Sports provide people around the world with unmatched entertainment, from the excitement of victory to the agony of defeat. Unfortunately, it also has become painfully clear that the agony of sports goes well beyond athletes losing games or competitions. Playing through concussions, the abuse of pain medicine, the use of performance-enhancing substances, and other health-related issues have become a constant reminder that being a professional athlete can be as dangerous as it is lucrative.
In The Athlete's Dilemma: Sacrificing Health for Wealth and Fame, John Weston Parry examines the health-related transgressions and hot-topic issues in America’s top spectator sports, particularly in football, baseball, hockey, soccer, cycling, tennis, and Olympic competitions. Parry delves into the unique health risks that pertain to each individual sport and scrutinizes how the various leagues and organizations have handled these issues. Controversies and scandals surrounding elite athletes are also included, highlighting the need for changes in how sports are governed and regulated in the United States and worldwide.
John Weston Parry is a lawyer, writer, and host of the website and blog sportpatholgies.com. He is the former director of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights (1982-2012) and editor/editor-in-chief of the Mental and Physical Disability Law Reporter (1979-2011). He has published numerous books and articles on mental disability and health law, diversity, and the rights of persons with disabilities, including Mental Disability, Violence, Future Dangerousness: Myths Behind the Presumption of Guilt (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013).
Parry (Mental Disability, Violence, Future Dangerousness), a lawyer with an expertise in mental health and health law, has written an excellent volume on the 'debilitating paradox' of popular spectator sports: that 'the overwhelming desire to attain the heightened fitness' required of an elite athlete leads children and adults to pain, injuries, and 'disability, addictions, and even premature deaths.' Part I is a solid overview of how the culture of 'playing hurt' causes both athletes and the professional medical providers on sports teams to reinforce a lifestyle that leads to injury. The second part of the book is an overview of the ways professional, collegiate, and Olympic sports organizations have ignored—and in many cases encouraged— the use of performance-enhancing drugs. In the final section, Parry takes a hard look at how 'bad practices and lack of candor at the professional level' regarding the consequences of sports-related impairments such as CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) have filtered down 'to collegiate, scholastic, and youth sports programs in very unhealthy ways.' Parry has written a highly detailed work that should be read by athletes, managers, and sports administrators at all levels.
The Athlete’s Dilemma: Sacrificing Health forWealth and Fame by John Weston Parry does an excellent job of exposing less than ethical behavior of the world of elite competitive sports. He provides extensive coverage of the contradictions—and there are many—between the elite athlete’s drive to succeed in a highly competitive, pressure-filled environment with the concomitant costs and consequences to the athlete’s short-term and long-term health. Parry has written an insightful and revealing expose about a sports culture that needs to improve its high quality, ethical treatment of athletes during and after their sports career.
John Parry has written a wonderfully readable tour de force of a book on the dangers of athletic cutthroat competition. In my experience as a forensic neuropsychiatric expert there is an all too steep and slippery a slope from narcissistic to neurological injury, from basking in the glory and freedom of being a “modern gladiator” to traveling back to the brutality and slavery that were the epitaphs of the Roman gladiator. A must read for all of us, experts and fans, athletes and parents.
In The Athlete’s Dilemma, John Weston Parry builds a compelling case that numerous health-related crises are impacting our athletes—from the pro level to the youth level—due to a combination of a laissez-faire approach to sports industry regulation in this country, and win-at-all-costs and profit-at-all-costs ethos. The result is a sports world that is indeed pathological.
When most fans watch their favorite sports on television or in person they only see the drama, excitement, and spectacle of the games. In The Athlete’s Dilemma: Sacrificing Health for Wealth and Fame John Parry asks hard questions about our favorite spectator sports—questions about performance enhancing drugs, concussions, and how professional athletes and big-time college players are treated by the various sports establishments. They are important questions that fans should think about even when they are busy cheering.
This is a very comprehensible legal perspective on injury and doping in sports from an experienced disability rights lawyer and writer. Parry, the former director of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights and editor/editor in chief of the Mental and Physical Disability Law Reporter, makes a strong case for a public health approach by the federal government to protect young and elite athletes (amateur to professional) because the many leagues and organizations that regulate sports are “self-serving” for profit. These numerous entities (NCAA, etc.) are “exempt from federal antitrust and other laws.” Some of the many injustices and concerns reported and discussed include playing while injured, using addictive drugs, illegal hits and severe violence, overuse of limbs, concussions and mental impairments, suicide, MRSA infections, drug-testing scandals, lawsuits, bribes and extortion, lack of health care and disability benefits for collegiate athletes, and minimal long-term provisions for retired players. The author provides numerous alarming examples of male and female case studies from football, baseball, basketball, skiing, boxing, hockey, cycling, tennis, etc. The book is divided into four manageable parts, but topics are often repeated with referrals to previous and later chapters. This work will appeal to a broad audience.
From football and soccer players returning to the field too soon after concussions to Olympic athletes using performance-enhancing substances, The Athlete’s Dilemma provides a broad perspective on the health risks prevalent in sports and what can be done to reduce these risks in the future. Accessibly written yet carefully researched, this book will be of interest to athletes of all levels, sports fans, academics, and health professionals.