Blurred Lines: When Do Physicians Become a Party to Permissive Injury? | MedPage Today

"Sports medicine helps people recover from acute injuries, and in the case of the professional athlete where millions of dollars are at stake, the pressure to return an injured athlete to the game can be significant. When the physician is employed by the team, the line is blurred between a physician's duty to heal and simply being a party to permissive injury, and even death, for the sake of entertainment....

Physicians are ethically bound to first do no harm, yet the demands and complexities of our society place the physician in a variety of situations beyond simply healing the sick. In a host of situations, medicine has been transformed from healing to enabling. Professional athletes knowingly engage in activities adverse to health. Physicians know this but may be employed to keep the players in the game...."