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Football Concussion Lawsuits Start To Hit High Schools
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."
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.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Those brain cells are gone for good -- and we're talking about minors who are acting under the care of an adult in authority.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
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.
> 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.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
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.
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.
Then don't play football.
Avoidable brain damage is stupid. Avoidable mechanical brain damage twice so.
All downside. No upside.
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!
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.
"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.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
A little dose of reality: Colleges do FAR more to recruit and court sports talent than academic talent.
My niece has some talent with soccer and decent grades. She was offered full rides at a lot of schools (tuition and living expense). She was offered special dorms, special tutoring, super nice facilities reserved for sports people. The coaches flew her out to their schools for sales pitches and gave her the red-carpet treatment, expensive dinners, etc.
Me with my paltry top-1/2 percent test scores, straight A's in hard classes won with hard work, and extracurriculars, (but NOT outstanding in sports)? No heavy recruitment, no full free rides offered, though I too got offered some priority dorm access and some money.
It dismays me how much more *kicking a ball* is worth to colleges than my big brain and hard academic work was!
And no, you can't just "study harder". Innate talent is NOT distributed equally and people who studied and worked harder than I achieved less simply because they weren't lucky enough to be born with a first class brain as I was. And there is NO way I could physically compete with the typical football player without heavy chemical enhancement no matter how hard I tried. So much for *choice*. You must play the cards you are dealt!