One prescription Canadian doctors shouldn’t write
The demand by the B.C. Medical Association to ban the growing sport of mixed martial arts reminded me there’s a…
The demand by the B.C. Medical Association to ban the growing sport of mixed martial arts reminded me there’s a kernel of truth in that great old doctor joke:
What’s the difference between God and a doctor? God doesn’t think he’s a doctor.
For fans of the “octagon” and the fighters who ply their bloody trade within its walls, it’s a punch line that hits home like a heavyweight haymaker to the solar plexus.
B.C. physicians must have some kind of God complex if they think they can outlaw a sport that’s perfectly legal and enjoying massive popularity — all without offering a scrap of hard evidence for why the sport should be banned or consulting the people who actually promote, regulate and participate in it.
B.C. doctors did not talk to anyone involved with mixed martial arts before they demanded the sport to be banned. They didn’t offer any statistical or academic proof to back up their concerns about traumatic brain injuries.
Just who do they think they are? (See joke, above.)
If you want to know how half-cocked and half-baked the doctors are on this one, consider the interview I did the other day with top doc Ian Gillespie.
When I asked the president of the BCMA how many ring deaths there had been in the sport of mixed martial arts, compared with a comparable combat sport such as boxing, his response was: “I actually don’t know.”
The answer to the question is one death in MMA, compared with more than 1,400 deaths in boxing, according to a 2007 study published in the Journal of Combative Sport.
Many other sports are much more dangerous than mixed martial arts, including ones that generate the head injuries the doctors are concerned about. Concussions from head shots are becoming an epidemic in contact sports such as hockey and football, yet the docs don’t dare to pick on those.
There have been way more deaths and catastrophic injuries in competitive cheerleading — yes, cheerleading — than in mixed martial arts, but I don’t see the doctors calling for those deadly pompoms to be outlawed.
Perhaps this has more to do with the image of mixed martial arts, which attracts a fan base of young people who sport tattoos and pierced eyebrows. The call for a ban is completely unfair, and it would be nice to see the provincial government come to the sport’s defence.
As for Dr. Gillespie, his official online biography says he’s a fan of kayaking and “adventure travel.” I hate to inform him there have been 1,500 canoe and kayak fatalities since 1993 in the U.S. alone, yet doctors are not calling for a ban on those tipsy, floating instruments of death.
Not surprisingly, Dr. Gillespie also informed me he has never seen a mixed martial arts competition.