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Education Medicine The Courts

Football Concussion Lawsuits Start To Hit High Schools 233

HughPickens.com writes Michael Tarm reports that a former high school quarterback has filed a lawsuit against the Illinois High School Association saying it didn't do enough to protect him from concussions when he played and still doesn't do enough to protect current players. This is the first instance in which legal action has been taken for former high school players as a whole against a group responsible for prep sports in a state. Such litigation could snowball, as similar suits targeting associations in other states are planned. "In Illinois high school football, responsibility — and, ultimately, fault — for the historically poor management of concussions begins with the IHSA," the lawsuit states. It calls high school concussions "an epidemic" and says the "most important battle being waged on high school football fields ... is the battle for the health and lives of" young players. The lawsuit calls on the Bloomington-based IHSA to tighten its head-injury protocols. It doesn't seek damages. "This is not a threat or attack on football," says attorney Joseph Siprut, who reached a $75 million settlement in a similar lawsuit against the NCAA in 2011. "Football is in danger in Illinois and other states — especially at the high school level — because of how dangerous it is. If football does not change internally, it will die. The talent well will dry up as parents keep kids out of the sport— and that's how a sport dies."
Previous research has shown that far from innocuous, invisible injuries, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. Individuals with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) may show symptoms of dementia, such as memory loss, aggression, confusion and depression, which generally appear years or many decades after the trauma. "The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone," says Chris Nowinski. "We know we can't do that anymore. This causes long-term damage."
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Football Concussion Lawsuits Start To Hit High Schools

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    1. Fully socialised healthcare and comprehensive welfare state like all the most advanced countries in the world do it, then there'd be no need to have this sort of inefficient, risk-avoisive bullshit just because people fear being fucked for life over a moderate injury;

    2. Acknowledgment then that lottery-win money is a ridiculous way to compensate anyone for an injury sustained while doing something risky. It fucks things over for everyone.

    • 3. At the high school level, the players are minors.

    • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @04:40PM (#48493099) Journal
      It would simplify some of the coding and billing; but it wouldn't solve the problem that we currently have basically nothing on the table for treating this class of brain injury. At the level of gross anatomy the damage is quite modest, not necessarily even visible until you slice 'n stain postmortem; but it's usually reported as a grab-bag of psychological issues(depression, lack of focus, loss of energy, emotional disregulation, etc.) that can be quite hard on the patient and which have no terribly reliable treatments. If an SSRI and maybe a psychostimulant work for you, then great, your insurance coverage does matter. If not, though, it doesn't matter if you can afford neural repair nanites or not because they simply cannot be had.
    • Tort System (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Etherwalk ( 681268 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @04:55PM (#48493201)

      1. Fully socialised healthcare and comprehensive welfare state like all the most advanced countries in the world do it, then there'd be no need to have this sort of inefficient, risk-avoisive bullshit just because people fear being fucked for life over a moderate injury;

      Wrong.

      The purpose of the tort system is to incentivize people to act reasonably. It has big costs--a bunch of jerks trying to get money--but that's what it's all about.

      Socialized healthcare takes care of the cost to the individual who is harmed--it does not incentivize the high school to act reasonably.

      • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        how about it be required for the high school to act reasonably by law and if not then put the suckers responsible for the actual action resulting in risk out of job. simple, eh? the tort system, takes just money out of the big pool, like maths and everything, and doesn't fire the people making the choices to run the kids head to head on a field.

    • risk-avoisive bullshit just because people fear being fucked for life over a moderate injury;

      Ummm -- do you have even the faintest glimmer of a clue as to the consequences of repetitive concussions?

      Why, yes, that was a rhetorical question.

  • Helmets with Sensors (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @04:24PM (#48492997) Journal

    I know it's being tried at some colleges and high schools, but it would not surprise me if mandatory sensors that communicate to central monitoring station at games and practices are required in the future.

    I'd imagine that a threshold of G's and number of times during play time or practice will require the player to sit out for a period of time or for the game/practice.

    Only a matter of time.

    • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @04:47PM (#48493153) Journal
      Better sensors will be useful for providing an actual idea of what sort of forces are being encountered; but it'll be interesting to see what happens to the monitoring system if team neurology keeps coming back with observable negative results at lower and lower thresholds.

      Part of what helped the problem fly under the radar so long (despite the fact that descriptions of boxers being 'punch drunk' are available even from classical sources) was the almost complete lack of measurements. Unless it cracked the helmet or something, the only severity measure was the (probably unrecorded) subjective assessment by the victim and any bystanders, and there wasn't anyone standing around delivering cognitive function tests before and after, or anyone doing long term followup of various populations with different levels of impact exposure.
    • How about we at least stop putting concussed kids back on the field? A concussion is a more serious injury than a freaking broken arm -- I know, I've treated hundreds of both. Nobody ever died of a closed arm fracture, but the same can't be said for a closed head injury.
      • by vivian ( 156520 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @05:44PM (#48493495)

        How about poay a psort that doesn't require heavy physical contact?
        nearly all athletics events, swimming, baseball, basketball,as well as numerous other field games exist that manage to be entertaining without having to put players at huge physical risk like (American) football does. Same deal with rugby and league, but even those games have rules that avoid the worst of the heavy impacts - and lack of body armor in those sports means the players are required to play more within limits that will tend to have less impact on the brain.

    • I know it's being tried at some colleges and high schools, but it would not surprise me if mandatory sensors that communicate to central monitoring station at games and practices are required in the future.

      Sensors can be, and will be, disabled if the players think it's in their short-term self-interest to do so.

      Just see how the workers at Fukushima [washingtonsblog.com] did that themselves with the tacit endorsement of management.

      A far simpler and more effective solution would be to have high school players just play flag football.

      Flag football is a version of American football or Canadian football where the basic rules of the game are similar to those of the mainstream game (often called "tackle football" for contrast), but instead of tackling players to the ground, the defensive team must remove a flag or flag belt from the ball carrier ("deflagging") to end a down.

      That would get rid of 90% of serious injuries at least.

  • Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by diamondmagic ( 877411 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @04:26PM (#48493015) Homepage

    Concussions are caused by sudden forces applied to the brain, right?

    Well then, let's get rid of the helmets. No, really. It's not like there's hard game pieces flying towards your head at 90+ MPH (hockey, baseball, lacrosse). The only long-term damage that a helmet can protect against is skull fractures. Other than that, they reduce the pain associated with hitting your head, making it easier to damage your brain.

    • It will reduce concussions, but greatly increase more threatening problems.

      The simplest and easiest solution is just to add rules that protect the head.

    • Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30, 2014 @04:31PM (#48493047)

      And we should give it a different name so people don't get confused.

      I vote for "rugby".

    • Exactly. Helmets don't protect heads from concussion, mouthguards do, make them compulsory, take away the huge pads and helmets, make tackles above the shoulder illegal, problem solved.
    • by dargaud ( 518470 )
      Yeah, who thought that playing violent games such as football, lacrosse or hockey in college is a good idea anyway. Or anywhere for that matter, I find those sports violent and stupid. There, I said it. It's better than people going at war or tribes throwing feces at each others, but barely.
      • by thogard ( 43403 )

        Football has a strong connection to military training. It is the best sport to teach future cannon fodder to blindly obey the rules while working as a team and follow the chain of command.

    • Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Deadstick ( 535032 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @04:49PM (#48493163)

      The boxing glove did much the same thing. The human head is several pounds of thick bone, and the human hand is basically chicken drumsticks; a bare-knuckle boxer couldn't hit a man in the head very hard without breaking his fingers. The object was to hit the supraorbital ridges, opening cuts. The plentiful blood flow in the head assured that the opponent would be blinded by blood, and the fight was over. It also left him looking like the second-place winner in a knife fight, and public revulsion caused boxing bans in many jurisdictions.

      The industry headed that off by inventing the boxing glove, which cut down on the lacerations. It also hardened the fist enough that a powerful man can deliver a maximum-effort blow. Result: boxing changed from a face-rearranging sport to a brain-damaging sport.

    • Helmets also prevent injuries such as fish-hooking the mouth, ears being ripped off, teeth being knocked out, and eyes being gouged, not to mention incidental facial abrasions from being tackled on artificial turf. Playing helmetless would like decrease head to head collisions, but would do nothing for other body parts smashing into the head. A man being wrestled to the ground by multiple opponents is likely to catch a knee or elbow, or get slammed on his back, bashing his head into the turf. There is no
      • Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)

        by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @04:56PM (#48493203) Homepage

        There is nothing resembling professional football that I would like to see a human being playing without a helmet.

        Not a rugby fan, then.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by ColdWetDog ( 752185 )

          He said human.

        • Nope, not a fan of rugby. I've watched rugby matches and the carnage is dialed back a bit, but I've still seen guys laid out cold as a mackeral from hits, and I've seen fingers inadvertently raked across faces.

          I'd rather see pro football remain as it is, but also see all school sponsorship of the sport ended. Let the adults who want to make a profession of the game go into it with their eyes wide open, not indoctrinated as impressionable young people. If the sport dies from lack of participation, so b
      • Other sports manage to find solutions to this without helmets. Think wrestling, water polo.

        • Or Rugby Union, Rugby League, AFL. All are full contact sports without the armour that is worn in American Football.

          But the styles of the games are completely different. From an uninterested observer American Football seems to have a lot of two lines of armoured tanks crashing into each other in the hope that the line gets broken. It doesn't seem to matter as much who has the ball. In all of types of rugby attacking a player who doesn't have the ball is a foul and that includes taking out defenders or a

    • So instead of concussions, we'll just have deaths. Good idea.
      • From what? What's colliding with player's skulls with such force they're going to get fractured?

        • Other people's skulls. In 1904-1909 (before there were helmets) there was an average of 18 deaths a year in college football. The sport was tiny then.
          • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            And they almost killed it, except Roosevelt made a speech saying that the continued existence of football was critical to the future of the USA.

          • by Cyberax ( 705495 )
            That's OK. Now the deaths are replaced with lots of more people getting debilitating brain damage which becomes apparent only after 15-20 years.
  • Even if people are inclined to let bygones be bygones, and not poke the touchy question of whether certain authority figures chose to stick with the 'eh, just rub some dirt on it, wimp' theory of sports medicine for sake of convenience even after medical evidence demanded otherwise; this seems like one that isn't going to go well.

    Mitigating shocks with helmets that don't make you look like you've been engulfed by a marshmallow python just isn't an easy problem; and there isn't an obvious 'floor' value below which shocks(especially when repeated, often, and often in relatively quick succession) are entirely harmless. Even if you can push the 'eh, they knew the risks and chose to play' at the pro level, that isn't going to go so well with children, who are typically treated as unsuitable for contract-grade decision making.
    • by Deadstick ( 535032 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @04:51PM (#48493173)

      Simple fix: Play football with the feet. There are countries where they do this.

      • While soccer (football to the rest of the world) probably has less of a problem, it is still a potentially serious issue [nytimes.com]. Better suggest golf next time. Or Dungeon and Dragons.

        • While soccer (football to the rest of the world) probably has less of a problem, it is still a potentially serious issue. Better suggest golf next time. Or Dungeon and Dragons.

          You've obviously never seen me try to golf then. The only safe place is the middle of the fairway.

        • If you're not experiencing brain damage from excessive *headdesk* in D&D, your players are doing something horribly wrong.

          Or horribly right. Hard to tell in most games.

        • I'd imagine this problem has been getting worse as they've tweaked the rules to make headers easier and much more common. When the ball weighted 75kg of wet leather and had massive prominent stitches runing across it, heading was somewhat less common.

        • Haha. I stayed at a hotel with a golf course once (I don't play golf) and every guest had to acknowledge in writing that walking outside when golfers are present is inherently dangerous and that the hotel is not liable if you're hit by a ball.

      • The problem then is that your supporters riot. I think they don't get enough of a fix of things happening on the pitch so they beat the crap out of each other afterwards.

  • About fucking time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @04:29PM (#48493041)

    I'm an emergency medic and unfortuntately meet a lot of kids who have been concussed -- and when they come in saying, "I think I have a concussion, it feels like the ones I get playing football" it's all I can do to not lose my shit right there. The story is always the same: kid gets his bell rung, is either unconscious or maybe A&Ox2 on the field, and if he's more or less functional by the end of the game, he's back on the field.

    Those brain cells are gone for good -- and we're talking about minors who are acting under the care of an adult in authority.

    • ... and we're talking about minors who are acting under the care of an adult in authority.

      Exactly this.

    • Yep... kids who don't want to play football tend to be suicidal and homicidal on the field... parents should take the blame for that happening.

    • by C0R1D4N ( 970153 )
      It's a problem for sure. It's not a fucking epidemic. People need to stop using that word wrong.
  • who wins - common sense or big money.
    Are they still separate? One wonders....

  • Let it die. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @04:45PM (#48493139) Homepage Journal

    > If football does not change internally, it will die.

    Good.

    Then schools and colleges can get back to academic disciplines.
    If people want group sports, go to the local sports center and sign up.
    Sports fuck up the priorities of schools and colleges to their detriment.

    • Professional sports mess up the priorities of sports. As soon as universities charge for sport events, it is no longer a sport, but a business and profession.
      Yes, you can say that the adult athletes should know about the dangers and as such should be in a position to ascertain the risk. Fundamentally, it was one of denial that something will happen to him. The same argument could be made that the Jews knew about the risks when Hitler got elected and opted to move to Birobidzhan as soon as the Nazi move
  • by Ihlosi ( 895663 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @05:05PM (#48493271)
    Do you like the capabilities your pre-frontal cortex gives you, like executive functions, impulse control, etc?

    Then don't play football.

    Avoidable brain damage is stupid. Avoidable mechanical brain damage twice so.

    • by Lunix Nutcase ( 1092239 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @05:11PM (#48493305)

      But the problem is that just like the NFL, these high school and college football programs are hiding these head injury risks from the players. It's not the kids' fault that the adults they should be able to trust are putting them into risky situations without properly informing them of the risks.

      • But the problem is that just like the NFL, these high school and college football programs are hiding these head injury risks from the players. It's not the kids' fault that the adults they should be able to trust are putting them into risky situations without properly informing them of the risks.

        That's not a solution. Minors can't give informed consent. They are not adults, and the presumption is that, lacking enough real-word experience, they are more subject to peer pressure, etc., and less capable of understanding what "life-long brain damage" really means. Kids think they're invulnerable, that it won't happen to them (a lot of adults also think the same wrt addiction, risky driving habits, etc).

        And the schools don't dare inform parents of all the risks - parents would say "What, are you cr

        • And the schools don't dare inform parents of all the risks - parents would say "What, are you crazy? I'm going to risk my kids future so you can get a stupid trophy for your office? DIAF."

          I wish you were right, but experience with the parents of brain-damaged young athletes indicates otherwise.

          • And the schools don't dare inform parents of all the risks - parents would say "What, are you crazy? I'm going to risk my kids future so you can get a stupid trophy for your office? DIAF."

            I wish you were right, but experience with the parents of brain-damaged young athletes indicates otherwise.

            Maybe it's time to consider that they're engaged in willful child endangerment? Nobody, not even a concussed-out coach, wants to be labeled a child abuser.

            • And the schools don't dare inform parents of all the risks - parents would say "What, are you crazy? I'm going to risk my kids future so you can get a stupid trophy for your office? DIAF."

              I wish you were right, but experience with the parents of brain-damaged young athletes indicates otherwise.

              Maybe it's time to consider that they're engaged in willful child endangerment? Nobody, not even a concussed-out coach, wants to be labeled a child abuser.

              Maybe so, but it's clear from what happened at Penn State that they just don't want the label. There's way too much tendency to turn a blind eye.

        • I didn't posit any "solution". All I said is the risk are being hidden from the players. And since these are kids they simply trust the adults telling them to play since it's supposedly ok.

    • Do you like the capabilities your pre-frontal cortex gives you, like executive functions, impulse control, etc?

      Then don't play football.

      Avoidable brain damage is stupid. Avoidable mechanical brain damage twice so.

      But...but...where will we get future cops and politicians from, if there are no more government-indoctrinated violent and aggressive brain-damaged.individuals being turned out by schools?

      Strat

      • But...but...where will we get future cops and politicians from, if there are no more government-indoctrinated violent and aggressive brain-damaged.individuals being turned out by schools?

        The kids who were given the choice of jail or the marines are a likely source.

    • Avoidable brain damage is stupid. Avoidable mechanical brain damage twice so.

      Perhaps. But: you are going to die. Almost anything you might do prior to that is going to leave its mark on your body, as will doing nothing, and that includes your brain. Does this mean football is a good deal? Maybe, maybe not, but you'll have to actually think it through before you can rightfully judge it. Because even if you do end up with brain damage, that doesn't mean all the good times you had from the game - or the money

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Many of the brain injured football players end up broke and alone, possibly in jail. By that point, if they COULD think clearly, they'd probably wish they'd played a different sport or at least taken better precautions.

        Football wasn't always played in full body armor.Perhaps it's time to redesign based on a scientific understanding of the risks and how to mitigate them.

        • by Ihlosi ( 895663 )
          Football wasn't always played in full body armor.Perhaps it's time to redesign based on a scientific understanding of the risks and how to mitigate them.

          It's actually very simple. The brain is soft. The skull is hard. When the two collide due to the head experiencing too much acceleration, it's easy to guess which of the two will be damaged more.

          The are dozens of types of sport that don't involve the participants head and neck experiencing large forces as a normal part of the game.

  • The talent well will dry up as parents keep kids out of the sport--- and that's how a sport dies.

    Let it die. The trend for every decade I've been alive is that more brains are needed to survive in the workplace, not less. Not only are the jobs more skilled, there are more rules to follow--- you have to have the mental wherewithal to know when you can and cannot say "fucked her right in the pussy", to use one famous example. We don't need otherwise healthy people starting at a deficit because they pla
  • by jamesl ( 106902 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @05:10PM (#48493297)

    ... I'd get rid of football. It has nothing to do with education. It costs money that schools don't have (or so the teachers' unions and school boards tell us); it causes short term and long term health problems and it exposes school systems, school employees and taxpayers to expensive and potentially ruinous lawsuits.

    All downside. No upside.

    • Absolutely. I live in Texas and my school district just sold a bond to build a 58million dollar stadium. It is amazing and stupid.

    • And you'd be ran out of town.

      In many places in small town america, high school sports (especially football and basketball) are a big entertainment draw. In my hometown of 6,000, it was not unusual to see over 1,000 people at a football game.

      I hate to say it, but most people are more interested in winning the state championship than in leading the state in graduation rates.

    • I think we should get rid of all sports in fact. Probably the arts, and likely music too. What does physical education really add to education any way? Home ec, for sure. Likely shop, those kids should go to vocational training for that.

      Great plan. Really. I'd love to meet the products of that system, not sterile at all!

      • I think we should get rid of all sports in fact. Probably the arts, and likely music too. What does physical education really add to education any way? Home ec, for sure. Likely shop, those kids should go to vocational training for that.

        Hmm... somewhat of a non sequitur, don't ya think? The parent was talking about a sport that is known to cause permanent brain damage in minors. I'm not sure if I agree with parent's approach to that issue, but it's a legitimate concern.

        How exactly do ALL other sports, the arts, music, home ec, etc. cause serious and permanent injuries to teenagers? Unless you can answer that question, I think your analogy is invalid.

        There are plenty of reasons to argue for all sorts of activities, including many var

  • by networkzombie ( 921324 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @05:19PM (#48493357)
    Why does the helmet only have padding on the inside? Padding on the inside makes it like a construction workers helmet that is meant to protect you from hard objects like girders and falling buckets of nails. Padding on the outside of the helmet would (slightly more) cushion the repeated sudden shocks that can damage the brain. The hard candy shell should be in the middle to distribute the shock over a larger area, which in football doesn't help much because that area is your braincase, but the shell will help the helmet keep its shape. Of course padding outside the helmet would also eliminate the loud hit sounds that the spectators enjoy and make the players look like little cream puffs that can't play rough. We should just give the players weapons and release lions during the game.
    • Re:Bad Helmet Design (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TheSync ( 5291 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @05:48PM (#48493517) Journal

      Why does the helmet only have padding on the inside?

      Most football concussions now come from "rotational acceleration", the twisting of the brain inside the skull. It is much harder for a helmet to protect against there than "linear acceleration" forces, the helmet has to literally slide around the head.

    • External air bags! Someone tries to spear with their helmet, BANG! They get thrown off by their own helmet air bag. Also, if a player is hit in the head and the external airbag deploys, it protects them from secondary contacts, AND ensures they're off the field.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 30, 2014 @05:21PM (#48493373)

    As we get ever more data about the danger of even mild concussions, it's pretty obvious Football is never going to be "safe". It's a sport focused on big, meaty impacts between dozens of large men running at each other full tilt. But the idea Football is going to die is laughable. We've know boxing was destroying young men's minds since the 1920s, and it's still alive and....punching. There will always be someone desperate and poor enough to want to "fight their way out of poverty".

    But football as the sport of the everyman is probably over. The team captain who bullies all the nerds in 2020 will be captain of the school basketball team or something. Hell, maybe not suffering cranial trauma every week for years on end will mean these jocks won't even be dumb!

  • by The Real Dr John ( 716876 ) on Sunday November 30, 2014 @06:14PM (#48493655) Homepage
    "Sports" like boxing and football will never be safe because they involve repeated blows to the head. Single blows are bad enough if they are of high force, but research has shown that repeated blows to the head, even moderate ones, are more than additive. The window of vulnerability has been found to be between 3 and 5 days, meaning that you need to avoid any additional impacts for that long after you have an initial impact. Because boxing and football involve hitting the head repeatedly over the course of a single day, it is apparent why football players and boxers have the worst cases of post traumatic encephalopathy (PTE). The only way to prevent this is to stop after the first blow to the head, which would make both of these "sports" unplayable by human beings. If you want to help out with this problem, invent robots that can engage in these activities. They too will sustain damage over time, but unlike human brains, they will be repairable. They also won't file lawsuits.
  • Football is modeled after warfare. The idea of charging the line in violent confrontation and almost assuring great injury or death was a common thing to do in the Civil War, WW1 and several lesser wars. At the time people didn't normally live very long and few were feeling good at the age of 40. We have classic players in major plays who called them selves old and senile at 35. So the idea of being snapped in half on a football field seemed quite acceptable and players were told that it was their res

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