As
our understanding of brain damage in sports continues to expand, the question
of whether children should continue being exposed to high-impact contact sports
comes into focus. In Bennet Omalu’s editorial “Don’t Let Kids Play Football,”
he uses his knowledge as a physician and elements of rhetoric to express why
kids should not play football and other high-impact contact sports.
To
begin the essay, he juxtaposes restrictions with cigarette smoking, alcohol,
and asbestos to the nonexistent restrictions made in sports. He makes the point
that although all of these practices endanger our health, high-impact contact
sports are the only ones that we have done nothing about. Through this
comparison, he equates the risk factors of playing sports to those of smoking
or drinking alcohol. He ends the essay with these examples by reminding the
audience that there are legal ages for certain things and that the same should
be done about “protecting the organ that defines who we are as human beings.”
Omalu
also uses rhetorical questioning to connect to his parental audience. He
emphasizes the health risks that come along with repetitive hits to the head
and asks, “Why, then, do we continue to intentionally expose our children to
this risk?” As this question causes readers to rethink, Omalu informs us of the
severity brain damage can have. After providing scientific evidence to explain
the impairment that can be inflicted on this organ, he closes the essay by asking,
“However, as a society, the question we have to answer is, when we knowingly
and willfully allow a child to play high-impact contact sports, are we
endangering that child?” These questions compel parents to think twice about
letting their children play.
Omalu’s
ideas are effective and should be taken into great consideration. As his
information reveals, our brains our extremely special organs and if protecting
them means giving up “old practices in the name of safety and progress,” then
these ideas need to be put into effect.
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