OPINION:
What happened to Maryland football player Jordan McNair is an example of incompetence on the part of the coach, and also apparently abuse (“Forced eating, vomiting set Maryland scandal apart,” Web, Aug. 26). It won’t be the first time that this has happened and it might be the rule for many athletic teams. One notorious example in the past 40 years was forced hydration — ’Drink before you are thirsty’ was the forced regimen. This actually did not come from any sound, honest scientific trials, but the sports-beverage industry. The result was hyponatremic encephalopathy, which leads to death. Long-distance runners were dying of these conditions, and one of the most notorious was a young woman, Dr. Cynthia Lucera, during the 2002 Boston Marathon.
The U.S. Army bought into the forced hydration fad in the ’90s and managed to kill some of their own recruits. They wised up by the end of the decade and stopped their practices. The man who finally put a stop to forced hydration was a professor from Cape Town, South Africa, Tim Noakes, but it took him 20 years of honest research to demonstrate what was going on. Even then change was slow.
There is plenty of good research going on in sports-nutrition at various universities (e.g., Volek at Ohio State and other independent laboratories). What happened to Jordan McNair falls in the criminally negligent category. It is no different from the sexual-abuse scandals at Michigan State and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
SAMUEL BURKEEN
Reston, Va.
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