Prosecutors have re-opened the case of anti-aging doctor Ramon Scruggs in an effort to find more baseball players who have used anabolic steroids (“Inquiry Into Doctor May Link Players to Drugs,” March 12). In June 2004, Dr. Scruggs was formally accused of prescribing steroids and ancillary medications without justification over the internet to patients who he did not physically examine. He settled his case with the State of California in August 2006.
In the settlement, Scruggs agreed the state could prove the charges and accepted a $4,800 fine and 35 months of probation: during that time he is required to have an outside monitor, take various courses and cease prescribing over the Internet. The settlement was agreed to in August 2006 and took effect in March 2007.
Dr. Scruggs prescribed steroids to professional baseball players Troy Glaus and Scott Schoeneweis in 2003 and 2004. In the fall of 2007, this information was leaked to the media by the office of District Attorney David Soares which is leading the investigation of the steroid scandal involving Signature Pharmacy.
As a result of the leak, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California want to revisit Scrugg’s case fishing for additional Major League Baseball players who use steroids.
Ramon Scruggs, M.D. is a physician who, prior to his legal troubles, openly worked with bodybuilders visiting his New Hope Med website; he felt that the best way for a physician to effectively supervise the health of a steroid-using bodybuilder was to medically monitor their steroid use and assure that bodybuilders avoided potentially dangerous black market sources of anabolic steroids.
Dr. Scruggs explained his criteria for prescribing steroids to bodybuilders in an interview with Jason Mueller of Anabolic Extreme in 1999-2000.
[T]hey have to do extensive blood work, they have to fill out a very detailed questionnaire, and they have to have a 40-minute to hour interview with me. That’s basically where we decide if someone can do this. Now, I’ll admit to you that as I do this, my criteria have relaxed. Before I would only do this with athletes or with ordinary citizens if they had a limitation, if they were hypogonadal, if they were on the low side of normal on their blood work. I’ve gradually relaxed that to include people who would be quote unquote normal. You’ve got to realize that virtually everything hormonal is considered normal by the establishment. They have virtually no ability to look at, let’s say the estrogen/progesterone levels for a woman, and testosterone for men and women, and say anything much about them at all because everybody from age 12 to age 90 is considered normal.
Dr. Scruggs felt that he was doing the right thing by monitoring and prescribing steroids to bodybuilders.
I feel like I’ve been led along a certain path in life and it’s almost as if I’m supposed to do certain things by fate. I would have, had it been my choice, done things differently from how they’ve actually happened. But I accept that there are no mistakes, which God has us do the things He would have us do, despite what our little self may want, and I feel directed. So yes, I am concerned about it, but at the same time, I know I’m right! I feel very comfortable in the choices I’ve made and the reason for those choices. I know that I’m helping people far more than I’m hurting them. If you want to know the truth, I don’t like taking 22 or 23 year-old and putting them on steroids, it makes me nervous. Yet, I’d rather have them come to me and manage their steroid use, and then have them do it on their own.
Ramon Scruggs has and continues to pay a substantial penalty for having worked with bodybuilders in this capacity, including a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in October 2005.
About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
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