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NIH Neuroscientists: Junior Seau Had Brain Disease Caused By Hits To the Head
McGruber writes "ABC News/ESPN broke the story that a team of scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) analyzed the brain tissue of renowned NFL linebacker Junior Seau and have concluded that the football player suffered a debilitating brain disease likely caused by two decades worth of hits to the head. From the article: 'In May 2012, Seau, 43 — football's monster in the middle, a perennial all-star and defensive icon in the 1990s whose passionate hits made him a dominant figure in the NFL — shot himself in the chest at his home in Oceanside, Calif., leaving behind four children and many unanswered questions.'
As Slashdot earlier reported, more than 30 NFL players have in recent years been diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition once known as 'punch drunk' because it affected boxers who had taken multiple blows to the head."
Now the football geeks are going to get a taste of statism as their sport gets outlawed in civil courts.
Join the club, fuckers.
There exist sensors that can be placed into the helment and detect hits that are potentially damaging. The cost is actually nominal. The NFL should make these mandatory.
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/healthscience/2011/January/Helmet-Device-Could-Help-in-Concussion-Detection/
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
It's a Tradition!
Multiple hits cause chronic damage. That's why I kept my son out of hockey, and why I'll keep him out of football as well. Soccer and swimming seem relatively safe. Being Canadian, a lot of people rag on anyone who says that hockey is dangerous for hits (like that twit Don Cherry) but it's just obvious.
Considering how important our brains are to geeks, I bet the rate of CTE is much lower in our group.
a condition once known as 'punch drunk' because it affected boxers who had taken multiple blows to the head
As opposed to the boxers that never get hit in the head in their entire career? The entire sport is giving each other concussions and you hear more complaints about the NFL than boxing these days. I think the loudest whiners are just soccer fans and/or people who don't like football.
In fine Slashdot tradition, let's hear from 52 people telling us that correlation does not imply causation and that only people with brain trauma or predisposed to it play football.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
And in all these cases an informed population chooses to engage in harmful activity. In the case of football, families clamor to put their small children in harms way, knowing, or at least should know as the information is out there for all to see, that treatment of injuries that are effective in mature athletes are much more difficult and expensive in immature athletes, often with a worse prognosis. Adults clamor for the pay that football gives them, then the public criticizes teams for using these athletes to do what they are paid to do.
So this is no surprise, and for the most part I suspect it will not change anything. People who need to believe will say that helmets are better, that athletes are better taken care of, that this is a one time thing. And then kids will be put out on the field, hit, and like type 2 diabetes which had been almost non existant in children, we will likely see symptoms of the increased rate of brain injury.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Interesting that he didn't shoot himself in the head. I wonder if that was a calculated move so that scientists could examine his brain to find the cause of his debilitating brain injuries?
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
What is surprising, is that this is surprising.
Murder, suicide and general crime rates are higher in the NFL than those outside the NFL. The NFL must be banned. If it would have saved this one life it would have been worth it.
There exist sensors that can be placed into the helment and detect hits that are potentially damaging.
If those are triggered then the damage is already done. More to the point if you are in a sport where that sort of thing is necessary, perhaps playing that sport isn't such a good idea. I have nothing particularly against american style football as a sport (heck I've taken boxing lessons) but if we're causing that much damage then maybe we should reconsider our entertainment choices.
The entire sport is giving each other concussions and you hear more complaints about the NFL than boxing these days
Not many people are in the sport of boxing. A few thousand nationwide maybe. Football on the other hand is wildly popular with participation counts likely in the millions. While your point is valid, we can prevent a lot more injuries by worrying about football.
Eliminating the "protective" equipment worn by the players would massively decrease the quantity of brain injuries. Players hit at speed and tackle head-up and in front of the runner (vs the rugby style) because from Pop Warner on they are "up-armored" like a Hummer in Jalalabad. Everything about how you are taught to hit in football (everything I was taught through high school anyway) becomes impractical when you take away shoulder pads and the facemask, especially at the higher speeds in college and the pros. Go to the soft helmet and no shoulder pads and the blood will fly but the concussions will drop dramatically. Since we have made good strides in treating lacerations and broken bones but can't fix brain injuries, I would vote for a trip in the way-back machine to early years of football.
Too bad the family didn't have doctors study what years of (alleged) steroid abuse did to him. Easier to point the finger at someone else, I suppose.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
This is one of the dumber comments modded up I've seen in a while. You are adding extra layers of protection from your brain and impact.
Mind Games
New on the Internet: a community of people who believe the government is beaming voices into their minds. They may be crazy, but the Pentagon has pursued a weapon that can do just that.
By Sharon Weinberger
Sunday, January 14, 2007
IF HARLAN GIRARD IS CRAZY, HE DOESN'T ACT THE PART. He is standing just where he said he would be, below the Philadelphia train station's World War II memorial -- a soaring statue of a winged angel embracing a fallen combatant, as if lifting him to heaven. Girard is wearing pressed khaki pants, expensive-looking leather loafers and a crisp blue button-down. He looks like a local businessman dressed for a casual Friday -- a local businessman with a wickedly dark sense of humor, which had become apparent when he said to look for him beneath "the angel sodomizing a dead soldier." At 70, he appears robust and healthy -- not the slightest bit disheveled or unusual-looking. He is also carrying a bag.
Girard's description of himself is matter-of-fact, until he explains what's in the bag: documents he believes prove that the government is attempting to control his mind. He carries that black, weathered bag everywhere he goes. "Every time I go out, I'm prepared to come home and find everything is stolen," he says.
The bag aside, Girard appears intelligent and coherent. At a table in front of Dunkin' Donuts inside the train station, Girard opens the bag and pulls out a thick stack of documents, carefully labeled and sorted with yellow sticky notes bearing neat block print. The documents are an authentic-looking mix of news stories, articles culled from military journals and even some declassified national security documents that do seem to show that the U.S. government has attempted to develop weapons that send voices into people's heads.
"It's undeniable that the technology exists," Girard says, "but if you go to the police and say, 'I'm hearing voices,' they're going to lock you up for psychiatric evaluation."
The thing that's missing from his bag -- the lack of which makes it hard to prove he isn't crazy -- is even a single document that would buttress the implausible notion that the government is currently targeting a large group of American citizens with mind-control technology. The only direct evidence for that, Girard admits, lies with alleged victims such as himself.
And of those, there are many.
IT'S 9:01 P.M. WHEN THE FIRST PERSON SPEAKS during the Saturday conference call.
Unsure whether anyone else is on the line yet, the female caller throws out the first question: "You got gang stalking or V2K?" she asks no one in particular.
There's a short, uncomfortable pause.
"V2K, really bad. 24-7," a man replies.
"Gang stalking," another woman says.
"Oh, yeah, join the club," yet another man replies.
The members of this confessional "club" are not your usual victims. This isn't a group for alcoholics, drug addicts or survivors of childhood abuse; the people connecting on the call are self-described victims of mind control -- people who believe they have been targeted by a secret government program that tracks them around the clock, using technology to probe and control their minds.
The callers frequently refer to themselves as TIs, which is short for Targeted Individuals, and talk about V2K -- the official military abbreviation stands for "voice to skull" and denotes weapons that beam voices or sounds into the head. In their esoteric lexicon, "gang stalking" refers to the belief that they are being followed and harassed: by neighbors, strangers or colleagues who are agents for the government.
A few more "hellos" are exchanged, interrupted by beeps signaling late arrivals: Bill from Columbus, Barbara from Philadelphia, Jim from California and a dozen or so others.
Derrick Robinson, the conference call moderator, calls order.
"It's five after 9," says Robinson, with the sweetly reasonable intonation of a late-night radio host. "Maybe we should go ahead and start."
THE
How is that tech news?
It's inevitable that the game of 'football' is going to have to drastically change its rules to take away the traumatic brain injuries. It will start with high school football, then college, then the NFL. What school district or college can afford lawsuits over that? Maybe it will have to become flag football or, more likely, some sort of hybrid with limited blocking and tackling. Whatever results, though, the Football 2.0 rules will end the present situation where brain injuries are a certainty.
Guys like Marshall Faulk, a running back who took a ton of hits, never had a concussion.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I'm still skeptical about a purely head trauma cause for football CTE problems. Pro football has been around a long time and guys have been getting concussed for decades. There seems to be a recent pickup in serious problems.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
So when we were cave tree men we probably used to bash each other in the head on a daily basis but we didn't worry about it too much as we rarely lived past 30yrs. In an activity which involves alot of bashing there is no way to protect the brain except maybe to limit the frequency and allow for more than proper recovery for the noticeable incidents. So for the NFL, make it a once a month sport with 3 weeks off after every game ...
And more experimentally Pickle the head bones to make them softer?
Hello Cruel World
At least we're worrying about something important like the fate of multimillionaires that played a little too rough and not wasting our time on things like poverty, cancer, the failing economy...
What we need to do is remove the skull of football players and put more padding around the brain. There would be a new permanent skull-helmet placed over the brain-padding to protect from cuts and sharp edges. I'm sure all the football players will look rather strange with giant heads, but we would get used to it after a short while. On the plus side for the players, they will be very easy to recognize out in public, so their fame will go up even more.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Has increased the speed and force of hits in today's game. When I played highschool football fields were not always in the greatest shape. In college they were much better and artificial turf offered even better traction.
Slow the players down might be the best answer, besides I miss those old sloppy games on fields with terrible drainage.
From wikipedia (which have links to the relevant sources):
From its earliest days as a mob game, football was a violent sport. The 1894 Harvard-Yale game, known as the "Hampden Park Blood Bath", resulted in crippling injuries for four players; the contest was suspended until 1897. The annual Army-Navy game was suspended from 1894 to 1898 for similar reasons. One of the major problems was the popularity of mass-formations like the flying wedge, in which a large number of offensive players charged as a unit against a similarly arranged defense. The resultant collisions often led to serious injuries and sometimes even death.
Interestingly while the bloody Harvard-Yale game took place in 1894, the first use of a football helmet is attributed to George "Rose" Barclay. Who in 1896 wore straps and ear pieces to protect his ears. The late 1910's marks the first use of hardened leather on to of the head to deflect blows to the top of the head. Read some interesting stuff here.
It seems that the injuries and deaths were in the sport PRIOR to the introduction of helmets and padding. It took rule changes in 1905-1906 to make the game "safer", and it looks like we are due more rule changes to mitigate the problems we are discovering today.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
It can't both be "more common" and not "happen as often".
Coal miners get black lung, programmers get carpal tunnel, police officers get shot, firefighters run into burning buildings, truck drivers get in accidents. Want to know the one difference between that group of people that are subject to long term debilitating disease? We don't piss away millions of dollars and then complain we can't afford health care, because we didn't have millions of dollars to begin with. It is a risk of the job that you get paid insane amounts of money for, suck it up and quit wasting all your fucking money. I am a huge football fan but these guys are seriously the biggest crybaby pussies in the world.
If they don't wear helmets, they aren't about to go headfirst into tackling as much. The Helmets are offering fake protection. Sure, short term protection, but nothing long term.
Or figure how to make helmets that absorb all the impact.
Be seeing you...
Pff...next week science will say it's good for us!
I haven't had my fill of knocks to the head yet; everything in moderation, and it won't kill you. Can even abstain for a while, and then build-up to a running headbutt on a wall, and you'll be fine!
First, let me say that I believe that getting paid to get hit in the head is a crazy career choice given two facts:
1. Unlike most parts of your body, you cannot generally pay a doctor to repair your brain after you injure it.
2. Human crash test dummies like Muhammad Ali have already demonstrated that the idea is bad if you value brains over fame.
Having said that, however, Junior Seau was one of those few famous football players who (last I heard anyway) had never had a documented concussion. He was, by all counts, a great player and a good human being ...... but that plus an agenda simply does not equal good science. We need lots of brain studies of football players (enough to eliminate variables like ethnicity, body type, family histories, non-football injuries, etc) which then show the differences between those who've been hit in the head and those who have not.
It does not matter that I believe there is a link, or that anybody else believes there is a link, ....... real solid science is what matters and this look at one unfortunate man's brain just aint that
Totally nude football.
Designed by a guy that has spent a lifetime protecting humans in 200+mph collisions. Equipment contracts by various leagues & schools could slow its adoption though.
http://www.manufacturing.net/news/2012/09/race-helmet-designer-turns-eye-to-football-safety
I'm pretty much in the "eliminate helmets" camp, but also think that eliminating substitution, or requiring, say, 10 plays from scrimmage before a player can leave the field would help too. Right now, many players are on the field for one play and they know they'll be subbed out for the next play (different yards to first down or whatever), so they go all-out no matter what.
If players had to control themselves so they could function for 10 straight plays, they might throttle back a bit. Plus it would force them to learn offense and defense, which I think would be a lot more interesting.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I undestand those that claim that these guys assume this risks for good amount of money like tose that work in the army. But this isnt such a neccesary risk. What about developing better hemets. They can bare breaking bones, but damaging your brain is something else. I cant belive that they cant develop less fashionable and lightweight protections and more hitech and less appealing head protections. For funding, research and peer finding please refer to the non-profit Aging Portfolio.