Doctors on Sport

Wiry, 22-year-old Charles Mohr was probably the finest collegiate boxer in the U.S.A University of Wisconsin senior Mohr was the 1959 intercollegiate champion at 165 Ibs., having won 23 fights and lost only five over a four-year period. Last April 9 at Madison, heavily favored to retain his title, he stepped into the ring against San Jose State's Stu Bartell. Minutes later, Boxer Mohr was in a deep coma from an intracranial hemorrhage following a moderate blow to the head. Eight days after the bout, without regaining consciousness, he died.

Bad injuries in sports happen often enough to keep doctors seriously worried In 1958, the U.S. Air Force announced that 3,222 of its men had been disabled or killed in sports activities during a single year.* Says Harvard University's Dr. Thomas B. Quigley: "Whenever young men gather regularly on green autumn fields, on winter ice, or polished wooden floors to dispute the possession and position of various leather and rubber objects, according to certain rules, sooner or later somebody gets hurt." Last week in Washington, D.C., 100 doctors met for the American Medical Association's second National Conference on the Medical Aspects of Sports. The question before them: Are organized sports worth the risk? The answer: a qualified yes.

Boxing Is Good. The doctors agreed with Harvard's Quigley that "young men must blow off steam, and the playing field is much to be preferred to the tavern." They disagreed with the University of Wisconsin, which, after Boxer Mohr's death retired from intercollegiate boxing Said Newark's Dr. Max M. Novich onetime University of North Carolina boxer: As most physicians and educators know there has been a serious decline in the physical fitness of our youth. Boxing if properly taught, would be a step in the right direction in conditioning the body as well as adding to the psychological strength of the boy, without undue risk of injury--more so than in any other sport " New York's Dr. Harry A. Kaplan disputed the popular theory that "punch-drunkenness" is the result of repeated head blows during a boxing career Reporting on a ten-year study of 3000 electroencephalograms (recordings of the brain's electric currents) taken on boxers Dr. Kaplan found no relationship between boxing and degenerative brain disease. The "punch-drunk" ex-pug he concluded, probably would have suffered the same fate had he never boxed at all.

Gynecologic Disorders. Some doctors still fear that women who participate in competitive sports suffer bad effects, including masculinization and menstrual disorders. But Illinois' Dr. Gyula J. Erdelyi insists that most of these fears are groundless. Reporting last week on a study of 729 Hungarian women athletes, Dr. Erdelyi called masculinization claims highly exaggerated," said that unfavorable changes in the menstrual cycle occur no more frequently among sportswomen (about 10%) than among nonathletic females. He also studied 172 pregnant women athletes, found complications of pregnancy less frequent than among nonathletes. Labor time was generally shorter, and the frequency of Caesarean sections half that of less active women.

But Dr. Erdelyi noted that competitors in certain sports--swimming, diving, skiing, ice skating--are more susceptible than other female athletes to gynecologic disorders such as dysmenorrhea (painful, difficult menstruation) and inflammation of the internal sex organs. Menstruation, he found, often impairs ability: "I found extremely poor performance in tennis and rowing during the menstrual period." Since female athletes exhibit top skill, strength and muscle tone just after menstruation, many deliberately provoke the onset of menstruation with hormone injections before sports contests.

Itsy-Bitsy Leagues. On one subject--competitive team athletics for children below high school age--the doctors were decidedly leery. More than 1,000,000 U.S. youngsters now participate in highly organized programs such as Little League baseball and Pop Warner football. "We have itsy-bitsy leagues of all descriptions," said Pittsburgh's Dr. Robert R. Macdonald, "and we have to live with them. But we don't have to like them. The overwhelming opinion among physicians is against contact sports for elementary and junior high school students."

Pediatricians argue that growing bones may be seriously harmed by strenuous activity, and that children's exercise should be widely varied and lightly disciplined, because their interest span is short. Organized leagues, they complain, do not classify youngsters by physical maturity but by chronological age--a notoriously misleading guide for grouping growing children. "Children are not little men," said one doctor last week. "Cutting down the field and changing the rules doesn't make football a kid's sport."

Said Washington, D.C. Pediatrician Felix Heald: "If young children must play team sports, there are certain sports more adaptable to their age group--like soccer --which really require a greater degree of physical fitness than football or baseball." Another Heald suggestion: "We could do away with gymnasiums if we did away with school buses."

The doctors also criticized parents who instruct children that the "desire to win" is more important than simple participation. Said Pittsburgh's Dr. Macdonald: "The only thing really wrong with children's competitive athletics is the adults who run them."

* The breakdown of injuries, with fatalities in parentheses: Softball, 703; football, 520-basketball, 504; water sports, 359 (76); winter sports, 154; baseball, 147; volleyball, 137-skeet shooting, 76 (1); hunting, 70 (2); hiking, 16-others, 536. The Air Force reported that 32,013 man-days were lost, at a cost of $3,753,890

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