Pubdate: Wed, 10 Mar 2010
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2010 The Ottawa Citizen
Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Dan Gardner
Note: Dan Gardner's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

LIFE'S ACCEPTABLE RISKS

Another hockey game, another limp body. This time the victim was Marc 
Savard of the Boston Bruins, lying unconscious on the ice after a 
devastating hit to the head by Matt Cooke of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

But unlike all the other times, this time the NHL's general managers 
were about to meet and discuss, among other things, whether hits to 
the head should be banned. The pressure for such a ban has been 
growing for years. And now this.

And so the cry has gone up. Just do it! They probably will.

But I find this puzzling. Why stop there? Banning hits to the head is 
likely to reduce the number of limp bodies and concussions somewhat. 
But it won't eliminate them. Hockey is a sport in which large men 
wearing armour rush around on a hard surface and, every now and then, 
crash into each other at high speed. Even if one particular variety 
of crash is removed from the game, there will be more limp bodies and 
concussions. It's a mathematical certainty.

So why not ban hockey? Playing would be a crime punishable by up to 
two years in jail and a fine of not less than $1,000. Organizing a 
game would be a much more serious offence. That would get you up to 
seven years in prison. And since there's a lot of money involved in 
hockey, the fine would have to be up to, say, $1 million. Does the 
RCMP have Gary Bettman's address?

I know. That's a little extreme. It's unnecessary, after all. We 
could just make it a crime to play "contact" hockey. Hockey without 
body-checking would be legal. It would be like basketball on skates. 
Of course this wouldn't eliminate all injuries, but it would come 
close to ensuring that we never again see a player lying limp on the ice.

And yet no one is suggesting this. The most anyone is demanding is a 
tweaking of the rules that would allow hockey to continue to be fast, 
violent, and risky. How odd.

The same thing is happening in football, incidentally. After 
congressional pressure, the NFL has tweaked its rules to reduce the 
frequency and ferocity of some concussions. Physicians, sports 
writers, and retired players are pushing for more changes. But 
football is a game in which giants form lines and smash into each 
other. Play after play after play. And when football players aren't 
smashing into each other, they're smashing into tackling dummies. 
Hour after hour after hour. Football destroys knees and backs and 
hips. It scrambles brains. It turns players into middle-aged, 
mentally unbalanced, shambling wrecks.

Tweaked rules might make football slightly less like a meat grinder, 
but it will still be brutal and it will still turn players into 
middle-aged, mentally unbalanced, shambling wrecks. And everyone's 
cool with that.

Like I said, odd.

Imagine a new product. It's dangerous. But lots of people like it and 
they defend it by saying it's not so bad. It only "occasionally" 
blows out knees. And herniates discs. And tears ligaments, breaks 
bones, and snaps necks. And it's only now and then that it inflicts 
horrific concussions which can lead to Alzheimer's disease, dementia, 
and death. Besides, it comes with a warning label.

Would anyone demand that this product be banned? Oh yes. And it would 
be. In a heartbeat.

Take a look at how governments handled MDMA, the drug better known as 
ecstasy. It was banned in the 1980s. Why? Well, it is not entirely 
safe. No drug is. But I know what the scientific evidence says about 
the risks of consuming ecstasy and the risks of playing football and 
if my kid insisted on doing one or the other I'd tell him to stay the 
hell away from football.

Same thing with khat, a drug popular among East African immigrants. 
It was legal until about a decade ago. Then it was banned. It's a 
mild stimulant with addictive qualities. Like coffee. But the police 
don't raid Starbucks.

I could pile up examples, but I think the point is clear: Place the 
decisions we make about risk side by side and they make no sense.

Sometimes we consider risk to be completely unacceptable. Even a 
smidgen of risk. Even when the only people involved are consenting adults.

In one poll, a majority of Canadians actually agreed that government 
should ensure we have a "zero risk" environment. And yet those same 
Canadians just spent two weeks in orgiastic celebration of sports 
that put people at risk of injury, paralysis, and death.

As I said before: odd. And it's universal. When a Georgian luger lost 
control of his cafeteria tray and rocketed to his death, the Georgian 
government announced it would honour the young man by building a luge 
track so other young Georgians could risk violent death.

But stay away from pot, young Georgians! That stuff's dangerous!

Many factors drive these wildly discrepant attitudes. I wrote a book 
about them.

But fundamentally, it comes down to feelings.

We are emotionally attached to hockey, the Olympics, coffee, and 
other risk-bearing substances and activities. That attachment changes 
our perceptions of the risks. It makes us resist conclusions that 
follow logically from the reasoning we apply to less-favoured risks.

Conclusions like banning football. Or turning hockey into basketball on skates.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom