The Drug Enforcement Agency recently detained three NFL teams as they passed through airports en route to games. The DEA's aim: to uncover illegal prescription drug use. A lawsuit by over 750 former NFL players alleges team physicians illegally provided prescription painkillers to keep players on the field.
Right now, television ratings for NFL teams are incredibly high — a November matchup between New England and Detroit had an estimated 70 percent viewership across New England — and the league continues to make an astonishing amount of revenue.
Medical ethicist Art Caplan — host of the Everyday Ethics podcast — said fans are part of the problem. "We are so sports-crazy in this country, and so football-crazy," Caplan said Wednesday on Boston Public Radio. "It's partly because the culture accepts that this is a risky game."
Caplan said team doctors are under duress from coaches and owners to keep the players — the ones responsible for the league's success — on the field. Fans expect stars to suit up every week, and painkillers prescribed by team physicians allow them to do so. "I suspect if [physicans] want to stay in that role, they've got to be liberal with pain control," Caplan said. "If I were an NFL player, I would (...) be saying, hey, I've [already] got a doc."
Caplan worried the pay-through-pain mentality has permeated not only college and high school football, but youth leagues as well. Caplan said parents have a responsibility to protect their kids in contact sports. "If you don't have the information about concussion risk, then I don't think you're having a very intelligent discussion with your own child about contact sports."
Caplan said pediatricians should suggest keeping kids out of contact sports as long as possible. "You're playing with your kid's head," Caplan said. "I don't see a case of playing tackle football other than [in] high school. (...) You can still learn how to catch a ball, throw a ball, run around and so on without being tackled."
>> To hear the entire interview with Art Caplan on BPR, click the audio above. Caplan is the host of the podcast Everyday Ethics, and head of the division of medical ethics at New York University's Langone Medical Center.
