Each year in the United States, high school sports are the cause of an estimated two million injuries, 500,000 doctor visits, and 30,000 hospitalizations. The overall rate of significant injuries is estimated to be 2.44 per 1,000 periods of training or competition, which is high enough to make them an expected part of the experience.
Fortunately, “catastrophic injuries” are far rarer. In the 2007-2008 school year, there were 180. Relative to the number of kids in sports, that’s tiny. But still, that is 180 cases of broken necks, paralysis, or death.
So what do we ban? Steroids. They’re dangerous, after all.
Does that make sense? “I would prefer my child take anabolic steroids and growth hormone than play rugby,” a British scientist who studies doping told the Financial Times. “I don’t know of any cases of quadriplegia caused by growth hormone.”
