Motorless sports are also dangerous

[Gangster Octopus]

Sounds nasty.

[evilC]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Oh, shit!

I like bobsleigh too! And Britain is pretty good at it at the moment. (I suppose I just like some dangerous sports.)

Unfortunate that this woman had only just taken the sport up, too.

Mind you, I think a lot of winter sports are dangerous. In fact, when I first saw your headline, G.O., I thought it might have been another incident like this. (Warning: gore!)

[Stumpy Pepys]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

I was always intrigued why the BMA would always call for boxing to be banned on health grounds, when there were always far more serious and fatal injuries from people riding horses.

[hobbes]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Presumably because the aim of boxing is to give your opponent brain damage.
Falling off a horse is an accident.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Makes no odds. Brain damage is a hazard of boxing, but it's not its purpose.

I'm assuming you don't object to things like car seat belts?

[Wyatt Earp]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

On past experience, I don't expect to make much headway here, but here goes.

1. Horse riding carries a risk of injury; boxing is associated with cumulative, dose-dependent health damage.

2. They're probably influenced by the fact that boxing is violent, as opposed to merely dangerous. Perhaps, as the BMA, they shouldn't be, but in general terms this is a legitimate ground for hostility to boxing, I'd say.

[Reed John]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Also, I suspect that equestrian sports are, like hockey and football, trying to find ways to minimize the risk of concussions and other serious injuries. Boxing is not doing anything to minimize the risk of concussions. If anything, it's encouraging them.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Why at Last! wrote:

1. Horse riding carries a risk of injury; boxing is associated with cumulative, dose-dependent health damage.

2. They're probably influenced by the fact that boxing is violent, as opposed to merely dangerous. Perhaps, as the BMA, they shouldn't be, but in general terms this is a legitimate ground for hostility to boxing, I'd say.

I understand the argument, but I'm just the kind of person who views these things statistically, whereas I think some of this reasoning is based on sentiment.

I mean, you could objectively make boxing safer by returning to bare-knuckle fighting. However, aesthetically it would be frowned upon, as would all the extra bleeding that would ensue.

@Reed
The standard of medical knowledge and procedures is higher than it's ever been, but I'm unaware of any safety measures in horse riding (of all varieties) beyond compulsory helmets.

[Janik]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Stumpy Pepys wrote:

Makes no odds. Brain damage is a hazard of boxing, but it's not its purpose.

I'm assuming you don't object to things like car seat belts?

Haven't recent studys associated with the head injuries and subsequent illnesses in American Football and Ice Hockey shown that many minor blows to the head cause some brain damage, and that these are cumulatively responsible for the degenrative brain diseases, as well as more major blows that obviously cause concussion or knock someone out?
If this is so, brain damage is more than a hazard in boxing, it's inherrent in the sport as it's currently constructed. And the only way to make it safe is to ban punches to the head.

Anyway, horse racing over jumps is a bad example, as there are good grounds for banning that as unneccesarily dangerous to the horses. Although I accept this wasn't your example, it was riding horses in general. But most of the sporting accidents happen in jump racing rather than flat racing (he says confidently, without any actual knowledge).

[Stumpy Pepys]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Yes, I really meant horse-riding as a pastime.

I suspect the serious injury rate among professional horse riders will be lower than people who just go horse riding.

[Janik]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Wasn't there also the suggestion going around a while back that a career spent heading a football was likely to be bad for the brain?

Again with the caveat about any of this being proved, but this would provide a very significant difference between horse riding as a pasttime and boxing or similar contact sport. In one case you get serious injuries when something goes wrong, but if everything happens as it's suppose to then there is no cumulative damage. In the other you get both the serious accidental injuries, and the cumulative damage when there has been no accident to speak of.
In such a scenario advoctaing safety improvements in one case, and the outright banning of the other would be perfectly logical.

[Reed John]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

I mean, you could objectively make boxing safer by returning to bare-knuckle fighting. However, aesthetically it would be frowned upon, as would all the extra bleeding that would ensue.

That's almost what MMA is.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

There seems to be a dichotomy here. Take the following two cases:

1. A centre-half, who receives repeated trauma to the head on account of repeatedly heading a football
2. A boxer, who receives repeated trauma to the head on account of being punched in the head.

Now, let's say, for the sake of argument, that the long-term consequences of both activities are identical over a large population.

Example 2 is to be looked down upon, while example 1 will be seen as unfortunate.

Discuss.

[Wyatt Earp]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Is the premise correct? I'd be surprised if it were, and I think the BMA's position is based on the claim that it isn't.

If it were true, this would mean there was no particular medical reason to disapprove of boxing as compared to football, but (a) I don't think it is true, and (b) not all reasons are medical (though I agree that the BMA's ought to be).

I want to respond to

... I'm just the kind of person who views these things statistically...

but in my slightly tipsy and tired Friday evening state I can't quite muster the necessary tact.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Why at Last! wrote:

Is the premise correct? I'd be surprised if it were, and I think the BMA's position is based on the claim that it isn't.

I genuinely don't know. But it seems to me that you could judge this in three ways:

1. Prohibit any activity that results in trauma to the head
2. Define criteria whereby the long-term incidence of brain damage is unacceptable
3. Ban certain activities on moral or sentimental grounds

[Wyatt Earp]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Your number 3 is really two separate things, though. Unless you truly think that "moral" reasons and "sentimental" reasons are broadly equivalent, in which case I'm not sure I've anything useful to say to you.

The resolution to think "statistically" amounts to a kind of determination to establish the facts of the matter, and to the extent that this is indeed what you do, it's admirable. One must establish the facts of the matter, and moral reasoning in the absence of such factual knowledge is rightly called "pontificating", and constitutes a pretty immoral kind of moralising. But the facts of the matter are never enough on their own. You can't reduce norms to facts. An "ought" can't be derived from an "is".

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that playing centre-half were indeed as dangerous for the brain as being a pro boxer. I doubt very much that that can be true, but suppose it were. Then danger to the brain wouldn't form a basis for a case against boxing any stronger than that against football.

But other considerations might. There are other kinds of argument--moral ones--against a sport in which people seek to do each other violent harm: Kantian arguments about the infringement of ethical principles we should cherish, and consequentialist ones about what would happen should such violence become normative in our culture.

Is it your position that such arguments are "sentimental" in character--a word that alwas seems to come with an implicit "merely"? I find that dispiritingly Gradgrindian, if so.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

Why at Last! wrote:

I want to respond to

... I'm just the kind of person who views these things statistically...

but in my slightly tipsy and tired Friday evening state I can't quite muster the necessary tact.

By that, do you mean that simply judging the absolute statistical risk of a sport is simplistic? Or is that just ad hominem stuff?

[Wyatt Earp]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

See above.

[Wyatt Earp]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

As to whether it's ad hominem--well, ish. For what it's worth I don't, to be honest, experience your arguments as more rational than other people's on here, and to the extent that you yourself do, I think this may be a problem. (Unless of course you feel that your "statistical" approach is no better than other people's "moral or sentimental" approach, but I don't get the impression that this is what you think.)

[Reed John]

Motorless sports are also dangerous

The facts as I know them:

1. I believe I read that repeated heading of the ball can be a problem but it can be mitigated by building up one's neck muscles. It's certainly something worth looking into. Those head-on-head collisions are another story, but they are fairly rare.

2. Increasing evidence suggests its not just the concussions one knows about that can create long term damage but repeated, less obvious injuries that add up. Boxing promotes the creation of both kinds.

3. Ice hockey doesn't seem to create as many of the repeated smaller hits as boxing of football except for fighters. In most cases, a player is prepared for a body check and can prevent their head from getting whacked. Blindside hits are a problem, however, as are any direct blows to the head.

4. Hockey, gridiron and, I imagine, boxing at the heavier weights are getting more dangerous as the science behind training improves. Guys are bigger, stronger, and faster than ever but our bones, tendons, and cranial spaces haven't "kept up" with these advances.

5. The helmets horse riders wear look pretty flimsy to me. Something they should look into. In seems like they should have the same helmet motocross riders wear.

6. Apparently, making helmets for hockey or football won't necessarily make things better. Something about surface area that I don't recall.

7. I don't know if helmets alone can solve these problems. It's not just the impact to the head but the whiplash effect. Maybe something like the HANS device NASCAR drivers have. How that could be applied to football, I don't know.