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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."
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!
football
I think you meant to type "handegg".
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
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.
Well, I hope your son never plays soccer beyond the Recreational level. Part of the game is heading the ball, which can travel quite fast. It may be a very light ball compared to other sports, but remember your physics lessons: it doesn't matter what it weighs if it's moving fast enough. Pro soccer players (the linked article is about a pro sport, yeah?) often have brain damage from taking hundreds of shots to the noggin from a ball traveling 60+ mph; and that's the low end of a kick, there are players who can kick for 80+ mph, and a few who claim 90+ mph.
I think you're suffering from a condition called "over-protective parent disorder." ALL sports have risk involved. Some more than others, yes, but the two examples you give are also dangerous. ACL/MCL tears and ankle problems (along with the above example) are major parts of soccer. Swimming? Drowning doesn't seem to be very fun- and yes, it does happen.
Boxing used to be one of the biggest sports in the US, now it's a Vegas sideshow, and the whole "beating people retarded" problem is a pretty big reason why. It's not that people are ignoring boxing's problems, it's that they've already addressed them and the popularity of the sport has plummeted as a result. Most people don't want to box, it's hard to find people willing to fight for a pittance in return for guaranteed brain damage. (Note, by comparison, the popularity of MMA, which does not rely purely on knockouts to win -- you can still give someone brain damage, but it's not literally the only or even the easiest path to victory) Football, on the other hand, is something that a lot of people play starting as young as grade school. I've never seen a grade school boxing league, but I see ads for peewee football signups every year.
heading in soccer also causes brain damage.
Banging one's head against the desk when some idiot posts a convoluted edge case as a rebuttal to a general argument probably also causes brain damage, hypertension, blurred vision and damaged keyboards.
I should probably quit doing it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You don't want to take that trip in the way-back machine to the early years of football. They almost banned the sport at the college level because so many kids were getting killed.
Yet golf had unsurpassed popularity when Tiger Woods took over, and the predominantly white hockey still lags behind the other pro sports like football, basketball, and baseball.
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.
Don't need to, there's already a control group for that - baseball players.
All the same steroid abuse as the NFL, minus the repeated head injuries.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This has nothing to do with statism. Conscientious parents simply aren't going to let their kids go out for football. Who wants to set their kids up for a lifetime of this - particularly if it increases their likelihood of an early death, of suicide, violence off the field or debilitating mental illness?
Why does everything have to be a political argument? This mostly has to do with being humane. If you wouldn't want this to happen to yourself or your loved ones, why would you pay to see it happen to somebody else?
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.
Yes, but it was the rule changes instituted between 1905 and 1909 that brought down the injuries and deaths, not the introduction of modern padding. It used to really be trench warfare with gang tackling, no distance between the players at the start of each play, eye gouging, etc... I will grant that the number of injuries will not decline, but I would argue that the type of injuries will be different and easier to treat.
Why does everything have to be a political argument? This mostly has to do with being humane. If you wouldn't want this to happen to yourself or your loved ones, why would you pay to see it happen to somebody else?
Because for generations school funding had been diverted away from the fundamentals of an enriching education in favor of sanctioned sports. And as the public school system crumble with teachers and professionals alike saying we need to focus on education, our politicians gladly raise our taxes only for the windfall to again be mismanaged into non-priority academics.
Best case is that it was blind loyalty to a stupid game of tribalism, worst case is that it's intentional to keep the cup rattling for more money.
More Twoson than Cupertino
This research may also prove valuable for returning war veterans, who were exposed to concussive explosions repeatedly; which also causes long term brain injury.
Frankly I wish they would dispense with the half-assed warfare of football, and bring back the gladiatorial games. Instead of mock battles over some stupid ball and goal posts, let's just move the game straight to big motherfuckers cutting each other to pieces. We can triple their pay, and they likely won't make it to 40, let alone to the point where they start suffering the ill effects of neurological damage.
I mean, if these guys are going to end up brain damaged messes in the end anyways, why not just short circuit all of that and go for the blood. That's what audiences really want, anyways. I can just see Hank Williams Jr. shouting "It's time for Monday Night Slaughterhouse!"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
We can only hope. Football is now scientifically proven to be more dangerous than marijuana. It's time to start sending football players to jail.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
Hang gliding, bungi jumping, sky diving, piloting private planes, piano-lifting, writing bad checks, Class B fireworks, running with scissors - what is it exactly that you want to do that our oppressive statist jack-booted government is preventing you from doing?
Pretty sure he's talking about teh marijuana.
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 don't think there's as much "sport" in a gladitorial game as compared to our popular sporting events. If you're dealing lethal blows to one another, it takes only a momentary slip for a prime athlete to fall and high-level competition is diminished as a result of this loss.
In Boxing and MMA, there are long slugging matches, but sometimes you have one clean shot that ends the match in the first round. I'm aware that vast amounts of training had gone into living up events into that one clean shot, but it makes for a spectator event that is harder to enjoy because the battle isn't played out for others to watch.
It'll be harder to get invested in a gladiator if they only last for a couple rounds before an accidental slip ends their career.