Fast foods do not make fast bowlers

THE EDITOR: For yet another year, the Family Planning Association is advertising urine testing for sugar. Urine testing is not a valid and recommended method for determining whether a patient has Diabetes or not.

There are many simple and quick “pin prick” blood tests available. The machines are cheap and carry a lifetime warranty. Whilst the results are not 100 percent accurate, it is far better than the assessment of urine tests. One hopes that the Family Planning Association will wake up from their ancient slumber and enter the 21st century.

Pace bowler J Lawson was not picked for the Second Test because he had chicken pox, which was diagnosed whilst in Guyana. He is then placed on a plane between Guyana and Trinidad, thus infecting the whole plane load. To add spread to the infection, he is placed on another plane to Jamaica. Another plane load infected. Two weeks later, he is declared fit and fully recovered and thus re-selected to the West Indies team. He played in the First Test and was never isolated. Is this a means of immunising the whole team? Is this to obtain an excuse for losing?

In modern day sports, 100 percent is required for success. Off the field, diet is important. When an international chain of fast foods was sponsoring the West Indies team it was claimed that the players wanted fast foods only. One wonders if the players thought that eating fast foods will make them bat faster and even bowl faster. Fast foods do not make fast bowlers.

It was thus disturbing to read and see pictures of the West Indies team eating at a fancy gourmet restaurant on the third night of the Second Test match.

Is this food nutritional and sport friendly? What was the management of the team thinking when this social event was organised during the match? Now it is said that it will be an established event for the third night of Test Matches. Is the management of the West Indies team serious?

And do the health authorities really believe that people will own up about symptoms of SARS! Do the health authorities believe that people want to be quarantined under the present sub-human conditions of the hospitals? Worse yet, it seems that the forms are not readily available. But seriously, is health a priority.

PHILIP AYOUNG-CHEE
Urological Surgeon
San Fernando