BLOOD, SWEAT AND FEARS

By Christine Gorman

ANYONE WHO HAS EVER BEEN RINGSIDE knows that boxing is a blood sport. When the going gets rough, it's not unusual for the referee, the cornermen and even the first few rows of spectators to find themselves covered with a bloody spray. That's always been part of boxing's primal appeal. But what if the blood that flows so freely in the ring contains the virus that causes AIDS? That was the issue on everyone's mind last week when heavyweight fighter Tommy Morrison confirmed, just three weeks after Magic Johnson's triumphant return to basketball, that he too is HIV positive.

What are the chances of contracting the AIDS virus in the ring? Pretty remote, according to most researchers. The skin is an excellent barrier against all kinds of microbes, not just HIV. And even if two opposing boxers suffer cuts at the same time, that doesn't mean transmission is inevitable. Cuts bleed out, making it difficult for the other person's blood to seep in. Furthermore, healthy athletes don't usually have that much HIV in their blood anyway; in the first decade of infection, most of the virus is trapped in the lymph nodes.

For those and other reasons, scientists haven't spent much time studying the theoretical risk of transmission in sports. The Centers for Disease Control did conduct one study four years ago on 11 teams in the National Football League. In 155 games among 538 players, the researchers counted 575 bleeding injuries. Based on the assumption that the incidence of HIV among football players is similar to that of male college students (1 in 200) and that the risk of successful transmission isn't greater than it is for a needle-stick injury with HIV-tainted blood (1 in 300), the scientists calculated that the risk of getting AIDS on the field was 1 in 85 million--even though no such transmissions have been documented.

Boxing--professional or otherwise--presents a special case, however. The force of the blows often exposes mucous membranes in the nose and eyes. In fact, one of the few known cases of transmission through nonsexual physical contact occurred after two brothers, one of whom had advanced AIDS, got into a vicious fight. The infected brother, who would have had tens of millions of virus particles in his blood, repeatedly bashed his head against his brother's. Both men bled profusely into each other's eyes and open wounds. Soon after, the previously uninfected brother tested positive for the virus.

Such reports are enough to give boxing officials pause. Last week New York became the fifth state, after Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, to require boxers to undergo routine HIV testing. Other states are expected to follow suit. Of course, if they are really concerned about the health of boxers--who risk brain damage and even death every time they step into the ring--people in the fight game should probably be thinking about banning the sport altogether.

--By Christine Gorman. Reported by Alice Park/New York

With reporting by Alice Park/New York