The Sports Illustrated article, The Case against Lance Armstrong, is stirring controversy. The in-depth expose details allegations of banned-substance use, and involvement in an organized doping operation. Armstrong is under investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in a federal grand jury inquiry in Los Angeles. Here are some highlights of the SI report: […]
Category: Hot Topic
Bloodgate Reversal of Fortune: Ethicist Lynley Anderson comments
As most of you will know from the news barrage, the UK High Court has overturned an earlier decision of the Health Professions Council to have sports physiotherapist Stephen Brennan struck off.(1) Background: Brennan admitted his part in the ‘Bloodgate’ scam. He provided fake blood capsules to the player (Tom Williams) in order to deceive […]
Bloodgate decision on Friday – learning from the past…
The Royal Society of Medicine (London) hosted a conference on sports medicine, ethics, and law last night (Jan 11, 2011). Before punsters start with the ‘I thought that was a contradiction in terms’, this fascinating meeting brought debate about: ‘Bloodgate’, the ethics of taping a ‘non-injury’ so as this obvious decoy would draw tackles away […]
Sudden death in sport – still not sorted
Just a quick post getting back into the year – highlighting that the issue of managing cardiac risk factors in sports is not easy. I was reading about various deaths in athletes when I came across this older, but interesting post. Remember also the September 2009 BJSM which dealt specifically with cardiac issues in the […]
What constitutes the safe use of PRP in sports injuries? Continuing the PRP debate.
This month’s BJSM is hot off the press! Lars Engebretsen and Kathrin Steffen Warm-Up by introducing us to the International Olympic Committee recommendations and discussing the controversy of PRP. In this BJSM issue the IOC consensus group caution the use of PRP in elite athletes as we await the outcomes of robust scientific evidence. It […]
Research in Stretching- A Letter to the Editor
Editor, I recently read the article Jamtvedt et al on whether pre and post stretching prevents injury (1) with interest. I commend the authors for their well-conducted study and would like to comment on two particular issues. First, the authors correctly point out that there was no difference in the primary outcome of all injuries, […]
Concussion in sport: The Consensus
Concussion is certainly hot this week! Lots of news stories of variable quality. Today we review the International Consensus statement itself. This practical resource was established, using a consensus-based approach, at the 3rd International Conference on Concussion in Sport held in Zurich, November 2008. It updates the recommendations of the 1st (Vienna) and 2nd (Prague) International Symposia on Concussion in […]
Concussion Position Statement: Why it’s not a KO.
The American Association of Neurology has published a concussion position statement but the question is ‘Where is the reference to the international consensus’? No-one would question that neurologists know about concussion but many of them would be the first to admit they are not experts in sport. How should an athlete train when returning to […]
Interesting Comments From David Butler’s team: Core and Back pain
Back pain is one of BJSM’s central issues – exercise is a major part of treatment of course. In December 2008, we included Paul Hodges’ summary of a decade of work, Transversus abdominis: a different view of the elephant, and this paper topped the page views for some months. At the same time as Professor Hodges work […]
Crying wolf: When media reports distort research evidence
As a researcher who has spent a considerable period investigating the risks of injury 1 2 in rugby, and setting up and evaluating injury prevention programmes designed to mitigate the risks 3, I read the BBC media report of July 4, 2010 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10501327) quoting Professor Allyson Pollock that ‘high tackles and scrums should be banned […]