This one definitely belongs in the Yuk File: During a 1998 college football game, a bunch of Duke University football players, sick from bad turkey, passed along a stomach-heaving virus to their Florida State opponents through the vomit on their hands and uniforms. Get the details here:
Food-poisoning virus was spread in football game
I decided to post this article not just because it's fascinating in a gross sort of way, but because a lot of you visiting this site are probably involved in team sports. And maybe you or your parents have wondered about the chances that you could get some sort of infection during play. Or maybe you've never thought about that before.
As the article pointed out, this is the first and so far only incident of this type (spread of a food-borne virus during a sporting event) to happen as far as we know. And these were really unusual circumstances--so many players getting sick before a game and then actually going in to play. So this article shouldn't make you get all worried about getting sick everytime you hit the field or court.
But it does raise some questions about how coaches, game officials and perhaps parents, too, should handle a sick player. It would seem fairly obvious that a player throwing up on the sidelines shouldn't go into the game and no one should push him or her to get back into play. But to try to see both sides, players can throw up for reasons other than illness, including overexertion, and perhaps it was not clear that the Duke University players had an infection. But there are sometimes obvious signs of illness, including fever, and the researchers who studied this football game sickness recommend that coaches keep players with obvious illness out of play. Perhaps parents and players themselves should think about this recommendation, too.
Of course, there are people with chronic infections, such as HIV. Not so long ago, there was a lot of debate about whether people with HIV infections should be barred from team sports. What if an infected player got a cut and some of his or her blood got onto another player? This was a very real fear for a while--remember all the flap about whether Magic Johnson should be allowed to continue to play in the NBA once it came out that he has HIV? Ultimately, it was decided by scientific experts that the chances of HIV being spread during sports are next to nil and now this isn't much of a concern anymore (although you can still find the occasional parent yelling for the referee to boot out of the game any player with a bloody knee or elbow).
So go out there and continue to play hard. But play smart, too.
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