{"id":4785,"date":"2026-06-22T05:06:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T04:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=4785"},"modified":"2026-06-22T05:06:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T04:06:53","slug":"why-do-we-accept-harm-in-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2026\/06\/22\/why-do-we-accept-harm-in-sport\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do we accept harm in sport?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jennifer Hardes Dvorak<\/p>\n

I\u00a0stepped into\u00a0a\u00a0Taekwondo dojang the year\u00a0I moved to Canada to pursue my PhD studies.\u00a0As an international student,\u00a0I was\u00a0new to the country\u00a0without any\u00a0family or\u00a0friends, and what\u00a0began as a means of staying active and\u00a0finding my place in a community soon\u00a0became a core part of my everyday life.\u00a0The dojang became my home from home – the Grandmaster a parental\u00a0figure,\u00a0and my\u00a0training\u00a0partners\u00a0were friends who felt like family. The discipline and routine complemented my doctoral work, with writing and research scheduled around three hours of daily training.<\/p>\n

As my involvement grew, I was invited to train with the team at weekends, and I soon began sparring and competing myself. Taekwondo\u00a0became a central part of my life alongside doctoral study, to the point that I attended my doctoral examination battered, bruised and sleep-deprived after spending the previous day testing for my black belt, a gruelling examination that had begun with an overnight stay\u00a0on the dojang floor.\u00a0To say I loved the sport was an\u00a0understatement; it was a core part of my identity.<\/p>\n

It was not abnormal to turn up to training for body conditioning \u2013 we would don a\u00a0hogu\u00a0(chest protector) and\u00a0proceed\u00a0to kick each other repeatedly to condition our bodies to give and receive blows. Head shots were a core part of training and sparring too \u2013 \u00a0the roundhouse kick wrapping around the side of the head, the axe kick to the face. Feeling sore or injured was a normal part of the practice.<\/p>\n

What strikes me now is not that these injuries\u00a0occurred\u00a0but\u00a0how unremarkable they were at the time.\u00a0Injuries were accepted as part of participation; they were\u00a0evidence of commitment, perseverance, and sometimes even pride.\u00a0I never asked whether these harms should occur because I\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0consider them harms in that sense of the word; they were simply part of the practice. Looking back, though, I find myself asking a question that never occurred to me then: why do we accept harm in sport?<\/p>\n

That question has taken on new significance as an academic working across medical law and ethics, prompting me\u00a0to return to these experiences from\u00a0a different perspective. Recent class action lawsuits such as the NFL Concussion Injury Litigation and the\u00a0ongoing\u00a0Various\u00a0Claimants\u00a0v World Rugby,\u00a0alongside growing public attention to an expanding evidence base concerning the\u00a0long-term\u00a0effects of\u00a0repetitive head impacts (RHIs), have intensified concern about sporting harm.\u00a0Athletes, clinicians,\u00a0parents, coaches, researchers\u00a0and policymakers are\u00a0increasingly\u00a0asking questions about concussion, neurological\u00a0injury\u00a0and institutional\u00a0responsibility.<\/p>\n

My\u00a0interest\u00a0in these questions is shaped not only by medical law and ethics but also by my background in sociology. Sport-related concussion is often framed as a matter of\u00a0individual\u00a0choice \u2013 as a risk knowingly\u00a0accepted\u00a0by\u00a0participants. Yet, as C. Wright Mills\u00a0famously argued, some issues are too structured, patterned and\u00a0socially significant to be\u00a0understood merely as\u00a0\u2018personal troubles\u2019;\u00a0instead, they are better framed as \u2018public\u00a0issues\u2019 \u2013 systemic problems shaped by cultures, institutions and governance structures. Sport-related harm is not, then, simply about individual athletes making risky choices, but about how sporting institutions organise, legitimise and distribute those risks.<\/p>\n

This is\u00a0where my JME article comes in. To date,\u00a0responses to\u00a0sport-related\u00a0concussion\u00a0have been focused \u2018downstream\u2019; RHIs and related neurological injuries are\u00a0problems to manage through education, regulation\u00a0or medical oversight, such as\u00a0better player safety protocols, risk management, and\u00a0return to play guidelines.\u00a0When legal remedies are\u00a0sought,\u00a0they tend to\u00a0emerge\u00a0after the fact through negligence claims that face considerable evidential and doctrinal obstacles.<\/p>\n

Despite being important,\u00a0these interventions\u00a0obscure a more fundamental question \u2013 that is, why are some forms of foreseeable harm in sport accepted in the first place? This question is particularly pressing in relation to RHIs in contact sports, where the devastating consequences may emerge years after participation in the form of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, many athletes who love sport are those who have been involved in the large class action lawsuits seeking remedy for the harms that emerge later in life from RHIs sustained during participation, risks that were often downgraded by sports organisations or so culturally embedded that they came to be seen as \u2018normal\u2019 and accepted \u2013 part of the fabric of the game itself.<\/p>\n

My article asks why some forms of foreseeable harm are treated as acceptable while others are not. As evidence of the long-term effects of RHIs unfolds,\u00a0assumptions that perhaps once seemed obvious deserve closer scrutiny.\u00a0What social, political, economic goods do sports bring that might\u00a0justify the continued tolerance of sport-related harm?\u00a0Who bears the\u00a0risks\u00a0of neurological injury in sport\u00a0and are these risks evenly distributed across the population? What responsibilities do sporting institutions have when harms are foreseeable?<\/p>\n

This is not to suggest that sport is not valuable \u2013 far from it. These questions arise precisely because sport\u00a0appears to be\u00a0so valuable. Sport is woven into our cultural fabric. It is embedded, even mandated in some respects, through PE and school sport. However, this elevated status of sport also\u00a0requires\u00a0elevated public justification. It is because sport matters so much and so deeply to many people that we must collectively and publicly confront not only questions about\u00a0how its harms should be managed and mitigated, but\u00a0also the\u00a0more fundamental\u00a0question\u00a0of\u00a0under what conditions\u00a0those harms\u00a0can be publicly justified.<\/p>\n

Paper title<\/strong>: \u00a0Is sport in the public interest? Towards a legal and ethical framework for justifying sport-related harm.<\/a><\/p>\n

Author<\/strong>: Jennifer Hardes Dvorak<\/p>\n

Affiliation<\/strong>: Law, Canterbury Christ Church University<\/p>\n

Competing interests<\/strong>: None to declare<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jennifer Hardes Dvorak I\u00a0stepped into\u00a0a\u00a0Taekwondo dojang the year\u00a0I moved to Canada to pursue my PhD studies.\u00a0As an international student,\u00a0I was\u00a0new to the country\u00a0without any\u00a0family or\u00a0friends, and what\u00a0began as a means of staying active and\u00a0finding my place in a community soon\u00a0became a core part of my everyday life.\u00a0The dojang became my home from home – […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":522,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8130,8051],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-sport"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy do we accept harm in sport? - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2026\/06\/22\/why-do-we-accept-harm-in-sport\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why do we accept harm in sport? - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Jennifer Hardes Dvorak I\u00a0stepped into\u00a0a\u00a0Taekwondo dojang the year\u00a0I moved to Canada to pursue my PhD studies.\u00a0As an international student,\u00a0I was\u00a0new to the country\u00a0without any\u00a0family or\u00a0friends, and what\u00a0began as a means of staying active and\u00a0finding my place in a community soon\u00a0became a core part of my everyday life.\u00a0The dojang became my home from home – [...]Read More...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2026\/06\/22\/why-do-we-accept-harm-in-sport\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-22T04:06:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"kathrynlm\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"kathrynlm\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/22\\\/why-do-we-accept-harm-in-sport\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/22\\\/why-do-we-accept-harm-in-sport\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"kathrynlm\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/0f1306b41a17e2f5cfcceadf41c9659b\"},\"headline\":\"Why do we accept harm in sport?\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-22T04:06:53+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/22\\\/why-do-we-accept-harm-in-sport\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":953,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Ethics\",\"sport\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/22\\\/why-do-we-accept-harm-in-sport\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/22\\\/why-do-we-accept-harm-in-sport\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/22\\\/why-do-we-accept-harm-in-sport\\\/\",\"name\":\"Why do we accept harm in sport? 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