The medical examiner is pronouncing. The baseball manager is disparaging. The lawmaker is demanding. The big suppliers are trembling. The government is studying. The shelves are clearing. Everywhere, evidence suggests that the future of ephedra-based sports supplements is about as bright as a winter day in northern Alaska.

	It might be difficult for a lawyer to prove that the sole responsibility for Steven Bechler's death lies with ephedra.

Its fate seems sealed by the loss of Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler, given the public reaction to his death.

But hold on.

"I don't think this will be the death knell for ephedra," said Anthony Almada, a supplement industry expert.

Despite calls for a federal ban on ephedra-based products, the sobering fact remains that the Federal Drug Administration has been reluctant to pull any over-the-counter supplement from the market since 1994 when the government passed a law no longer requiring manufacturers to prove the safety of their products. Afterward, the burden of proof shifted to the FDA, which found itself ill-equipped to prove deaths were caused by taking a particular substance, no matter the body count.

President Bush disappointed critics of the drug last summer by calling for more study on the drug rather than a ban. Even if the Bush administration does bow to mounting public pressure to ban ephedra, athletes will likely be able to get the amphetamine-like substances through the Internet and the same underground channels that now make the act of buying anabolic steroids a matter of frictionless commerce.

Consumers might even still be able to buy the supplements on the shelves of legal businesses, as long the labels on the bottles do not reveal ephedra as an ingredient, said Larry Sasich, a pharmacist and research analyst for the watchdog group Public Citizen.

"If the FDA comes out and starts to take (ephedra) off the market, or forces them to put a strong warning label on the bottles, the big companies will get out of the business because they won't be able to get the insurance coverage," he said. "But you'll still have plenty of fly-by-night companies ready to step in.

"It's like chasing weapons of mass destruction around Iraq."

That does not mean the death of Bechler, 23, might not affect the course of the pills.

Used by Americans generally to lose weight and by athletes specifically to boost energy and build muscle, products with ephedra have been linked by the FDA to 88 deaths and 1,500 reports of health problems, including heart attacks, strokes and seizures. The Bush Administration is expected to get an analysis of those reports in the next month or two from the Rand Corp., to determine how to move forward on the issue.

Bechler puts a very public face on the ephedra debate at a politically sensitive time. Like other apparent victims, the primary reason for his death may be hard to pin down. The Broward County medical examiner said he had taken three pills, one above the recommended daily dosage, on the morning of the event. But he also found a history of borderline hypertension and liver problems that went untreated. The pitcher was overweight, at 249 pounds, and had eaten little solid food the morning before he collapsed.

Good luck to any lawyer trying to prove in court ephedra caused the demise of Bechler.

"It's called the tobacco defense," Sasich said, of those companies' historic ability to beat plaintiffs by forcing them to show that smoking, as opposed to genetics or some other force, caused their lung cancer.

Yet, a young baseball player with an ephedrine bottle in his locker is dead.

"I'm afraid that the negative publicity will scare people," said John Hatchcock, vice president of the Council for Responsible Nutrition. "There might be a snowballing effect because of this, leading to actions that are misdirected."

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig called Friday for new talks with the players' union to ban ephedra, the nutritional supplement. Joining a chorus that includes some players and newspaper editorialists, one New York lawmaker even proposed an immediate halt to all sales of the Chinese herb until Congress can hold hearings. The NFL, NCAA and IOC have already banned the substance from their games.

But ephedra was already losing its footing before much of the nation was introduced, posthumously, to Steve Bechler. In January, EAS, a major manufacturer of sports supplements, became the latest in a string of companies to stop selling the controversial herbal stimulant. Twinlab Corp., maker of the Ripped Fuel and Metabolift products so popular with athletes, plans to switch to supplements without ephedra as of March 31.

General Nutrition Centers, the largest retailer in the nation, stopped selling ephedra products to minors in November. 7-Eleven went one step further last month, asking franchisees and managers of company-owned stores to remove the drug from its shelves. Reportedly, most have complied.

Driving the private-industry backlash: the rising cost of insurance. Although considered difficult to win a lawsuit against a supplement manufacturer, claims against those companies are mounting. Metabolife, an industry leader under criminal investigation by the Justice Department, faces more than 100 lawsuits from consumers who claim they suffered serious health problems after taking an ephedra product.

"Insurance liability is a Himalayan concern in this industry," said Almada, who co-founded EAS before selling the company in 1995. His current company, Imaginutrition, creates supplements, none with ephedra.

Yet, there's too much money for everyone in the supplement industry to walk away from the products without calling in their lobbyists and lawyers for a monster fight. Last year, the top 80 companies sold $1.24 billion in ephedra-based products, said Patrick Rea, research director for the Nutrition Business Journal. Though ephedra sales had dipped 14 percent from 2001, the only larger market was for multi-vitamins at $3.2 billion.

Still, hedging their bets, some companies are now scrambling to come up with alternative products that lack the much-maligned herb. One of those firms is Cytodyne, the New Jersey-based maker of the supplement, Xenadine RFA-1, that Bechler was taking. On its Web site, the company touts Xenadrine EFX as an "ultra-potent synergistic formulation" that increases energy, enhances mental acuity and suppresses appetite.

"And best of all," the Web site says, "it works without containing ephedrine!"

Of course, that promo also begs the question: If ephedra is so good to avoid, then why sell it at all?

The answer: Because Cytodyne can. There's nothing illegal about their products.

And barring intervention by a former baseball owner now in the White House, the status of supplement regulation is unlikely to change, either.

Tom Farrey is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at tom.farrey@espn3.com.