Shortt's office: "The amount and dosage, I mean, I don't recall. But I know when things cost thousand -- couple of thousand dollars, that's not a little bit."

And it wasn't just once or twice, she says. "[It was] on a fairly regular basis," says Simpson.

Simpson says she quit working in the doctor's office because she grew suspicious about some of the medications the athletes were receiving: "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 'em all down?"

In September 2004, a year after Simpson quit, state and federal investigators raided Shortt’s office. The State newspaper in South Carolina has reported the Drug Enforcement Agency wants to interview nine current and former Panthers about Shortt.

60 Minutes Wednesday tried to talk to Shortt about the Panthers last year, but didn’t get very far.

"Now, you treat professional football players, too," Cooper asked Shortt.

"I do nutritional work and detoxification," said Shortt.

His lawyer told 60 Minutes Wednesday that the federal health privacy law known as HIPAA limited what the doctor could say.

"But in general, professional football players come to you for what?" Cooper asked Shortt.

"I really think that goes beyond HIPAA," said Shortt.

Shortt declined to be interviewed for this story. So did Todd Steussie and Jeff Mitchell.

60 Minutes Wednesday did have a brief phone conversation with punter Todd Sauerbrun. When asked about Shortt, Sauerbrun 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.”

Shortt is still open for business at his office in South Carolina -- despite the DEA investigation into his prescription of steroids.

"This is bad medicine [for a doctor to prescribe this amount of medication, in this combination]," says Black. "It's not good medicine. This is not even medicine. This is better athletes through chemistry."