Degenerative Brain Disease Found In Nearly All Donated NFL Player Brains, Says Study (npr.org) 213
A new study published Tuesday in the journal American Medical Association found that 110 out of 111 brains of those who played in the NFL had degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). NPR reports: In the study, researchers examined the brains of 202 deceased former football players at all levels. Nearly 88 percent of all the brains, 177, had CTE. Three of 14 who had played only in high school had CTE, 48 of 53 college players, 9 of 14 semiprofessional players, and 7 of 8 Canadian Football League players. CTE was not found in the brains of two who played football before high school. According to the study's senior author, Dr. Ann McKee, "this is by far the largest [study] of individuals who developed CTE that has ever been described. And it only includes individuals who are exposed to head trauma by participation in football." A CTE study several years ago by McKee and her colleagues included football players and athletes from other collision sports such as hockey, soccer and rugby. It also examined the brains of military veterans who had suffered head injuries. The study released Tuesday is the continuation of a study that began eight years ago. In 2015, McKee and fellow researchers at the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University published study results revealing 87 of 91 former NFL players had CTE.
Sample bias (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would someone donate their brain if they didn't think they had damage?
Re:Sample bias (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would someone donate their brain if they didn't think they had damage?
Why not? Why do you need to keep your brain if you're dead?
I am an organ donor, and they are welcome to use any parts they can for anything useful. It may help someone, and it is less that my family has to pay to cremate.
Disclaimer: I don't play or watch football.
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Why not? Why do you need to keep your brain if you're dead?
Conversely, why do you need to donate anything when you're dead?
You won't get a warm fuzzy feeling from it, because you're dead.
And they don't give a discount on cremation for missing organs.
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Because it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling whilst you're alive.
It is satisfying to me to know that when I die, there is a possibility someone else might be able to benefit from that. Rather than it just being an entire waste.
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You won't get a warm fuzzy feeling from it, because you're dead.
You get a warm and fuzzy feeling when you sign up. Try it.
And they don't give a discount on cremation for missing organs.
Yes they do. Many cremation facilities will vary fees based on the weight of the corpse.
Re:Sample bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sample bias (Score:4, Funny)
>Why not? Why do you need to keep your brain if you're dead?
Why do you need a brain if you are an NFL player?
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Well no one was letting them into college on academic grounds.
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And how many of them earned it vs. how many of them got it because the made the college football team look great?
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Why would someone donate their brain if they didn't think they had damage?
Why not? Why do you need to keep your brain if you're dead?
Some people also don't need it when they are alive, apparently...
"I knew it was wrong, I shouldn't have done it...
I should have never reconnected his Internet."
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I got dibs on your penis. I always wanted one.
Why wait. We have the technology to fix that now. Both ways - an addadicktome or a lopitoffofme.
Re: Sample bias (Score:2)
No. We can only create a rough approximation of a penis. It would fool no one.
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Ithyphallic Eidolon [wikipedia.org], anyone?
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Sorry, if heaven doesn't include the option of getting a fresh, fully functional, undamaged brain if desired, I'd rather go to that other place.
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Heaven better does provide a functional brain for those that enter, pretty much everyone who gets there lacks one.
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I'd rather run, especially if you hear him say "Braaaaaaaaaains..."
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They should analyze Trump's "brain" next.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. (Score:2, Interesting)
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I'd argue that being focused is more important than intelligence in most line of work. If one can't apply that intelligence it is mostly useless.
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No, most of the players have vastly reduced complexity in what they have to learn. The smartest player on the team is generally the quarterback. He also has to learn the most plays and variations, as well as read the entire field during each play.
Re: Sample bias (Score:5, Informative)
The BBC version of this story actually discusses the sample bias, and the director of the CTE center is quoted fully acknowledging that there's enormous bias.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... [bbc.com]
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And a separate study came to a significantly different conclusion - that chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a leading cause of organ donation.
Re: Sample bias (Score:5, Interesting)
The methods section (emphasis mine)
Study Recruitment In 2008, as a collaboration among the VA Boston Healthcare System, Bedford VA, Boston University (BU) School of Medicine, and Sports Legacy Institute (now the Concussion Legacy Foundation [CLF]), a brain bank was created to better understand the long-term effects of repetitive head trauma experienced through contact sport participation and military-related exposure. The purpose of the brain bank was to comprehensively examine the neuropathology and clinical presentation of brain donors considered at risk of development of CTE. The institutional review board at Boston University Medical Campus approved all research activities. The next of kin or legally authorized representative of each brain donor provided written informed consent. No stipend for participation was provided. Inclusion criteria were based entirely on exposure to repetitive head trauma (eg, contact sports, military service, or domestic violence), regardless of whether symptoms manifested during life. Playing American football was sufficient for inclusion. Because of limited resources, more strict inclusion criteria were implemented in 2014 and required that football players who died after age 35 years have at least 2 years of college-level play. Donors were excluded if postmortem interval exceeded 72 hours or if fixed tissue fragments representing less than half the total brain volume were received (eFigure in the Supplement).
It sounds like they selected from donated cadavers for people who had played football. This is quite different from football players who suspected they had brain damage from football donating their brains. There would still be bias, as families who were convinced their loved ones were suffering from brain damage would be more likely to say yes to being in the study. But that's likely NOT NEARLY as big a bias as what GP is suggesting.
Re: Sample bias (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with CTE is it's cumulative. The more trauma, the more damage. Some of the more aggressive players have unfortunately succumbed with devastating results. Basically, who was once a family man suddenly has behavioral changes which include sudden outbursts of anger and violence that are unprovoked. Who if they weren't football players, we may have normally had jailed or committed.
Some are even suicidal, which is a shame because most take a bullet to the head, which destroys any evidence. (Some do have enough presence of mind left to avoid damaging the head and thus allowing researchers to diagnose CTE).
The only reason for doubt is because the NFL is rather self-interested in not promoting tackle football causes CTE. Two reasons. First, they are worried - yes, scared sh*tless - that if the association is made, parents will withdraw their kids from football programs. This may lead to lowered interest in football, which means the millions of dollars it brings in could dry up.
The second reason is the players associations - they have successfully sued the NFL over hiding or discounting the medical issue which is more than career ending, it's life changing.
Before CTE was even discovered, it was thought brain damage happened as a result of a major event - it was thought the brain could handle getting hit and recover, when instead it recovers irregularly. CTE is the result of repeated minor brain damage caused by the brain banging against the skull causing scarring and bruising, and which builds up over time.
The sports associations are heavily into discounting CTE because it really affects their bottom lines. It's also why there's a ton of research going into smart helmets that can indicate when a potentially damaging event occurs, and why at least at the college level and below, the threshold for benching someone has gone from knockout or concussion to a blow that exceeds 75Gs or so, even if the player is still conscious and lucid. And after a concussion, the bench time has a fixed minimum - no longer you wake up and you're in the next game, it's minimum 4-6 weeks benched, and only the doctor can clear you. Heck, some teams have even banned tackling during practice to avoid causing more damage than necessary.
The link between football (and other contact heavy sports) and CTE has been long proven. There are many well regarded papers behind it. The only question left is what percentage of the football playing population has CTE.
And finally, this is a VERY recent discovery. Bennet Omalu discovered this in 2002, and the NFL reluctantly acknowledged CTE's existence in 2009, after 7 years of trying to discredit Omalu. It's just like leaded gas, cigarettes, CFCs, and global warming all over again.
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As I've said before, if the NFL were a drug, it would have been banned years ago.
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And as with drugs I can only say that if people do it willingly, why outlaw it? It's not like anyone forces them to play there, every single NFL-player has the option to live a normal life with a normal job, it's trivial for them to do just that.
Why should the government step in and dictate what people can and cannot do with their life? Yes, that may be dangerous or even self destroying, but if someone wants to do that and does not subject anyone to it that didn't himself agree to be part of the whole deal,
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Erh... have you ever watched a game of Rugby? Or Aussie rules football?
In short: Nope. It is neither less exciting, nor do people stop using their bodies as battering rams.
Re: Sample bias (Score:4, Interesting)
But then there's this quote from the BBC article, which makes it sounds like it was from families who suspected that the deceased had CTE
"Dr Ann McKee, director of Boston University's CTE Center, which led the study, cautioned against drawing any immediate conclusions.
"There's a tremendous selection bias," she said, explaining how many of the brains were donated specifically by families who had suspected that their loved ones were suffering from CTE, which researchers believe is caused by repeated blows to the head."
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Put another way, if researchers approached the family of a deceased individual and asked "can we cut their brain out now, within 72 hours of death, so you'll have to have a closed casket," many people would say no. They'd be more likely to say yes if they tho
Control group is non-football players (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would someone donate their brain if they didn't think they had damage?
Plenty of people donate their brains for research who do not have CTE or other brain damage. This has been studied among the general population quite thoroughly. There is no need for every football player to donate his brain to avoid sample bias. We have a control group in everyone who doesn't play that sport.
Re:Control group is non-football players (Score:4, Informative)
The set of players posthumously tested by Dr. McKee is far from a random sample of N.F.L. retirees. “There’s a tremendous selection bias,” she has cautioned, noting that many families have donated brains specifically because the former player showed symptoms of C.T.E.
But 110 positives remain significant scientific evidence of an N.F.L. player’s risk of developing C.T.E., which can be diagnosed only after death. About 1,300 former players have died since the B.U. group began examining brains. So even if every one of the other 1,200 players had tested negative — which even the heartiest skeptics would agree could not possibly be the case — the minimum C.T.E. prevalence would be close to 9 percent, vastly higher than in the general population.
Academic distinctions (Score:3)
Yes, but it doesn't give accurate percentages of those affected.
That's kind of an academic point of interest. Once they develop an in-situ test on a live brain then we'll get accurate counts of percent of players affected but that's not particularly important data. The important fact is that playing american football unambiguously and substantially increases the risk of CTE particularly among professionals. The exact percentage of affected players is academically interesting but not clinically important to those affected. The important fact is that the rate of affec
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Because they believe they're fine and want to defend their beloved sport.
The Report Says Exactly This. (Score:5, Informative)
This study had several limitations. First, a major limitation is ascertainment bias associated with participation in this brain donation program. Although the criteria for participation were based on exposure to repetitive head trauma rather than on clinical signs of brain trauma, public awareness of a possible link between repetitive head trauma and CTE may have motivated players and their families with symptoms and signs of brain injury to participate in this research. Therefore, caution must be used in interpreting the high frequency of CTE in this sample, and estimates of prevalence cannot be concluded or implied from this sample.
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For research? Plenty of people do that sort of thing. I will leave my body to science even though I don't think they will find anything interesting.
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While this sample is going to have a much higher ratio of injured brains to non-injured brains than the general NFL population due to selection, the extremely high ratio of 110-to-1 (and 10-1 in a broader population that was studied), makes it unlikely that there are not a lot of former players out there with less severe brain trauma that are not getting flagged as brain damaged.
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"Even so, the Times notes that, even if the other 1,200 NFL players who’ve died since the project started came up clean, that’d still mean 9 percent of players—a much higher percentage than the general population—developed C.T.E."
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Because they want to further science? That's the main reason that people donate their bodies.
I assume the paper will mention this and other potential biases as anything other would indicate sloppy research.
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My fiancè's grandparents have agreed to donate their bodies for scientific research after they die and to the best of my knowledge, neither of them has had and kind of TBE.
Some people do it because they want to make the world a better place.
LK
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While this is true, 87 of 91 is an astonishingly high proportion.
Under the "no effect/sampling bias" hypothesis, the brains donated for NFL players would be reflective of the general population of people who suffer from dementia. That would mean that Alzheimer's and vascular dementia would account for the vast majority of cases. The chances of a random sampling of 91 dementia brains turning up 87 cases of traumatic injury is vanishingly small, meaning that it is quite reasonable to conclude that playing f
Re: Sample bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Correlation does not imply causation.
Is the implication that playing football causes brain damage, or that having brain damage causes playing football?
As a lifelong nerd, I've often suspected both are likely, but I suppose you're right that we need to study this more before declaring "I knew it!"
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Having brain damage might increase the chance of being asked to donate your brain.
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When you're dead, what do you need your brain for?
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When you're dead, what do you need your brain for?
That makes as much sense as saying "when you're a sock, what do you need your brain for?"
The phrase "when you" does not make sense, because there is no you. For a while, there's a carcass, owned by others. The temerity to think you have any right to decide what they do with it is appalling. Your wishes are as valid as a cow's wishes on how to prepare the steaks, i.e. only useful as a humorous device in fiction.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Informative)
Every single concussion comes with an extent of brain damaged aligned to the severity of the concussion, every single one https://www.brainline.org/arti... [brainline.org]. The more concussions you suffer and the worse they are, the greater your accumulated brain damage. The reason you are concussed is because, yes you brain suffered sufficient impact to cause it harm, that is why you feel concussed. It's like never damaged, bruised nerves, means in those millions of nerve bundles some where broken, severed, ceased to function, resulting in diminished capacity, as for the brain. As different parts of the brain do different things, the direction of the impact has a significant impact on the outcome, some being much more dangerous than others. What probably saves jock straps from more behaviourally visible reduce cerebral function is smaller brains in thicker skulls, with fewer neuron connections and the types of activity they indulge in, not much mental function is required for the activity, in fact reduced mental function is desirable for repetitive training behaviours.
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Every single concussion comes with an extent of brain damaged aligned to the severity of the concussion, every single one https://www.brainline.org/arti... [brainline.org]. The more concussions you suffer and the worse they are, the greater your accumulated brain damage. The reason you are concussed is because, yes you brain suffered sufficient impact to cause it harm, that is why you feel concussed. It's like never damaged, bruised nerves, means in those millions of nerve bundles some where broken, severed, ceased to function, resulting in diminished capacity, as for the brain. As different parts of the brain do different things, the direction of the impact has a significant impact on the outcome, some being much more dangerous than others. What probably saves jock straps from more behaviourally visible reduce cerebral function is smaller brains in thicker skulls, with fewer neuron connections and the types of activity they indulge in, not much mental function is required for the activity, in fact reduced mental function is desirable for repetitive training behaviours.
Friend, I have a policy of not shooting for +5 Funny twice in the same discussion, but man... reading your post makes me feel like maybe I've been playing too much football and it's time to donate my brain to science.
Ask yourself! (Score:4, Interesting)
If I could be paid millions of dollars a year to exercise for hours every day, travel the country, and play a game a weekend for a few months a year, and I knew the paycheck came with the risk of brain damage, would I? Yeah, probably. Would you? I'm guessing you have would have a price not much different that what NFL players make.
As long as players are aware of risks, it should be their decision to accept or turn down contracts. I think the problem many have with the current situation is that the NFL and other agencies (allegedly) attempted to hide the risks from players.
The "allegedly" means that I don't know for fact, and don't care to debate the allegation. If they did, it's wrong but I believe it has been since corrected.
Re:Ask yourself! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Ask yourself! (Score:2)
Here's something that may not have occurred to you. There are people that actually like playing football. Some of them are even intelligent.
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I think the first statement contradicts the second.
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The first statement does not rule out the second. Both can be true.
Not Prove, but Yes IMPLY (Score:5, Insightful)
Correlation does not PROVE causation. It can however strongly imply causation, especially as we can plainly see and infer the other mechanisms at play here. Let's not be like the cigarette companies here and turn a blind eye to the likely health dangers with misdirection. As for sample bias, when you are 110 for 111 I don't care what your bias is, the likelihood is that far over half of serious football players suffer brain damage of some sort or severity. Football and boxing are not likely to go away in our generation, but they will have to be modified greatly or they will eventually be considered a sport only us ignorant ancients would engage in.
Causation has been proven (Score:5, Insightful)
Correlation does not PROVE causation.
It's a distinction without a difference in this case. CTE comes from being hit in the head which demonstrably happens a lot in football. CTE is relatively rare among the general population who do not engage in contact sports or who haven't been violently assaulted. It is quite safe to say that playing football is a common cause of CTE. Causation is not really a question in this instance and the causal chain is well understood. Some players manage to avoid being concussed but that doesn't mean that playing football was not the cause in those who do get CTE. There is no other reasonable explanation for their condition aside from head blows received while playing a violent professional sport.
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Please site where CTE is rare among the general population?
If I suspect a person has had a concussion, could I then get the brain CTE testing? I think its significant that 1 NFL brain, suspected of having CTE, did not. The sample was of NFL brains that were checked because they were thought to have CTE. Where is the control group of samples in the NFL?
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>Correlation does not PROVE causation. It can however strongly imply causation
Indeed. We need a properly controlled study of the following form:
A) Cut the heads of all current NFL players and examine their brains.
B) Cut the heads of a randomly selected group of people from the general populace and examine their brains.
C) See if there's a statistically significant different.
This will both teach us if violent sports cause CTE and free up the airwaves for better quality television than stupid sports.
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True.
We could round up a random selection of people and force half of them to play in the NFL.
Then chop all their heads off.
Don't be stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Correlation does not imply causation.
Getting hit in the head is a proven cause of CTE. Professional football players get hit in the head commonly. Professional football players have CTE commonly. There is no other known cause of CTE aside from getting hit in the head. QED playing professional football is a common cause of CTE. The causal chain is quite intact here. The fact that some players manage to avoid brain injury while playing football does not change that causal chain.
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When, however, there is a possible causative agent (as pointed out below, concussions), then a correlation damn well does imply causation.
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You shouldn't parrot things that you don't understand.
Well yeah of course (Score:5, Funny)
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The price of a brain varies.
An ordinary brain might go for $30, but Einstein's brain would be worth much more.
And then there's Trump's brain - almost priceless. Because it's never been used.
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I'd rather have Spock's Brain [wikipedia.org] or Broca's Brain [wikipedia.org], myself.
Old story (Score:2)
known for a long time - let's see who wins now - $$ or common sense for self-preservation..
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Oh please, you see what we do to the planet and need to ask that question?
Do not assume causation (Score:2, Interesting)
Correlation does not equal causation. Just because all professional NFL players appear to have brain damage, it does not mean that football causes brain damage.
It could also mean that only a brain damaged person would play tackle football.
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It could also mean that only a brain damaged person would play tackle football.
Or that one way of getting through college if you have problems with your brain is through athletics programs.
But most likely, the major bias here is that players with brain damage are the ones who are asked to donate their brains.
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Or that one way of getting through college if you have problems with your brain is through athletics programs.
It seems unlikely that you would find many who turned to athletics late enough for that to make sense actually getting to play on something like a football team. I'm under the assumption that it is well proven that most of the people playing a competitive college-level sport had to begin practicing at a fairly young age. I can't really imagine somebody saying, "Gosh, I'm sure struggling in biology class, I better apply for a football scholarship."
So what is the causal chain to explain why there are so many
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True... but there is other evidence of causation (Score:5, Informative)
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Correlation does not equal causation. Just because all professional NFL players appear to have brain damage, it does not mean that football causes brain damage.
Very true. Maybe all of these football players also had something else in common, which happened to cause the brain damage.
Oh hey, all of the football players had autopsies performed on them - maybe the autopsies caused the brain damage?
Not correlation vs causation (Score:5, Informative)
Correlation does not equal causation. Just because all professional NFL players appear to have brain damage, it does not mean that football causes brain damage.
Snark all you want but in this case this isn't mere correlation. The condition in question Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Key word there is traumatic. You get that by being hit in the head and receiving brain damage as a result of being concussed. It's the exact same condition seen in boxers and MMA fighters and hockey players and rugby players and soldiers who get concussed repeatedly. So yes it absolutely does mean that playing football in the NFL is a cause for many players of serious brain injury. The fact that some players manage to avoid such injury does not mean that a cause/effect relationship is not in play. It simply means that some managed to avoid getting concussed during their playing career. Your claim is similar to saying smoking doesn't cause cancer because not every smoker gets cancer.
Not only that (Score:2)
Not only that. This study may simply indicate that football players tend to develop CTE when they die, which isn't that worrying.
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I doubt there is a single known case of anybody developing CTE when they die. It seems highly unlikely.
You're going to need a brand new wild guess.
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I just assumed most of them got the brain damage from their fathers. That's why they learned to like being hit in the head in first place, after all, and if your team is good you can even earn your father's love for a few hours a year.
And some of us got to play baseball, which has different ethics regarding hitting each other.
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Sure. And lung cancer causes smoking.
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In Soviet Russia, it sure does!
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Degenerative Brain Disease Found... (Score:2)
Of course we had a derogatory saying about drummers as well. My point is: did they check the brains before as well as after? It could just be that damaged brains like football.
it only includes individuals who are exposed to head trauma by participation in football.
Ahhh, so they're trying to link one to the other. Just because you've got it now and are literally in a head-banging sport, it would make sense, but are you absolutely sure they weren't damaged originally? My point sti
Glad we didn't give the Chargers a billion bux (Score:3)
Whatever, I'm glad we aren't on the hook for an expensive ego booster to some dinky dicked millionare.
Correction for primordial brains? (Score:2)
Repeatedly smacking the brain against .... (Score:2)
Now let's look at hockey (Score:2)
Not as violent (not including the fighting) but hits to the boards are quite more common per game that it makes me wonder if this is going to be a concern
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Guess it is already being noticed
http://www.tsn.ca/four-junior-... [www.tsn.ca]
Physics is a bitch. (Score:3)
"People who risk smashing their heads into the floor for a living can have noticeable differences in their brains"
Not really surprising, is it? All the padding in the world doesn't absorb the shock of decelerations like that and your brain is a squidy thing inside a bit hard thing, with a bit of leeway and fluid.
No matter how hard the eggshell, you can still break the yolk inside.
Hmmm (Score:3)
Reminds me of a religious conservative taking the age-at-death of a number of porn stars, taking its average, and comparing that with the average age-of-death in the US, totally oblivious to those pornstars who are still alive and the contribution of their ages-at-death, which are presently unknown.
From an epidemiology perspective, the 99% is, of course, useless. It's like saying that 99% of people who had terminal cancer died of cancer.
On the other hand, (and why the fuck isn't this angle being spelt out more??), you have a reasonable number of brains to look at, from which you can infer ways to recognise where the brain injuries come from, and use this to better understand how often these problems occur in general. For example the questions that should be asked are about what sort of tests can we come up with to detect this sort of brain injury sooner.
Correlation (Score:2)
I wonder how much of "correlation is not causation" is at play here -
do they get the damage through playing, or do people with that specific sort of brain damage are especially apt at Football?
CTE doesn't come from drug use (Score:3)
What about soccer and baseball players?
What about them?
How can we tell drugs were not a cause?
Because CTE has a well known and understood cause - namely getting hit in the head. Getting hit in the head happens a LOT in american football. There is no known case in medical science of anyone getting CTE from drug use.
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Soccer players who frequently use their heads to hit the ball may be at even higher risk than football players. Luckily, heading the ball is not very useful at the teenage level and most of the players are receiving many fewer head strikes than football players. However, some studies have suggested that a minority of players, presumably the most skilled, are already taking a large number of head strikes in high school.
It is worth doing that sort of study, but because of macho societal stereotypes soccer pla
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I don't where all these dill weeds came from, but this isn't some blue-sky study to try to prove anything.
It is a study to gather information about a known harm that is affecting people, that has clear and unquestioned causes, but where the extent of damage is not well known.
Like for example if I neglect to water my tomatoes, and it hasn't rained, and I know there is damage from lack of water, I'm not doing a study to find out why the plants are turning yellow. Instead, I'm looking at how many of them are y
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It is probably just a fruit smoothie by now. Sorry.
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Never. He used the frying pan, he said it hurts less.
Thinking back, I think he was right, it sure hurt him less.