Aquagal
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The movie and story was interesting, albeit slow. They really needed to chuck the whole wifey side story, that was really boring.
The NFL, concussions, and the importance of Dave Duerson's suicide last Thursday
- Thread starter RoryN
- Start date
The movie and story was interesting, albeit slow. They really needed to chuck the whole wifey side story, that was really boring.
RoryN
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The film needed better dialogue, characterization, and overall polish.
A good director could've taken the same story and made something on the level of "Spotlight".
RoryN
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http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/...I-wouldn-t-play-football/stories/201601190177
Former Steelers receiver Antwaan Randle El: 'If I could go back, I wouldn't [play football]'
January 19, 2016 4:00 PM
If he had to go back and do it all again, he said he wouldn't play football.
By J. Brady McCollough / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ten years after he threw one of the most-celebrated passes in Steelers history, Antwaan Randle El has trouble walking down stairs.
“I have to come down sideways sometimes, depending on the day,” Randle El, 36, said. “Going up is easier actually than coming down.”
Randle El was an electric athlete, versatile enough to run a route on one play and throw a beautiful spiral on the next, as he did in Super Bowl XL when he found Hines Ward for a 43-yard touchdown on a wide receiver reverse pass. That his body has begun to betray him before his 40th birthday is hard to fathom. The crazy thing is that Randle El can feel his mind slipping, too.
“I ask my wife things over and over again, and she’s like, ‘I just told you that,’ ” Randle El said. “I’ll ask her three times the night before and get up in the morning and forget. Stuff like that. I try to chalk it up as I’m busy, I’m doing a lot, but I have to be on my knees praying about it, asking God to allow me to not have these issues and live a long life. I want to see my kids raised up. I want to see my grandkids.”
Randle El didn’t hesitate when asked if he regrets playing football.
“If I could go back, I wouldn’t,” he said. “I would play baseball. I got drafted by the Cubs in the 14th round, but I didn’t play baseball because of my parents. They made me go to school. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game of football. But, right now, I could still be playing baseball.”
Randle El’s early retirement from football in 2010 allowed him to more quickly move into a second stanza in which he could use his immense faith to help others. Three years ago, he helped found a Christian high school in Ashburn, Va., called Virginia Academy. He has served as the school’s athletic director, and, through his El Foundation, five underprivileged students now are on scholarship there.
When the school started, Randle El wanted it to have a football program. They funded it for two years before he decided it was too expensive and dropped the sport. It was not a popular decision, and Virginia Academy lost about 15 students because of it.
Knowing what he does about the game, Randle El can easily justify dropping the sport at the high school level because of the liability alone.
“The kids are getting bigger and faster, so the concussions, the severe spinal cord injuries, are only going to get worse,” he said. “It’s a tough pill to swallow because I love the game of football. But I tell parents, you can have the right helmet, the perfect pads on, and still end up with a paraplegic kid.
“There’s no correcting it. There’s no helmet that’s going to correct it. There’s no teaching that’s going to correct it. It just comes down to it’s a physically violent game. Football players are in a car wreck every week.”
Randle El knows how much power the game of football still has over American society. He knows every year the NFL just piles up more and more money. But he also knows the winds are changing.
What he’s about to say … he knows it sounds off the wall.
“Right now,” he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if football isn’t around in 20, 25 years.”
Former Steelers receiver Antwaan Randle El: 'If I could go back, I wouldn't [play football]'
January 19, 2016 4:00 PM
If he had to go back and do it all again, he said he wouldn't play football.
By J. Brady McCollough / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ten years after he threw one of the most-celebrated passes in Steelers history, Antwaan Randle El has trouble walking down stairs.
“I have to come down sideways sometimes, depending on the day,” Randle El, 36, said. “Going up is easier actually than coming down.”
Randle El was an electric athlete, versatile enough to run a route on one play and throw a beautiful spiral on the next, as he did in Super Bowl XL when he found Hines Ward for a 43-yard touchdown on a wide receiver reverse pass. That his body has begun to betray him before his 40th birthday is hard to fathom. The crazy thing is that Randle El can feel his mind slipping, too.
“I ask my wife things over and over again, and she’s like, ‘I just told you that,’ ” Randle El said. “I’ll ask her three times the night before and get up in the morning and forget. Stuff like that. I try to chalk it up as I’m busy, I’m doing a lot, but I have to be on my knees praying about it, asking God to allow me to not have these issues and live a long life. I want to see my kids raised up. I want to see my grandkids.”
Randle El didn’t hesitate when asked if he regrets playing football.
“If I could go back, I wouldn’t,” he said. “I would play baseball. I got drafted by the Cubs in the 14th round, but I didn’t play baseball because of my parents. They made me go to school. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game of football. But, right now, I could still be playing baseball.”
Randle El’s early retirement from football in 2010 allowed him to more quickly move into a second stanza in which he could use his immense faith to help others. Three years ago, he helped found a Christian high school in Ashburn, Va., called Virginia Academy. He has served as the school’s athletic director, and, through his El Foundation, five underprivileged students now are on scholarship there.
When the school started, Randle El wanted it to have a football program. They funded it for two years before he decided it was too expensive and dropped the sport. It was not a popular decision, and Virginia Academy lost about 15 students because of it.
Knowing what he does about the game, Randle El can easily justify dropping the sport at the high school level because of the liability alone.
“The kids are getting bigger and faster, so the concussions, the severe spinal cord injuries, are only going to get worse,” he said. “It’s a tough pill to swallow because I love the game of football. But I tell parents, you can have the right helmet, the perfect pads on, and still end up with a paraplegic kid.
“There’s no correcting it. There’s no helmet that’s going to correct it. There’s no teaching that’s going to correct it. It just comes down to it’s a physically violent game. Football players are in a car wreck every week.”
Randle El knows how much power the game of football still has over American society. He knows every year the NFL just piles up more and more money. But he also knows the winds are changing.
What he’s about to say … he knows it sounds off the wall.
“Right now,” he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if football isn’t around in 20, 25 years.”
RoryN
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Advanced CTE Found in Late Former Giants Safety Tyler Sash
By Joe DeLessio
Before former Giants safety Tyler Sash died at 27 of an accidental overdose of pain medication last September, his family noticed unusual and irregular behavior. He had bouts of confusion, memory loss, and minor fits of temper. He’d repeat himself in conversation, repeatedly lose his wallet, and have trouble doing everyday activities like reading email. He was arrested in his Iowa hometown for public intoxication, and he had so much trouble focusing that he couldn’t find meaningful employment. After he died, his family donated his brain to be tested for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the degenerative brain disease caused by head trauma found in dozens of former NFL players, and they learned last week that not only did Sash have the disease, but that it had advanced to a stage rarely found in someone so young.
Sash suffered at least five concussions during his career, including one in the NFC Championship Game after the 2011 season, which the Giants won to advance to the Super Bowl. He was cut by the Giants in 2013, but continued to feel the effects of a shoulder injury, for which he took pain medication and that required surgery. His family thought that the powerful medication he was taking was the source of his behavioral problems, and hoped that surgery would put an end to them.
Dr. Ann McKee, chief of neuropathology at the VA Boston Healthcare System and a professor of neurology and pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine who conducted the examination on Sash's brain, said yesterday that the severity of Sash's CTE was similar to that of Junior Seau, the Hall of Fame linebacker who committed suicide in 2012 at the age of 43. CTE can only be diagnosed after a person has died, and McKee said she’s only seen one case of an athlete who died at a similar age to Sash who had the disease at such an advanced stage.
Said McKee to the New York Times: “Even though he was only 27, he played 16 years of football, and we’re finding over and over that it’s the duration of exposure to football that gives you a high risk for C.T.E. Certainly, 16 years is a high exposure.”
Sash, who played mostly as a reserve for the Giants before sustaining a concussion during the 2013 preseason and reaching an injury settlement with the team, had talked with family and friends about stories he had heard of former players with mental acuity issues and CTE. “He would make comments periodically,” his mother, Barnetta, told the Times. “He would joke, ‘I’ll be sitting in a nursing home with dementia.’”
A first-team All-Big Ten selection in his final year at Iowa, Sash was drafted in the sixth round by the Giants, playing in 23 regular-season games and four postseason contests.
By Joe DeLessio
Before former Giants safety Tyler Sash died at 27 of an accidental overdose of pain medication last September, his family noticed unusual and irregular behavior. He had bouts of confusion, memory loss, and minor fits of temper. He’d repeat himself in conversation, repeatedly lose his wallet, and have trouble doing everyday activities like reading email. He was arrested in his Iowa hometown for public intoxication, and he had so much trouble focusing that he couldn’t find meaningful employment. After he died, his family donated his brain to be tested for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the degenerative brain disease caused by head trauma found in dozens of former NFL players, and they learned last week that not only did Sash have the disease, but that it had advanced to a stage rarely found in someone so young.
Sash suffered at least five concussions during his career, including one in the NFC Championship Game after the 2011 season, which the Giants won to advance to the Super Bowl. He was cut by the Giants in 2013, but continued to feel the effects of a shoulder injury, for which he took pain medication and that required surgery. His family thought that the powerful medication he was taking was the source of his behavioral problems, and hoped that surgery would put an end to them.
Dr. Ann McKee, chief of neuropathology at the VA Boston Healthcare System and a professor of neurology and pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine who conducted the examination on Sash's brain, said yesterday that the severity of Sash's CTE was similar to that of Junior Seau, the Hall of Fame linebacker who committed suicide in 2012 at the age of 43. CTE can only be diagnosed after a person has died, and McKee said she’s only seen one case of an athlete who died at a similar age to Sash who had the disease at such an advanced stage.
Said McKee to the New York Times: “Even though he was only 27, he played 16 years of football, and we’re finding over and over that it’s the duration of exposure to football that gives you a high risk for C.T.E. Certainly, 16 years is a high exposure.”
Sash, who played mostly as a reserve for the Giants before sustaining a concussion during the 2013 preseason and reaching an injury settlement with the team, had talked with family and friends about stories he had heard of former players with mental acuity issues and CTE. “He would make comments periodically,” his mother, Barnetta, told the Times. “He would joke, ‘I’ll be sitting in a nursing home with dementia.’”
A first-team All-Big Ten selection in his final year at Iowa, Sash was drafted in the sixth round by the Giants, playing in 23 regular-season games and four postseason contests.
RoryN
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'Concussion' Doctor: 'I Would Bet My Medical License' O.J. Simpson Has Degenerative Brain Disease CTE
By ABC NEWS
Jan 29, 2016, 11:15 AM ET
The renowned doctor whose discovery of a degenerative brain disease in football players inspired a hit movie says he believes O.J. Simpson may be suffering from the disease -- known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Speaking yesterday in an interview with ABC News, Dr. Bennet Omalu -- the neuropathologist whose identification of CTE is depicted in “Concussion” starring Will Smith -- said Simpson was “more likely than not” suffering from CTE.
“I would bet my medical license on it,” said Omalu.
CTE is believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head. It has been found mostly in athletes who play contact sports, such as football.
Omalu has not examined Simpson personally and CTE can only be diagnosed after death via an examination of brain tissue, but the doctor says he can identify the tell-tale signs of CTE’s behavioral symptoms, which he said include explosive, impulsive behavior, impaired judgment, criminality and even mood disorders.
The strongest evidence that Simpson may have CTE, Omalu said, is his college and pro-playing years.
“He was exposed to thousands of blunt force trauma of his brain,” Omalu said.
Simpson, one of the most famous running backs in football history, became infamous after he was charged with the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman.
Though he was found not guilty in the much-disputed 1995 criminal case, Simpson lost a wrongful death civil suit brought against him by the families of Goldman and his ex-wife. He was ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages.
In September 2007, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas for armed robbery after attempting to steal sports memorabilia that he claimed belonged to him. The following year -- 13 years to the day after being acquitted in his criminal trial -- he was found guilty of robbery and kidnapping and sentenced to up to 33 years in prison.
Multiple NFL players -- including Frank Gifford and Junior Seau -- have been diagnosed with CTE after their deaths.
Simpson himself once used concussions as part of a legal strategy after his conviction in the armed robbery case.
According to ESPN, during an appeal of his 33-year maximum sentence, Simpson’s attorney reportedly filed a sworn statement that his client had suffered “numerous blows to my head and/or landed on my head violently” while playing football.
Although Simpson never relied on that defense for his appeal, he was denied a new trial.
While Omalu stressed that CTE does not cause the criminal behavior that led to Simpson’s incarceration, he wants the case to serve a reminder of the life-altering damage that can result from playing football.
“I think because of our intoxication with football we are in some type of delusional denial. But that is how serious this is,” he said.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/concussion...nse-oj-simpson-degenerative/story?id=36587331
By ABC NEWS
Jan 29, 2016, 11:15 AM ET
The renowned doctor whose discovery of a degenerative brain disease in football players inspired a hit movie says he believes O.J. Simpson may be suffering from the disease -- known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Speaking yesterday in an interview with ABC News, Dr. Bennet Omalu -- the neuropathologist whose identification of CTE is depicted in “Concussion” starring Will Smith -- said Simpson was “more likely than not” suffering from CTE.
“I would bet my medical license on it,” said Omalu.
CTE is believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head. It has been found mostly in athletes who play contact sports, such as football.
Omalu has not examined Simpson personally and CTE can only be diagnosed after death via an examination of brain tissue, but the doctor says he can identify the tell-tale signs of CTE’s behavioral symptoms, which he said include explosive, impulsive behavior, impaired judgment, criminality and even mood disorders.
The strongest evidence that Simpson may have CTE, Omalu said, is his college and pro-playing years.
“He was exposed to thousands of blunt force trauma of his brain,” Omalu said.
Simpson, one of the most famous running backs in football history, became infamous after he was charged with the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman.
Though he was found not guilty in the much-disputed 1995 criminal case, Simpson lost a wrongful death civil suit brought against him by the families of Goldman and his ex-wife. He was ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages.
In September 2007, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas for armed robbery after attempting to steal sports memorabilia that he claimed belonged to him. The following year -- 13 years to the day after being acquitted in his criminal trial -- he was found guilty of robbery and kidnapping and sentenced to up to 33 years in prison.
Multiple NFL players -- including Frank Gifford and Junior Seau -- have been diagnosed with CTE after their deaths.
Simpson himself once used concussions as part of a legal strategy after his conviction in the armed robbery case.
According to ESPN, during an appeal of his 33-year maximum sentence, Simpson’s attorney reportedly filed a sworn statement that his client had suffered “numerous blows to my head and/or landed on my head violently” while playing football.
Although Simpson never relied on that defense for his appeal, he was denied a new trial.
While Omalu stressed that CTE does not cause the criminal behavior that led to Simpson’s incarceration, he wants the case to serve a reminder of the life-altering damage that can result from playing football.
“I think because of our intoxication with football we are in some type of delusional denial. But that is how serious this is,” he said.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/concussion...nse-oj-simpson-degenerative/story?id=36587331
JohnnySavage
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Is the scrutiny on the NFL because of it's size? I mean, the whole point of boxing is to knock the other guy out - wouldn't the issue be of much greater concern there?
RjThoughts
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For years the NFL downplayed and lied about the potential problems repeated blows to the head and concussions would have on players' brains. They've also lied to players, having them return too soon after concussions.
RoryN
You're screwed.
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I wanted to change gears a bit, and talk about the living or deceased and not-yet-tested.
Here's a list of athletes who I think should probably be checked for CTE (the "while you're alive" test is controversial, but seems to work) if they're still alive, and others whose brains should be tested. These choices are based on behaviors and previous injuries. Please feel free to add names:
Maurice Clarett
Jack Trudeau
Todd Marinovich
Dave Meggett
Mark Ingram
Vince Young
Dexter Manley (already has had brain surgery)
Aaron Hernandez (doesn't fit the profile at first glance, but neither have others)
Ryan Leaf (fits the profile like a glove)
Marcus Dupree
Mike Tyson
Lawrence Phillips (note: just died; brain currently being examined for CTE)
Jeff Hardy (pro wrestling)
Luna Vachon (pro wrestling)
Lex Luger (pro wrestling)
Chyna (pro wrestling)
Jake Roberts (pro wrestling)
Kerry Von Erich (pro wrestling; don't think they saved his brain, but shot himself in the heart like other CTE victims)
Big Vito (pro wrestling; currently suing for brain damage)
Adam Mercer (pro wrestling; currently suing for brain damage)
Axl Rotten (pro wrestling; died today)
Dave Mirra (BMX legend, died today - suicide by gunshot)
Here's a list of athletes who I think should probably be checked for CTE (the "while you're alive" test is controversial, but seems to work) if they're still alive, and others whose brains should be tested. These choices are based on behaviors and previous injuries. Please feel free to add names:
Maurice Clarett
Jack Trudeau
Todd Marinovich
Dave Meggett
Mark Ingram
Vince Young
Dexter Manley (already has had brain surgery)
Aaron Hernandez (doesn't fit the profile at first glance, but neither have others)
Ryan Leaf (fits the profile like a glove)
Marcus Dupree
Mike Tyson
Lawrence Phillips (note: just died; brain currently being examined for CTE)
Jeff Hardy (pro wrestling)
Luna Vachon (pro wrestling)
Lex Luger (pro wrestling)
Chyna (pro wrestling)
Jake Roberts (pro wrestling)
Kerry Von Erich (pro wrestling; don't think they saved his brain, but shot himself in the heart like other CTE victims)
Big Vito (pro wrestling; currently suing for brain damage)
Adam Mercer (pro wrestling; currently suing for brain damage)
Axl Rotten (pro wrestling; died today)
Dave Mirra (BMX legend, died today - suicide by gunshot)
RoryN
You're screwed.
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2011 was awhile ago. Here's the first thing I posted in this thread: "NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said as he arrived for labor negotiations Sunday that he didn't know details about Duerson's case."
In a way, we came full circle on this thread per a report this afternoon. See below:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...om&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial
NFL Acknowledges Link Between Football and CTE
By Scott Polacek , Featured Columnist
Mar 14, 2016
A senior NFL official acknowledged Monday there is an existing association between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as CTE, according to Steve Fainaru of ESPN.com. Fainaru wrote it was "the first time a senior league official has conceded football's connection to the devastating brain disease."
Jeff Miller is the NFL's senior vice president for health and safety, and when asked if there was a link between football and neurodegenerative diseases, he said, "The answer to that question is certainly yes," per Fainaru.
"The admission came during a roundtable discussion on concussions convened by the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce," per Fainaru.
Miller reportedly looked to the work of Dr. Ann McKee as the reason for his answer. McKee is a neuropathologist at Boston University, and Fainaru said she has diagnosed CTE in 176 people posthumously and 90 of 94 former NFL players.
McKee also weighed in on the topic on Monday, per Fainaru:
I unequivocally think there's a link between playing football and CTE. We've seen it in 90 out of 94 NFL players whose brains we've examined, we've found it in 45 out of 55 college players and 26 out of 65 high school players. No, I don't think this represents how common this disease is in the living population, but the fact that over five years I've been able to accumulate this number of cases in football players, it cannot be rare. In fact, I think we are going to be surprised at how common it is.
It was a chilling assessment from the doctor as the topic of head trauma, concussions and the overall violence of the NFL and football in general continues to make headlines.
Fainaru noted NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, as well as other representatives for the league, has never directly established a connection to the sport of football and CTE, even when asked by Congress. What’s more, Dr. Mitch Berger—the neurosurgeon who is in charge of the NFL’s subcommittee on long-term brain injury—recently said there wasn’t an “established link” between CTE and the sport, per Fainaru.
While Miller went public with his assessment that there is a connection Monday, Fainaru did say the NFL’s senior vice president for health and safety pointed out there is still much to be learned moving forward about how common the disease is and the risks of getting it.
CTE has been in the football headlines for years, including recently when former Oakland Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler was diagnosed with it posthumously, per John Branch of the New York Times.
What’s more, the league released injury data that indicated concussions reached a four-year high in 2015 after dropping during the three prior seasons.
Paul Liotta and Mark Emery of the New York Daily News listed a number of former players who were determined to have CTE (which can only be diagnosed posthumously), including former New York Giants safety Tyler Sash.
Liotta and Emery also mentioned Hall of Famer and former Monday Night Footballannouncer Frank Gifford, superstar linebacker Junior Seau and Hall of Fame tight end John Mackey as specific notable cases of players diagnosed with CTE.
Will Smith’s movie Concussion also recently brought the issue of head trauma and the NFL to light in Hollywood.
With concussions on the rise from the 2014 campaign to the 2015 one, the issue hitting the silver screen and numerous reports of former players being diagnosed with the disease, CTE is rapidly becoming associated with football and the NFL in particular.
A league official finally acknowledged the connection Monday.
In a way, we came full circle on this thread per a report this afternoon. See below:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...om&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial
NFL Acknowledges Link Between Football and CTE
By Scott Polacek , Featured Columnist
Mar 14, 2016
A senior NFL official acknowledged Monday there is an existing association between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as CTE, according to Steve Fainaru of ESPN.com. Fainaru wrote it was "the first time a senior league official has conceded football's connection to the devastating brain disease."
Jeff Miller is the NFL's senior vice president for health and safety, and when asked if there was a link between football and neurodegenerative diseases, he said, "The answer to that question is certainly yes," per Fainaru.
"The admission came during a roundtable discussion on concussions convened by the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce," per Fainaru.
Miller reportedly looked to the work of Dr. Ann McKee as the reason for his answer. McKee is a neuropathologist at Boston University, and Fainaru said she has diagnosed CTE in 176 people posthumously and 90 of 94 former NFL players.
McKee also weighed in on the topic on Monday, per Fainaru:
I unequivocally think there's a link between playing football and CTE. We've seen it in 90 out of 94 NFL players whose brains we've examined, we've found it in 45 out of 55 college players and 26 out of 65 high school players. No, I don't think this represents how common this disease is in the living population, but the fact that over five years I've been able to accumulate this number of cases in football players, it cannot be rare. In fact, I think we are going to be surprised at how common it is.
It was a chilling assessment from the doctor as the topic of head trauma, concussions and the overall violence of the NFL and football in general continues to make headlines.
Fainaru noted NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, as well as other representatives for the league, has never directly established a connection to the sport of football and CTE, even when asked by Congress. What’s more, Dr. Mitch Berger—the neurosurgeon who is in charge of the NFL’s subcommittee on long-term brain injury—recently said there wasn’t an “established link” between CTE and the sport, per Fainaru.
While Miller went public with his assessment that there is a connection Monday, Fainaru did say the NFL’s senior vice president for health and safety pointed out there is still much to be learned moving forward about how common the disease is and the risks of getting it.
CTE has been in the football headlines for years, including recently when former Oakland Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler was diagnosed with it posthumously, per John Branch of the New York Times.
What’s more, the league released injury data that indicated concussions reached a four-year high in 2015 after dropping during the three prior seasons.
Paul Liotta and Mark Emery of the New York Daily News listed a number of former players who were determined to have CTE (which can only be diagnosed posthumously), including former New York Giants safety Tyler Sash.
Liotta and Emery also mentioned Hall of Famer and former Monday Night Footballannouncer Frank Gifford, superstar linebacker Junior Seau and Hall of Fame tight end John Mackey as specific notable cases of players diagnosed with CTE.
Will Smith’s movie Concussion also recently brought the issue of head trauma and the NFL to light in Hollywood.
With concussions on the rise from the 2014 campaign to the 2015 one, the issue hitting the silver screen and numerous reports of former players being diagnosed with the disease, CTE is rapidly becoming associated with football and the NFL in particular.
A league official finally acknowledged the connection Monday.
RoryN
You're screwed.
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Oh my ow.
Scathing. If you were anticipating a "spotlight"-type report on this, the NYT clearly expects this to be the one. The war is on.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/sports/football/nfl-concussion-research-tobacco.html?_r=0
In N.F.L., Deeply Flawed Concussion Research and Ties to Big Tobacco
By ALAN SCHWARZ, WALT BOGDANICH and JACQUELINE WILLIAMS
MARCH 24, 2016
THE NEW YORK TIMES
The National Football League was on the clock.
With several of its marquee players retiring early after a cascade of frightening concussions, the league formed a committee in 1994 that would ultimately issue a succession of research papers playing down the danger of head injuries. Amid criticism of the committee’s work, physicians brought in later to continue the research said the papers had relied on faulty analysis.
Now, an investigation by The New York Times has found that the N.F.L.’s concussion research was far more flawed than previously known.
For the last 13 years, the N.F.L. has stood by the research, which, the papers stated, was based on a full accounting of all concussions diagnosed by team physicians from 1996 through 2001. But confidential data obtained by The Times shows that more than 100 diagnosed concussions were omitted from the studies — including some severe injuries to stars like quarterbacks Steve Young and Troy Aikman. The committee then calculated the rates of concussions using the incomplete data, making them appear less frequent than they actually were.
After The Times asked the league about the missing diagnosed cases — more than 10 percent of the total — officials acknowledged that “the clubs were not required to submit their data and not every club did.” That should have been made clearer, the league said in a statement, adding that the missing cases were not part of an attempt “to alter or suppress the rate of concussions.”
One member of the concussion committee, Dr. Joseph Waeckerle, said he was unaware of the omissions. But he added: “If somebody made a human error or somebody assumed the data was absolutely correct and didn’t question it, well, we screwed up. If we found it wasn’t accurate and still used it, that’s not a screw-up; that’s a lie.”
These discoveries raise new questions about the validity of the committee’s findings, published in 13 peer-reviewed articles and held up by the league as scientific evidence that brain injuries did not cause long-term harm to its players. It is also unclear why the omissions went unchallenged by league officials, by the epidemiologist whose job it was to ensure accurate data collection and by the editor of the medical journal that published the studies.
In 2013, the N.F.L. agreed to a $765 million settlement of a lawsuit in which retired players accused league officials of covering up the risks of concussions. Some players have appealed the settlement, asking for an examination of the committee’s concussion research.
*photo* Dr. Joseph Waeckerle, speaking to quarterback Joe Montana in 1994, was the Chiefs’ team physician and a member of the N.F.L.’s concussion committee. Credit Associated Press
Some retired players have likened the N.F.L.’s handling of its health crisis to that of the tobacco industry, which was notorious for using questionable science to play down the dangers of cigarettes.
Concussions can hardly be equated with smoking, which kills 1,300 people a day in the United States, and The Times has found no direct evidence that the league took its strategy from Big Tobacco. But records show a long relationship between two businesses with little in common beyond the health risks associated with their products.
In a letter to The Times, a lawyer for the league said, “The N.F.L. is not the tobacco industry; it had no connection to the tobacco industry,” which he called “perhaps the most odious industry in American history.”
Still, the records show that the two businesses shared lobbyists, lawyers and consultants. Personal correspondence underscored their friendships, including dinner invitations and a request for lobbying advice.
In 1997, to provide legal oversight for the committee, the league assigned Dorothy C. Mitchell, a young lawyer who had earlier defended the Tobacco Institute, the industry trade group. She had earned the institute’s “highest praise” for her work.
A co-owner of the Giants, Preston R. Tisch, also partly owned a leading cigarette company, Lorillard, and was a board member of both the Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research, two entities that played a central role in misusing science to hide the risks of cigarettes.
The N.F.L.’s concussion committee began publishing its findings in 2003 in the medical journal Neurosurgery. Although the database used in the studies contained numerical codes for teams and players, The Times decoded it by cross-referencing team schedules and public injury reports.
The N.F.L.’s concussion studies have faced questions since they were published, but even the league’s harshest critics have never suggested, and no evidence has ever arisen, that the underlying data set could be so faulty.
“One of the rules of science is that you need to have impeccable data collection procedures,” said Bill Barr, a neuropsychologist who once worked for the Jets and who has in the past criticized the committee’s work.
By excluding so many concussions, Mr. Barr said, “You’re not doing science here; you are putting forth some idea that you already have.”
The Work Begins
In an introduction to the first of the concussion committee’s papers, the league’s commissioner at the time, Paul Tagliabue, acknowledged the need for “independent scientific research” to better understand the risks of concussions.
Prominent Holes in N.F.L. Study
In the mid-1990s, the National Football League formed a concussion committee that ultimately determined that head trauma posed no significant danger. But the data it collected from teams was inconsistent and contained glaring omissions — some involving the game’s star players.
*photo* The 49ers have no concussions listed from 1997 through 2000. However, numerous media reports and the N.F.L.’s own injury reports indicate quarterback Steve Young had at least two. The one at left occurred against Arizona in 1999. Young did not play again.
Young listed on midweek N.F.L. injury reports
Sept. 3, 1997
Sept. 29, 1999
Concussion
Concussion
The Cowboys do not have a single concussion in the database, which covers six seasons. But according to media reports and the N.F.L.’s injury reports, quarterback Troy Aikman sustained four during that time, including one against the Eagles in 1997, left.
Aikman listed on midweek N.F.L. injury reports
Oct. 29, 1997
Nov. 10, 1999
Sept. 6, 2000
Dec. 13, 2000
Concussion
Head*
Concussion
Concussion
*Sometimes injury reports refer to concussions as head injuries. News media outlets at the time reported that Cowboys officials had said Aikman sustained a "mild concussion
“As we looked more deeply into the specific area of concussions, we realized that there were many more questions than answers,” Mr. Tagliabue wrote.
The committee’s chairman, Dr. Elliot Pellman, the team physician for the Jets, emphasized that his group aimed to produce research that was “independent” and “meticulous.”
In fact, most of the dozen committee members were associated with N.F.L. teams, as a physician, neurosurgeon or athletic trainer, which meant they made decisions about player care and then studied whether those decisions were proper. Still, the researchers stated unambiguously — in each of their first seven peer-reviewed papers — that their financial or business relationships had not compromised their work.
The committee said it analyzed all concussions diagnosed by team medical staffs from 1996 through 2001 — 887 in all. Concussions were recorded by position, type of play, time missed, even the brand of helmet.
The committee’s statements emphasized the completeness of the data.
“It was understood that any player with a recognized symptom of head injury, no matter how minor, should be included in the study,” one paper said.
And in confidential peer-review documents, the committee wrote that “all N.F.L. teams participated” and that “all players were therefore part of this study.”
Those statements are contradicted by the database.
The Times found that most teams failed to report all of their players’ concussions. Over all, at least 10 percent of head injuries diagnosed by team doctors were missing from the study, including two sustained by Jets receiver Wayne Chrebet, who retired several years later after more concussions. Dr. Pellman, the Jets’ physician, led the research and was the lead author on every paper.
Prominent Holes in N.F.L. Study
In the mid-1990s, the National Football League formed a concussion committee that ultimately determined that head trauma posed no significant danger. But the data it collected from teams was inconsistent and contained glaring omissions — some involving the game’s star players.
According to the research papers, team physicians were to fill out forms specially designed for the studies to submit information about concussions — a system that went well beyond the league’s standard injury-reporting protocols. In one paper, the committee wrote, “The Commissioner of the N.F.L. mandated all team physicians to complete and return forms whenever they examined a player with a head injury.”
But after The Times described how it had identified missing concussions, the N.F.L. said this week that the studies, in fact, “never purported” to include all concussions.
Teams were “not mandated” to participate, the league said, only “strongly encouraged.” And some teams, a spokesman said, “did not take the additional steps of supplying the initial and/or follow-up forms.” He did not explain why some teams had not included all concussions identified by medical personnel.
The league explained, as did the papers, that some concussions went undiagnosed in the first place because players are known to occasionally hide their symptoms of concussion from team doctors; that symptoms of concussion can be so brief that no one notices; and that doctors might have used different criteria to make concussion diagnoses.
But the vast majority of omitted concussions identified by The Times were included in the N.F.L.’s public injury reports, meaning that medical staffs had made the diagnoses and reported them to the league. Some of the omitted concussions were reported by the teams to the news media after a game but do not appear on the injury reports, presumably because the player’s status for the next game was not in doubt.
Photo
The database does not include any concussions involving the Dallas Cowboys for all six seasons, including four to Mr. Aikman that were listed on the N.F.L.’s official midweek injury reports or were widely reported in the news media. He and many other players were therefore not included when the committee analyzed the frequency and lasting effects of multiple concussions.
Several other teams have no concussions listed for years at a time. Yet the committee’s calculations did include hundreds of those teams’ games played during that period, which produced a lower overall concussion rate.
A Cowboys spokesman, Rich Dalrymple, said the team had participated, but he declined to say how many cases were reported and which players were involved. He said he did not know why the Cowboys’ data did not appear in the studies. A San Francisco 49ers spokesman did not return messages seeking comment about Mr. Young.
Dr. Robert Cantu, one of the peer reviewers who at the time criticized the committee’s analyses, said, “It should be an unmistakable red flag that a team does not report any concussions over multiple years.”
Some injuries were more severe than what was reflected in the official tally. According to committee records, St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner sustained a concussion on Dec. 24, 2000, that healed after two days. But Mr. Warner’s symptoms continued, and four weeks later he was ruled out of the Pro Bowl with what a league official described as lingering symptoms of that head injury.
The N.F.L. declined to make Dr. Pellman available for an interview. The study’s epidemiologist, John Powell, who no longer works on behalf of the league, did not respond to interview requests. Michael L. J. Apuzzo, editor of Neurosurgery when the papers were published, did not respond to interview requests.
The committee and the N.F.L. have long claimed that the papers were vetted through a rigorous, confidential peer-review process before publication, which legitimized their methods and conclusions. But more than a dozen pages of anonymous back-and-forth between reviewers and the committee show some reviewers almost desperate to stop the papers’ publication while the authors brushed aside criticism.
One reviewer wrote, “Many of the management of concussion suggestions are inappropriate and not founded on facts.” Another said the committee’s assertion that the league was handling concussions too cautiously was not proved and was therefore “potentially dangerous.”
An author of the N.F.L. studies responded, “If the truth is dangerous, then I suppose our results are dangerous.”
Overlapping Interests
In 1992, amid rising concerns about concussions, Mr. Tisch — the Giants and Lorillard part owner — asked the cigarette company’s general counsel, Arthur J. Stevens, to contact the N.F.L. commissioner at the time, Mr. Tagliabue, about certain legal issues.
Mr. Stevens was not just any tobacco lawyer; he was a member of the industry’s secretive Committee of Counsel, which helped direct tobacco research projects. In a letter obtained by The Times, Mr. Stevens referred Mr. Tagliabue to two court cases alleging that the tobacco and asbestos industries had covered up the health risks of their products.
In one case, the family of a dead smoker sought internal documents that the tobacco industry had withheld on the grounds of lawyer-client privilege — which does not apply if invoked to cover up a crime. The judge in the case reacted angrily after reading those internal records.
“The documents speak for themselves in a voice filled with disdain for the consuming public and its health,” the judge, H. Lee Sarokin of Federal District Court in New Jersey, wrote earlier in 1992. Tobacco lawyers succeeded in having Judge Sarokin removed from the case.
Why an influential tobacco lawyer would recommend legal cases to the N.F.L. is not known, because neither Mr. Stevens nor Mr. Tagliabue would agree to be interviewed. Mr. Tisch died in 2005.
Joe Lockhart, a league spokesman, said that the cases involved potential bias of judges and that there was no evidence that the letter “was taken seriously.”
Even so, records show that, in the legal arena, the league and the tobacco industry sometimes intersected.
Before joining the N.F.L., Ms. Mitchell, a young Harvard Law School graduate, had been one of five lawyers at Covington & Burling who had provided either lobbying help or legal representation to both the N.F.L. and the tobacco industry, sometimes in the same year. Mr. Tagliabue had been a partner at the firm before becoming the N.F.L.’s commissioner.
In 1992, Ms. Mitchell defended the Tobacco Institute against a smoker’s lawsuit. She also worked on behalf of the institute in a landmark secondhand smoke case, as well as for other nontobacco clients. Ms. Mitchell said she was not responsible for legal strategy in the tobacco cases.
At the N.F.L., said Brian McCarthy, a league spokesman, Ms. Mitchell’s work for the concussion committee was administrative. “She did not have any responsibility or any role in directing the research,” he said.
Dr. Waeckerle, the concussion committee member, offered a different view.
He said Ms. Mitchell asked committee members: “How can this affect us? How can this be studied? How should we view it? Is this a legitimate concern, or is this part of somebody’s zeal, and do we need to be concerned?”
Photo
Wayne Chrebet being attended to in 2003 by the Jets’ team doctor, Elliot Pellman, right, who led the N.F.L.’s research on concussions. Among the head injuries missing from the N.F.L.’s studies were two sustained by Chrebet. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Dr. Waeckerle praised her for bringing a nonmedical voice that made members consider the risks, benefits and “what are the intended and nonintended consequences of whatever we were discussing.” He said, for example, that she wanted to ensure that the committee’s work applied only to the N.F.L., not to college or youth football.
Ms. Mitchell said in an interview that she left the N.F.L. after six years for personal reasons, unrelated to her work, and that she did not recall much about the committee’s work.
“I don’t think I saw any reports,” she said. “It was in the early stages.”
Ms. Mitchell added that, as the league’s assistant secretary, she had broad responsibilities beyond health and safety issues.
Her contributions to the concussion committee won her thanks in five research papers — three by the N.F.L. and two by a Canadian company that did contract work for the N.F.L. The committee wrote that she worked “tirelessly to initiate” its research and that “her efforts paved the way for successful completion of the research.”
On at least two occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, the N.F.L. hired a company whose client list included the Tobacco Institute to study player injuries. The league also hired a company — for a matter unrelated to player safety — that had performed a study for the tobacco industry that played down the danger of secondhand smoke.
The N.F.L.’s ties to tobacco are reflected in other ways. When Congress was considering legislation that dealt with when a team owner could relocate a franchise, Joe Browne, a league official sought lobbying advice from a representative of the Tobacco Institute.
“I would like to take the opportunity to sit down and discuss this bill with you further,” Mr. Browne said in a 1982 letter to the institute’s president, Sam Chilcote.
Neil Austrian, a former N.F.L. president, had previously run an advertising agency that under his leadership reversed its ban on taking tobacco clients. He called Philip Morris “an honorable company that sets high standards.” It was during his tenure at the N.F.L. that the concussion committee was created.
Years later, when the committee’s work drew criticism during the peer review process, its members pushed back.
“We are aware the findings from the N.F.L. confront some popular opinions,” they wrote, “but believe this study stands on its merits based on the physician evaluation of injury and quality assurance of the data.”
Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting.
Scathing. If you were anticipating a "spotlight"-type report on this, the NYT clearly expects this to be the one. The war is on.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/sports/football/nfl-concussion-research-tobacco.html?_r=0
In N.F.L., Deeply Flawed Concussion Research and Ties to Big Tobacco
By ALAN SCHWARZ, WALT BOGDANICH and JACQUELINE WILLIAMS
MARCH 24, 2016
THE NEW YORK TIMES
The National Football League was on the clock.
With several of its marquee players retiring early after a cascade of frightening concussions, the league formed a committee in 1994 that would ultimately issue a succession of research papers playing down the danger of head injuries. Amid criticism of the committee’s work, physicians brought in later to continue the research said the papers had relied on faulty analysis.
Now, an investigation by The New York Times has found that the N.F.L.’s concussion research was far more flawed than previously known.
For the last 13 years, the N.F.L. has stood by the research, which, the papers stated, was based on a full accounting of all concussions diagnosed by team physicians from 1996 through 2001. But confidential data obtained by The Times shows that more than 100 diagnosed concussions were omitted from the studies — including some severe injuries to stars like quarterbacks Steve Young and Troy Aikman. The committee then calculated the rates of concussions using the incomplete data, making them appear less frequent than they actually were.
After The Times asked the league about the missing diagnosed cases — more than 10 percent of the total — officials acknowledged that “the clubs were not required to submit their data and not every club did.” That should have been made clearer, the league said in a statement, adding that the missing cases were not part of an attempt “to alter or suppress the rate of concussions.”
One member of the concussion committee, Dr. Joseph Waeckerle, said he was unaware of the omissions. But he added: “If somebody made a human error or somebody assumed the data was absolutely correct and didn’t question it, well, we screwed up. If we found it wasn’t accurate and still used it, that’s not a screw-up; that’s a lie.”
These discoveries raise new questions about the validity of the committee’s findings, published in 13 peer-reviewed articles and held up by the league as scientific evidence that brain injuries did not cause long-term harm to its players. It is also unclear why the omissions went unchallenged by league officials, by the epidemiologist whose job it was to ensure accurate data collection and by the editor of the medical journal that published the studies.
In 2013, the N.F.L. agreed to a $765 million settlement of a lawsuit in which retired players accused league officials of covering up the risks of concussions. Some players have appealed the settlement, asking for an examination of the committee’s concussion research.
*photo* Dr. Joseph Waeckerle, speaking to quarterback Joe Montana in 1994, was the Chiefs’ team physician and a member of the N.F.L.’s concussion committee. Credit Associated Press
Some retired players have likened the N.F.L.’s handling of its health crisis to that of the tobacco industry, which was notorious for using questionable science to play down the dangers of cigarettes.
Concussions can hardly be equated with smoking, which kills 1,300 people a day in the United States, and The Times has found no direct evidence that the league took its strategy from Big Tobacco. But records show a long relationship between two businesses with little in common beyond the health risks associated with their products.
In a letter to The Times, a lawyer for the league said, “The N.F.L. is not the tobacco industry; it had no connection to the tobacco industry,” which he called “perhaps the most odious industry in American history.”
Still, the records show that the two businesses shared lobbyists, lawyers and consultants. Personal correspondence underscored their friendships, including dinner invitations and a request for lobbying advice.
In 1997, to provide legal oversight for the committee, the league assigned Dorothy C. Mitchell, a young lawyer who had earlier defended the Tobacco Institute, the industry trade group. She had earned the institute’s “highest praise” for her work.
A co-owner of the Giants, Preston R. Tisch, also partly owned a leading cigarette company, Lorillard, and was a board member of both the Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research, two entities that played a central role in misusing science to hide the risks of cigarettes.
The N.F.L.’s concussion committee began publishing its findings in 2003 in the medical journal Neurosurgery. Although the database used in the studies contained numerical codes for teams and players, The Times decoded it by cross-referencing team schedules and public injury reports.
The N.F.L.’s concussion studies have faced questions since they were published, but even the league’s harshest critics have never suggested, and no evidence has ever arisen, that the underlying data set could be so faulty.
“One of the rules of science is that you need to have impeccable data collection procedures,” said Bill Barr, a neuropsychologist who once worked for the Jets and who has in the past criticized the committee’s work.
By excluding so many concussions, Mr. Barr said, “You’re not doing science here; you are putting forth some idea that you already have.”
The Work Begins
In an introduction to the first of the concussion committee’s papers, the league’s commissioner at the time, Paul Tagliabue, acknowledged the need for “independent scientific research” to better understand the risks of concussions.
Prominent Holes in N.F.L. Study
In the mid-1990s, the National Football League formed a concussion committee that ultimately determined that head trauma posed no significant danger. But the data it collected from teams was inconsistent and contained glaring omissions — some involving the game’s star players.
*photo* The 49ers have no concussions listed from 1997 through 2000. However, numerous media reports and the N.F.L.’s own injury reports indicate quarterback Steve Young had at least two. The one at left occurred against Arizona in 1999. Young did not play again.
Young listed on midweek N.F.L. injury reports
Sept. 3, 1997
Sept. 29, 1999
Concussion
Concussion
The Cowboys do not have a single concussion in the database, which covers six seasons. But according to media reports and the N.F.L.’s injury reports, quarterback Troy Aikman sustained four during that time, including one against the Eagles in 1997, left.
Aikman listed on midweek N.F.L. injury reports
Oct. 29, 1997
Nov. 10, 1999
Sept. 6, 2000
Dec. 13, 2000
Concussion
Head*
Concussion
Concussion
*Sometimes injury reports refer to concussions as head injuries. News media outlets at the time reported that Cowboys officials had said Aikman sustained a "mild concussion
“As we looked more deeply into the specific area of concussions, we realized that there were many more questions than answers,” Mr. Tagliabue wrote.
The committee’s chairman, Dr. Elliot Pellman, the team physician for the Jets, emphasized that his group aimed to produce research that was “independent” and “meticulous.”
In fact, most of the dozen committee members were associated with N.F.L. teams, as a physician, neurosurgeon or athletic trainer, which meant they made decisions about player care and then studied whether those decisions were proper. Still, the researchers stated unambiguously — in each of their first seven peer-reviewed papers — that their financial or business relationships had not compromised their work.
The committee said it analyzed all concussions diagnosed by team medical staffs from 1996 through 2001 — 887 in all. Concussions were recorded by position, type of play, time missed, even the brand of helmet.
The committee’s statements emphasized the completeness of the data.
“It was understood that any player with a recognized symptom of head injury, no matter how minor, should be included in the study,” one paper said.
And in confidential peer-review documents, the committee wrote that “all N.F.L. teams participated” and that “all players were therefore part of this study.”
Those statements are contradicted by the database.
The Times found that most teams failed to report all of their players’ concussions. Over all, at least 10 percent of head injuries diagnosed by team doctors were missing from the study, including two sustained by Jets receiver Wayne Chrebet, who retired several years later after more concussions. Dr. Pellman, the Jets’ physician, led the research and was the lead author on every paper.
Prominent Holes in N.F.L. Study
In the mid-1990s, the National Football League formed a concussion committee that ultimately determined that head trauma posed no significant danger. But the data it collected from teams was inconsistent and contained glaring omissions — some involving the game’s star players.
According to the research papers, team physicians were to fill out forms specially designed for the studies to submit information about concussions — a system that went well beyond the league’s standard injury-reporting protocols. In one paper, the committee wrote, “The Commissioner of the N.F.L. mandated all team physicians to complete and return forms whenever they examined a player with a head injury.”
But after The Times described how it had identified missing concussions, the N.F.L. said this week that the studies, in fact, “never purported” to include all concussions.
Teams were “not mandated” to participate, the league said, only “strongly encouraged.” And some teams, a spokesman said, “did not take the additional steps of supplying the initial and/or follow-up forms.” He did not explain why some teams had not included all concussions identified by medical personnel.
The league explained, as did the papers, that some concussions went undiagnosed in the first place because players are known to occasionally hide their symptoms of concussion from team doctors; that symptoms of concussion can be so brief that no one notices; and that doctors might have used different criteria to make concussion diagnoses.
But the vast majority of omitted concussions identified by The Times were included in the N.F.L.’s public injury reports, meaning that medical staffs had made the diagnoses and reported them to the league. Some of the omitted concussions were reported by the teams to the news media after a game but do not appear on the injury reports, presumably because the player’s status for the next game was not in doubt.
Photo
The database does not include any concussions involving the Dallas Cowboys for all six seasons, including four to Mr. Aikman that were listed on the N.F.L.’s official midweek injury reports or were widely reported in the news media. He and many other players were therefore not included when the committee analyzed the frequency and lasting effects of multiple concussions.
Several other teams have no concussions listed for years at a time. Yet the committee’s calculations did include hundreds of those teams’ games played during that period, which produced a lower overall concussion rate.
A Cowboys spokesman, Rich Dalrymple, said the team had participated, but he declined to say how many cases were reported and which players were involved. He said he did not know why the Cowboys’ data did not appear in the studies. A San Francisco 49ers spokesman did not return messages seeking comment about Mr. Young.
Dr. Robert Cantu, one of the peer reviewers who at the time criticized the committee’s analyses, said, “It should be an unmistakable red flag that a team does not report any concussions over multiple years.”
Some injuries were more severe than what was reflected in the official tally. According to committee records, St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner sustained a concussion on Dec. 24, 2000, that healed after two days. But Mr. Warner’s symptoms continued, and four weeks later he was ruled out of the Pro Bowl with what a league official described as lingering symptoms of that head injury.
The N.F.L. declined to make Dr. Pellman available for an interview. The study’s epidemiologist, John Powell, who no longer works on behalf of the league, did not respond to interview requests. Michael L. J. Apuzzo, editor of Neurosurgery when the papers were published, did not respond to interview requests.
The committee and the N.F.L. have long claimed that the papers were vetted through a rigorous, confidential peer-review process before publication, which legitimized their methods and conclusions. But more than a dozen pages of anonymous back-and-forth between reviewers and the committee show some reviewers almost desperate to stop the papers’ publication while the authors brushed aside criticism.
One reviewer wrote, “Many of the management of concussion suggestions are inappropriate and not founded on facts.” Another said the committee’s assertion that the league was handling concussions too cautiously was not proved and was therefore “potentially dangerous.”
An author of the N.F.L. studies responded, “If the truth is dangerous, then I suppose our results are dangerous.”
Overlapping Interests
In 1992, amid rising concerns about concussions, Mr. Tisch — the Giants and Lorillard part owner — asked the cigarette company’s general counsel, Arthur J. Stevens, to contact the N.F.L. commissioner at the time, Mr. Tagliabue, about certain legal issues.
Mr. Stevens was not just any tobacco lawyer; he was a member of the industry’s secretive Committee of Counsel, which helped direct tobacco research projects. In a letter obtained by The Times, Mr. Stevens referred Mr. Tagliabue to two court cases alleging that the tobacco and asbestos industries had covered up the health risks of their products.
In one case, the family of a dead smoker sought internal documents that the tobacco industry had withheld on the grounds of lawyer-client privilege — which does not apply if invoked to cover up a crime. The judge in the case reacted angrily after reading those internal records.
“The documents speak for themselves in a voice filled with disdain for the consuming public and its health,” the judge, H. Lee Sarokin of Federal District Court in New Jersey, wrote earlier in 1992. Tobacco lawyers succeeded in having Judge Sarokin removed from the case.
Why an influential tobacco lawyer would recommend legal cases to the N.F.L. is not known, because neither Mr. Stevens nor Mr. Tagliabue would agree to be interviewed. Mr. Tisch died in 2005.
Joe Lockhart, a league spokesman, said that the cases involved potential bias of judges and that there was no evidence that the letter “was taken seriously.”
Even so, records show that, in the legal arena, the league and the tobacco industry sometimes intersected.
Before joining the N.F.L., Ms. Mitchell, a young Harvard Law School graduate, had been one of five lawyers at Covington & Burling who had provided either lobbying help or legal representation to both the N.F.L. and the tobacco industry, sometimes in the same year. Mr. Tagliabue had been a partner at the firm before becoming the N.F.L.’s commissioner.
In 1992, Ms. Mitchell defended the Tobacco Institute against a smoker’s lawsuit. She also worked on behalf of the institute in a landmark secondhand smoke case, as well as for other nontobacco clients. Ms. Mitchell said she was not responsible for legal strategy in the tobacco cases.
At the N.F.L., said Brian McCarthy, a league spokesman, Ms. Mitchell’s work for the concussion committee was administrative. “She did not have any responsibility or any role in directing the research,” he said.
Dr. Waeckerle, the concussion committee member, offered a different view.
He said Ms. Mitchell asked committee members: “How can this affect us? How can this be studied? How should we view it? Is this a legitimate concern, or is this part of somebody’s zeal, and do we need to be concerned?”
Photo
Wayne Chrebet being attended to in 2003 by the Jets’ team doctor, Elliot Pellman, right, who led the N.F.L.’s research on concussions. Among the head injuries missing from the N.F.L.’s studies were two sustained by Chrebet. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Dr. Waeckerle praised her for bringing a nonmedical voice that made members consider the risks, benefits and “what are the intended and nonintended consequences of whatever we were discussing.” He said, for example, that she wanted to ensure that the committee’s work applied only to the N.F.L., not to college or youth football.
Ms. Mitchell said in an interview that she left the N.F.L. after six years for personal reasons, unrelated to her work, and that she did not recall much about the committee’s work.
“I don’t think I saw any reports,” she said. “It was in the early stages.”
Ms. Mitchell added that, as the league’s assistant secretary, she had broad responsibilities beyond health and safety issues.
Her contributions to the concussion committee won her thanks in five research papers — three by the N.F.L. and two by a Canadian company that did contract work for the N.F.L. The committee wrote that she worked “tirelessly to initiate” its research and that “her efforts paved the way for successful completion of the research.”
On at least two occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, the N.F.L. hired a company whose client list included the Tobacco Institute to study player injuries. The league also hired a company — for a matter unrelated to player safety — that had performed a study for the tobacco industry that played down the danger of secondhand smoke.
The N.F.L.’s ties to tobacco are reflected in other ways. When Congress was considering legislation that dealt with when a team owner could relocate a franchise, Joe Browne, a league official sought lobbying advice from a representative of the Tobacco Institute.
“I would like to take the opportunity to sit down and discuss this bill with you further,” Mr. Browne said in a 1982 letter to the institute’s president, Sam Chilcote.
Neil Austrian, a former N.F.L. president, had previously run an advertising agency that under his leadership reversed its ban on taking tobacco clients. He called Philip Morris “an honorable company that sets high standards.” It was during his tenure at the N.F.L. that the concussion committee was created.
Years later, when the committee’s work drew criticism during the peer review process, its members pushed back.
“We are aware the findings from the N.F.L. confront some popular opinions,” they wrote, “but believe this study stands on its merits based on the physician evaluation of injury and quality assurance of the data.”
Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting.
nerfhearder
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2016
- Posts
- 2,330
Some of those I agree might be worth looking at but Clarett and Hernandez are just thugs who got away with being thugs for a while because they could play football.
I'm not sure about Leaf either. I think he may just be an asshole along the same lines as Manziel but then maybe Johnny Football took a few too many to the head, too.
RoryN
You're screwed.
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2003
- Posts
- 60,964
True. I'm not arguing about letting anyone off the hook for their behavior. But it's worth discussion since CTE's symptoms have pretty consistently included asshole-ishness. They may very well be what they are without it as well.
RjThoughts
I'm The Rojodi!
- Joined
- May 7, 2001
- Posts
- 36,491
Manziel's problems are caused by him being a spoiled rich kid with a grandiose sense of entitlement.
RoryN
You're screwed.
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2003
- Posts
- 60,964
Good call. And it's going straight to Dr. Bennet Omalu.
Chyna's Brain Will Be Donated to Science
The WWE star's brain will be studied for signs of any disorder.
STEVE HUFF
A DAY AGO
In an exclusive, the New York Daily News reported Friday that the brain of deceased former WWE star Chyna (a.k.a. Joanie Laurer) will be studied by the physician made famous in the Will Smith film Concussion, Dr. Bennet Omalu.
Omalu was the doctor who discovered compelling evidence of CTE — chronic traumatic encephalopathy — in the brains of numerous dead athletes and then waged a protracted battle with the NFL to recognize the existence of the disorder.
Manager Anthony Anzaldo told the News that Chyna, who died Wednesday at 46, was at work on a documentary titled The Reconstruction of Chyna when she died. Anzaldo also told the paper that attorneys involved with a possible lawsuit against the WWE had contacted the pioneering wrestler well in advance of her death to see if she was interested in being a part of the action. After she died, they got in touch with Anzaldo again:
"When she died, they called me again and asked, 'Can we have her brain,'" Anzaldo told The News. "My hope is that we can do it. I'm in the process of getting the permission to speak on behalf of family to tell the coroner it's okay to release it."
Anzaldo was the one who said Dr. Omalu would be involved in studying the wrestler's brain, but the physician's office hadn't returned calls regarding the story as of late Friday.
Anzaldo also said Chyna was found in bed, bottles for anti-anxiety and sleeping meds by her side. "She was just lying there peacefully," Anzaldo told the News.
There were signs Chyna had been deteriorating, including a strange video she'd posted on her Youtube channel in which she could be seen rambling in a disjointed manner just days before her death. But regarding her death, Anzaldo acknowledged to the paper that she'd "had issues" and posted online in relation to them, but he just didn't "think [her death] was intentional."
According to Anzaldo, Chyna will be cremated. He's also planning a public service and hopes famous friends like Mike Tyson will be a part of it.
http://www.maxim.com/news/chyna-brain-science-2016-4
Chyna's Brain Will Be Donated to Science
The WWE star's brain will be studied for signs of any disorder.
STEVE HUFF
A DAY AGO
In an exclusive, the New York Daily News reported Friday that the brain of deceased former WWE star Chyna (a.k.a. Joanie Laurer) will be studied by the physician made famous in the Will Smith film Concussion, Dr. Bennet Omalu.
Omalu was the doctor who discovered compelling evidence of CTE — chronic traumatic encephalopathy — in the brains of numerous dead athletes and then waged a protracted battle with the NFL to recognize the existence of the disorder.
Manager Anthony Anzaldo told the News that Chyna, who died Wednesday at 46, was at work on a documentary titled The Reconstruction of Chyna when she died. Anzaldo also told the paper that attorneys involved with a possible lawsuit against the WWE had contacted the pioneering wrestler well in advance of her death to see if she was interested in being a part of the action. After she died, they got in touch with Anzaldo again:
"When she died, they called me again and asked, 'Can we have her brain,'" Anzaldo told The News. "My hope is that we can do it. I'm in the process of getting the permission to speak on behalf of family to tell the coroner it's okay to release it."
Anzaldo was the one who said Dr. Omalu would be involved in studying the wrestler's brain, but the physician's office hadn't returned calls regarding the story as of late Friday.
Anzaldo also said Chyna was found in bed, bottles for anti-anxiety and sleeping meds by her side. "She was just lying there peacefully," Anzaldo told the News.
There were signs Chyna had been deteriorating, including a strange video she'd posted on her Youtube channel in which she could be seen rambling in a disjointed manner just days before her death. But regarding her death, Anzaldo acknowledged to the paper that she'd "had issues" and posted online in relation to them, but he just didn't "think [her death] was intentional."
According to Anzaldo, Chyna will be cremated. He's also planning a public service and hopes famous friends like Mike Tyson will be a part of it.
http://www.maxim.com/news/chyna-brain-science-2016-4
WalksOnWater
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Two entire copyrighted pieces fully c&p'd in the last two days, and your partisan pal the GB Moderator says not a thing, even though she's banned others for doing the exact same thing, just as the Forum Rules command her to do EQUALLY:
You know, I can understand why a totally partisan Moderator continues to allow her partisan pals to post stuff that she bans others posters she has partisan problems with for, but what still bewilders me is that partisan pieces of shit like you claim to like the GB's partisan Moderator, as you continue to intentionally violate her Forum rules without being banned...
Ok, I lied - it's not really bewildering in the least.
You know, I can understand why a totally partisan Moderator continues to allow her partisan pals to post stuff that she bans others posters she has partisan problems with for, but what still bewilders me is that partisan pieces of shit like you claim to like the GB's partisan Moderator, as you continue to intentionally violate her Forum rules without being banned...
Ok, I lied - it's not really bewildering in the least.
SgtSpiderMan
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You can't complain if you don't report it.
RoryN
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WalksOnWater
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Nice.
Que
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He didn't say that.
SgtSpiderMan
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Que
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Quoted what?
SgtSpiderMan
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Que
aʒɑ̃ prɔvɔkatœr
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When?
SgtSpiderMan
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