SPORTS MEDICINE: Scientists at Work

Not a guide for young athletes but a profile of sports doctors and their work, this starts with Dr. Joseph S. Torg, an orthopedic surgeon and director of the University of Pennsylvania Sports Medicine Center, on a typical afternoon with a variety of male and female patients. Another orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Dinesh Patel, is shown operating on a knee using a new device, an arthroscope that allows him to see inside the joint. The physical exam given prospective Jets at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital, a tendon transplant that saved Dodger Tommy John's pitching arm, and an Olympic silver medal won on skier Phil Mahre's rebuilt ankle are presented as spectacular sports-medicine feats; and Berger also features researchers and others who have established a National Athletic Head and Neck Injury Registry, analyzed runners' motions (a boon for running-shoe manufacturers), devised a chart matching particular sports to personal traits, and studied athletes' moods and motivation. Except for a chapter on drugs, which cites findings that commonly used amphetamines and steroids do little if any good and can do harm, there is no consideration of issues; and the emphasis is on the ""amazing skill [of the doctors] and the wonders of modern sports medicine."" But the work is closer than that of some Berger-profiled scientists to kids' interests, and he has taken care to include female athletes and ""he or she"" references to sports doctors in general.