This exciting study explores ethical dilemmas in the relationship between sporting performance, sports medicine and the health of the athlete.

Are pain and injury managed appropriately in the environment of professional sport?
Is sports medicine a tool to empower or to disempower athletes?

David Howe considers these and other pertinent concerns and questions whether, in the world of modern sport, it is the participants themselves or the sport's administrators who exert more control over athletes' well being. Exploring the historical transformation of sports medicine and the relationships between medicine, body and culture, Sport, Professionalism and Pain bridges a perceived space in the literature between medical anthropology, medical sociology and sport studies.