Slashdot Mirror
Brain Disease Found In NFL Players
SternisheFan sends this excerpt from ABC:
"On the heels of the latest NFL suicide, researchers announced today that 34 NFL players whose brains were studied suffered from CTE, a degenerative brain disease brought on by repeated hits to the head that results in confusion, depression and, eventually, dementia. The study was released just days after the murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher. It's not yet known what triggered Belcher's action, but they mirror other NFL players who have committed suicide. Researchers at Boston University's Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy published the largest case series study of CTE to date (abstract), according to the center. Of the 85 brains donated by the families of deceased veterans and athletes with histories of repeated head trauma, they found CTE in 68 of them. Of those, 34 were professional football players, nine others played college football and six played only high school football. Of the 35 professional football players' brains donated, only one had no evidence of the disease, according to the study."
It's a good thing we protect our youth from conditions like this.
Do we really need a study to show that repeated hits to the head result in confusion, depression and dementia? If so, I'd like to sign up to be the guy on the research team that whacks this researcher on the head repeatedly so he can discover the effects.
I just want to help. Really I do.
Sent from my ENIAC
'cus it's sooooo much better than Football!
*sunglasses*
Going to be interesting to see if Belcher's brain had this disease, seeing as it was spread all over the parking lot.
At least his girlfriend was an actual female not his right-hand as is the case for the Slashdot crowd. That or sometimes mommy steps in to give little Billy a handjob when his fingers get too encrusted with Cheetos dust.
I would have thought that the 1-line heading would be the start & end to this article, with anything else being redundant...? :-/
This has been studied time and time again.
Any sport that involves any repeated impact to the head - whether football, boxing or soccer will result in brain injury.
I plraled futbawl sence I wurz 5. It made my dad happy, and me happer. I never get suicidal, and I got hit in ther head hunnreds of times in those years. Preas don't look at my record and see my addiction to oxys and wife beating as any evidence to suppurt ur stupid claims either.
Silence is a state of mime.
Was there ever a chance that getting trauma to the head would lead to super scientists or some other type of improvement? American football. The "sport" where you get brain damage from all that kicking the ball with your feet.
'Nuff said.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I do not know a single intelligent person who likes
watching football.
It is idiotic barbaric violent crap.
And you have to be a sick fuck to even think it is cool
to watch people beat the hell out of each other during the game.
Of course it fits right in with the old Roman scheme of "bread and circuses"
which was meant to keep the populace in a satisfied and compliant state.
Of course if you are not an idiot that alone will offend you.
Suicide is not evidence that someone has brain damage or is insane or anything like that. It is often a brave and highly rational act. When I hear of a suicide I look for what it was in their environment that caused it. Not for what was wrong in their head. It is blaming the victim that is the real problem. Japanese society has a healthy view of suicide.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT!
Sucks that so many folks are dying, though.
"a degenerative brain disease brought on by repeated hits to the head that results in confusion, depression and, eventually, dementia." Windows Vista users suffered from a similar condition.
To satisfy our social self destructive desires.
There's always been some sacrificial element in society, whether it be celebrity, sport or literal sacrifices in less 'civilized' days. The way I see it we're lying to ourselves if we don't accept the pornography of sport, the search for new talent to seduce with fame and throw away as soon as their purpose starts to fade. How is this any different from celebrity or young women in fashion? This research is important and should bring to light an important issue in society we can't seem to live without, but how will 'making the game safer' truly improve the lives of the players while satisfying our desires as spectators? These are the questions we have to ask when we finally take a look and realize just how damaging our practice of sacrificing youth is, be it football, olympic athletes, eenage fashion models, hollywood etc. How do we replace the desire to watch others suffer? Don't dare ever question most sports fans, their only happiness is derived from obscuring the illusion of material filth around them with the constant consumption of sport.
Tom Payne wrote a decent book "Fame: What the Classics Tell us About Our Cult of Celebrity", that touches on the sacrifice aspect of celebrity.
Get my real time strategic sports viewing kicks from watching professional Starcraft now, knowing that the worst injuries being inflicted on the players is maybe a case of CTS, and only if they aren't careful about posture.
hand egg as it should be called would be better of if they removed the paddings and helmets ,
as reference there has been more deaths in boxing due to padded gloves then there was before when they used to box without ,
its just a false sence of safety
I mean look at the size of these guys today. Even the wide receivers are huge. Bigger, stronger, faster...all to feed our insatiable appetite for violence disguised as sport. In hockey it's the fights. In nascar it's the crashes. In football it's the big hit. Add to that the enormous sums of money available to the stars of these sports and it's no wonder they will do whatever is necessary to win. All to the delight of the fat, shirtless drunk spewing profanities on every play.
The athletes are simply too big and strong. Could you imagine Fran Tarkenton playing in today's NFL? He would get killed. The equipment cannot protect them adequately. The NFL is stuck between giving the fans what they want on the one hand and getting sued on the other hand by crippled ex players. Cutting back on the head shots is a good start but how much can you really do to prevent permanent injury?
What we need to remember here is as the brains studied were from samples taken posthumously. Chances are they played 20-30 years ago, back when they'd take each other's heads off without so much as a flag being thrown. What I'd like to know is the incidence in brain disease with the newer, kinder, gentler NFL we see today, with the next generation collision helmets, brain injury prevention rules, etc.
Belcher killed his girlfriend, that was the motivation for his suicide, either from the grief over what he'd done or the realization he'd be going to prison for a long, long time. Also, he'd been in the league a much shorter time than many of the other notable suicides, who often killed themselves after retirement. Belcher was just in his third season.
If he was suffering from a brain disorder from too many hits, it had clearly affected him in a much different manner than any of the others. Has there ever been another murder/suicide or some other violent act attributed to a football player suffering from this disorder?
"Handegg" (I refuse to call anything but Association Football "football") needs to be banned and removed from play at school level. Anything less is irresponsible.
Only idiot fans of that violent, harmful sports would dare say anything else.
It's a good thing we protect our youth from conditions like this.
I see your sarcasm and raise you an unfortunate reality. I grew up on the NFL, like many kids did in the 70s and 80s, as our parents and their friends gathered, drank and were merry. I never made a mental connection to football like I did with, say, Star Trek. I didn't ever seek it out, but rather it became background noise and part-reason to gather with friends... and drink. Perhaps a fortunate side-effect of the USA becoming more aware of brain injury could be the replacement of humans with robotic players. Yeah, I know we're nowhere close to stuff like Real Steel, but wouldn't it be kind of cool to see bots being beat to crap and the pieces swept off after? By little robots, nonetheless.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Isn't this a no-brainer?
Sports builds character. How could it be so bad? These brain damaged players are just slackers. Next your gonna say that vaccinations don't cause autism and Jesus didn't ride dinosaurs.
Please respond using a car analogy so I can understand WTF you are saying.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
No surprise.
If you've ever had the displeasure of meeting a football player, "brain damage" would be least of your worries.
Then no one will be able to get it.
We all pay a price for monetizing our natural talents and abilities. The NFL guys suffer from head bashing. The brilliant programmers often suffer burn-out from death marches. I've seen both types in their old age and they are both badly damaged.
While some of us are not so big, quick and athletic as to get sucked into the Big Sportz Machine (TM), it is simplistic to presume such a career is less healthy than another.
yes folks it was discovered while a giant sized NFL guy was trying to text his mom....shame really...we discover that head banging for real just isnt what its CRACKED up to be....
So what is the cure you all say....why ILessStupidicus.runticus gene....These small weak eyed humans needing glasses are the key to salvation of said big people ....
Just to make sure that you cant get more stupid then you already are.
LOL
What's crazy is that women still chase after alpha male guys - and in fact - guys exactly like these - instead of intelligent geeks...
Go figure?
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
So what is the pathogen?
Maybe we should all just start playing sarcastaball. That will be much safer.
This guy was the definition of team player.
This is insightful. And a very sad insight as well.
He intentionally sacrificed his life so maybe other current and future players would not have to suffer from the same things he has suffered from.
Perhaps the reverse is true.
First they get brain damage, and then they start playing football.
My first reaction: "Yeah, that makes sense. Gotta take some kind of brain disease to make you wanna play American Football".
It's a good thing they were Jocks then. Nothing of value was lost as they didn't exactly fall from a higher level
Also, brain disease.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2778
Some obvious solutions that won't be discussed to the "big guys hitting each others heads too hard"
1) Technology. Now only played above 5000 meters. No idea what Florida is going to do here. Too little O2 to smash each others heads.
2) Weight limits. 400 pounds to the head is probably worse than 175. Fine get all bulked up but no one plays over 175 pounds.
3) Socially inappropriate. The cheerleaders play too. In the 75 IQ backwoods "hittin a hot girl on the head" is even less cool than it is in the city. I suppose this is going to give a whole new meaning to "touch football". You could probably doctor the rules a bit such that all male and all female teams would be competitive.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Where is the study explaining what sort of brain disease they have that leads them to watching NFL games?
Any geek in high school could tell you this.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Throw a few accelerometers into the player's helmets/equipment and start getting some real-time information on these guys. Considering how much of an investment these players may represent you would think that all interested parties would want to know more about this issue.
Or maybe it opens doors to the truth that may threaten the financial viability of this sport.
...Costas that the gun, in fact, wasn't the murderer. And that it was actually football that lead to these two deaths. The gun was just the instrument.
I'm not so sure I agree that polygyny is rare.
http://www.polygamystop.org/history.html
"An estimated over three billion people around the world today still believe in polygamy."
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"with no chance of any reasonable quality of life "
absolutes are easy.
what if there is a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of a cure for a debilitating disease to be found in the individuals lifetime.
who decides what is/counts as a reasonable quality?
my personal? the ability or inability wipe your own ass.....
trust me, if I get to where I can't wipe my butt, and it's highly unlikely that that'll change back anytime soon?
please go ahead and push me off the roof....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I don't despise football or other sports which rely heavily on the physics of (human) bodies colliding, but I do think that we should have teams of robots out there instead. The real competition would then be in advancing technology instead of retarding bigger meat-sacks faster. Such competition sort of parallels the way in which car racing improves the science of automobiles, and leads to innovations like better fuel efficiency or more powerful engines, or low profile tires; Some of which wind up in common folks' vehicles... Though, it's moronic to use the low-profile tires on street cars: They're designed to be used on very smooth roads and make room for huge brake pads. Thus, street cars with tiny little brakes in their low profile wheels look ridiculous to me, esp. when your wheel (not just tire) is destroyed by a golf ball sized rock -- which those cheap wheels with more tire sidewall cope with just fine.
Where was I? Oh yes, you see, it's far too expensive to support our fragile bodies in long term space journeys. The answer is to create robotic bodies and climb another rung on the evolutionary ladder. Oh stop it, of course there'd still be romance, the bodies can look "sexy" if you like, and electronic orgasms on demand are already possible for humans. Stem cell research means we could produce egg and sperm from parent's tissue samples, then make embryos, and hook them into their robot bodies as they grow allowing not just more easy transition to sturdier bodies, but also new senses to be connected -- Thermal & x-ray vision for example, or telepathy (WIFI).
I'd much rather my city spend hundreds of millions of dollars to improve robotics, and eventually allow our minds to escape these vestigial bodies and colonize the stars (thus, ensuring some of our eggs are off planet when the next Asteroid strikes this basket) than to incentivize young people to destroy their brains with false hopes of becoming a brain-damaged millionaire sports star. I mean, screw their bodies, but we can't replace the brains.... yet.
In the U.S. having a medical condition presented in a mere 3% of a population is considered medically significant and mitigation factors are set in place if the condition exceeds 3%. We just read a study where 50% had a condition. That is an order of magnitude above what should be tolerated medically speaking. That's more than the number of health defects caused by smoking cigarettes! I hope a wider study lowers the number, but if it doesn't... if we don't put up with cigarettes being bad for health, how can we justify allowing for a game that is bad for our health?
Now we have scientific proof, of something we've known forever. Footballer players are retarded.
These crybabies just need to follow the advice of all coaches since the beginning of time. Just walk it off, you sissies!
Sure, given football's current popularity, no one is going to be writing its epitaph any time soon. But in the long run, I think that the conclusive proof that modern tackle football causes brain damage is going to be a decisive factor and will either cause the game to change beyond recognition or be ejected from the pantheon of American sports.
There is precedent for this. Professional boxing used to be an extremely popular sport. Today it is little more than a tawdry sideshow, and one of the reasons for its decline in popularity is that everyone knows how terrible a toll it takes on the participants. Few children want to be professional boxers when they grow up, because even kids know that boxers get serious brain damage and/or die young.
The new knowledge of football's dangers will not affect current NFL players, who are invested in their careers, nor will it affect most current players in high school or college, who have already placed a great deal of time, effort, and self-image into the sport. But football is going to have a pipeline problem in the next generation. Middle-class parents will increasingly ban their sons from playing tackle football in high school. Indeed, many high schools may shut down their football programs entirely due to lawsuits or the fear thereof. It's going to be difficult to justify exposing underage kids to activity that is known to cause brain injury even if all the rules are followed. Where is the next generation of NFL players going to come from? Sure, they might be able to get enough people from poorer communities (or those with really diehard fans) to keep the game going, but the inevitable result is that football will move from the core of American life to the margins unless the game is substantially altered.
Football is in itself a brain disease. If you can get a person so confused that they think that playing football is fun that is proof of a pre-existing insanity. Then you have to admire the marketing teams that can get the public so mind scrambled that they are willing to pay big money to sit in crowded, uncomfortable, stadiums and fork over large sums of money to watch the apes bash each other on the field. For those that pay big bucks to watch football in their own home large amounts of anesthesia in a tribal mixture called beer are required so that one can be enough of a dullard to enjoy the entire game. It being somewhat obvious that the viewers must not have working brain cells or they would never watch such a dumb sport.
Many problems solved.
Perhaps a fortunate side-effect of the USA becoming more aware of brain injury could be the replacement of humans with robotic players. Yeah, I know we're nowhere close to stuff like Real Steel, but wouldn't it be kind of cool to see bots being beat to crap and the pieces swept off after? By little robots, nonetheless.
Came here for this--Slashdot should be rejoicing, this can only hasten the day that many of us have high-paying jobs designing, building, and programming football-playing robots!
"The study was released just days after the murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher."
You stupid fucks don't think it's necessary to mention the name of the poor girl he killed? Fuck you, slashdot.
Here's a good article on violence in the NFL by Bill Simmons.
Football will change to adapt, given this century alone football has changed dramatically, someone from 1920 wouldn't recognize the modern sport at all.
The sport of boxing is hitting people until they fall down. There isn't much that can be changed in that sport.
The sport of football is getting a ball onto a certain part of a field, there is a lot that can be changed in that sport and still resemble the current sport enough to retain fan interest.
CONSTANT lurker, but rarely post. I guess I rarely feel like I can offer something that hasn't already been well articulated. But this is one of those discussions where two of my passions collide (nerdery and football), so I'll give it a stab...
As a new parent, football has been on my mind quite a bit lately thanks to news such as this study. I grew up in a household where football was pretty much the religion. It was a large bond between my dad and I from when I very young, so it's probably not surprising that at the age of ten I jumped at the first opportunity to put on the pads and see what I could do.
It was a pretty big shock! Even at ten years old, the violence of the game caught me off guard, and my schoolyard prowess just didn't translate well. I pretty much got the crap beaten out of me. My second year playing, though, something clicked in me. I finally got it. In order to enjoy playing football, you have to embrace the violence. And embrace it I did. As the smallest kid on just about every team I played on, I enjoyed nothing more than knocking down somebody twice my size.
I've never been into my skull with a microscope, but there's no outward evidence that any of this early playing took a physical toll on me. I started high school ball with body in perfect working order and grades at the top of my class. And off the football field I was still not only a total nerd, but a pretty nice guy!... Once up to high school, though, the physics of things change. I was still small, but now the bigger kids were starting to catch up in speed. It's at this age that REAL collisions start to occur. (It always confuses me when parents tell me that they're not going to let their kids play football until high school because it's too dangerous. I always respond with, "Are you kidding!? It doesn't get dangerous until high school!") I was still the smallest guy on the team, but loved nothing more than sticking my nose in it, so I ended up playing positions that nobody my size had any business playing. And my body suffered horribly.
I graduated from high school having torn or pulled pretty much every muscle in my body, with two badly dislocated shoulders, a hip pointer, torn wrist tendons (bother me to this day), and having suffered through four knee surgeries (three on one knee and one on the other). I took one hit to the head that left me seeing stars, several other hits where the split second between impact with the opponent and impact with the ground completely disappeared, and one hit that was so bad it demolished my helmet (facemask torn from the shell and cheek pads scattered on the ground). After all of those hits, while playing 90% of positions on the field over the course of eight seasons of play--linebacker and fullback my senior year in high school, no less--I cannot see ANY signs of mental deficiencies as a result. I tutored fellow students in calculus and physics while still in high school, graduated with a nearly perfect academic record, went off to college, am upbeat and happy (as far as having two babies in the house allows...), and have always been extremely non-violent outside of a football field (the picture of me abusing my wife would be laughable if you knew me).
Which brings me to my son. As a rational human being, how do I reconcile the situation described above with all of the recent reports by scientists studying the long term impacts of playing football? How do I tell my son he can't play football when I still regard it as the most rewarding hobby I've ever had? And so he can, what, sit on his ass all day playing video games instead? Take up an individual sport that lacks any aspect of teamwork, camaraderie, or strategy? (Because the same damage is being found in hockey players, soccer players, etc. Few team sports are in the clear.)
It's also hard for me to justify keeping my son out of football when I still don't regret my own time playing the game. Football gets a bad rap as a game for morons, but I haven't played
Unless it turns into touch football, or they discover a way to cure concussions, I can't see how it survives. If you have the head of professional athlete repeatedly coming to a sudden stop you're going to have concussions, you can't make a helmet that prevents that. Plus I think football has a serious risk of a sudden collapse, boxing only needs a couple boxers and a ref, a football game needs two full teams, once the idea of head injuries starts pervading the public high school teams could collapse in a handful of years, possibly faster than the sport can adapt. It will be a very tricky transition when people start playing touch people but still want to watch tackle, if the big leagues don't transition properly the whole system might collapse and some other sport like soccer might take up the slack.
Then again, if you could somehow buy stocks in touch football it might be a hell of an investment.
Hockey has a similar (though less severe problem), but I think the difference is that hitting is a lot less integral to hockey than football and a smooth transition from full contact to none is possible.
I stole this Sig