League of Denial - How the NFL hid the link to brain injuries.

remydat

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I know we have discussed this before and I have frequently heard people defend the NFL by saying it was obvious that playing football would lead to brain injuries but the below article about a new book pretty much dispels the notion that this information was obvious. The NFL according to the allegations basically launched a campaign trying to cover up this link going so far to have its researchers and doctors to claim in supposedly scientific journals that Concussions were minor injuries; multiple concussions did not increase the risk of further injury; and football did not cause brain damage. "Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis,"

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_...r-two-decades-deny-football-link-brain-damage

The National Football League conducted a two-decade campaign to deny a growing body of scientific research that showed a link between playing football and brain damage, according to a new book co-authored by a pair of ESPN investigative reporters.

The book, "League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth," reports that the NFL used its power and resources to discredit independent scientists and their work; that the league cited research data that minimized the dangers of concussions while emphasizing the league's own flawed research; and that league executives employed an aggressive public relations strategy designed to keep the public unaware of what league executives really knew about the effects of playing the game. ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated published book excerpts on Wednesday morning.

HEAD-ON COLLISION

An excerpt from "League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth," appears in the Oct. 14 editions of ESPN The Magazine, which is available on newsstands Friday. The excerpt

The NFL's whitewash of the debilitating neurological effects of playing football suffered by players began under former commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who left office in 2006, but continued under his successor, the current commissioner Roger Goodell, according to the book written by ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru.

The book, which will be released Tuesday by Crown Archetype, compares the NFL's two decades of actions on health and safety to that of Big Tobacco -- the group of cigarette-making corporations whose executives for years covered up the fact that their products contained dangerous, addictive, potentially deadly and cancer-causing chemicals.

"There are many differences," the Fainaru brothers write in "League of Denial," "but one is that football's health crisis featured not millions of anonymous victims but very public figures whose grotesque demises seemed almost impossible to reconcile with their personas."

NFL executives declined to cooperate with the authors on the book. On Wednesday morning, league spokesman Greg Aiello declined to comment.

Among the major findings in "League of Denial," which the Fainarus spent more than a year researching and writing:

• Two original members of a concussion committee established by Tagliabue disavowed the committee's major findings, including the NFL's assertion that concussions were minor injuries that never led to long-term brain injury.

• As far back as 1999, the NFL's retirement board paid more than $2 million in disability payments to former players after concluding football gave them brain damage. But it would be nearly a decade before league executives would publicly acknowledge a link.

• Beginning in 2000, some of the country's top neuroscientists warned the NFL that football led to higher rates of depression, memory loss, dementia and brain damage.

• The league in 2005 tried unsuccessfully to have medical journals retract the published work of several independent concussion researchers.

• Independent researchers directly warned Goodell about the connection between football and brain damage in 2007, but the commissioner waited nearly three years to acknowledge the link and to dismantle the league's discredited concussion committee. In 2009, two other independent researchers delivered still more evidence that football caused brain damage during a private meeting at the NFL's Park Avenue headquarters. Yet the league committee's co-chairman, Dr. Ira Casson, mocked and challenged the researchers so aggressively that he offended others who were present, including a Columbia University suicide expert and a U.S. Army colonel who directed the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.

• As the crisis escalated, the NFL tried desperately to regain control of the issue and contain damage to its brand. Before an October 2009 hearing on football and brain injuries conducted by the House Judiciary Committee, the NFL lobbied successfully to prevent Goodell from testifying on the same panel as the father of a high school quarterback who had died after sustaining a concussion.

• Dr. Ann McKee, the leading expert on football and brain damage, told the authors that she believes the incidences of neurodegenerative disease among NFL players will prove to be "shockingly high" and that "most NFL players are going to get this. It's just a question of degree." Since 2005, when the disease was first diagnosed in deceased NFL players, McKee has studied 54 brains harvested from deceased NFL players. All but two had CTE. "I'm really wondering where this stops," she told the Fainarus. "I'm really wondering if every single football player doesn't have this.".

The health of former players and the league's previous scientific exploration formed the basis of a lawsuit filed against the NFL by more than 4,500 ex-players. The players charged that the league's Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee conducted fraudulent research to hide the connection between football and brain damage. On Aug. 29, the NFL and the former players settled the lawsuit for $765 million.

One of the most significant findings in the book, for which the authors say they conducted more than 200 interviews and reviewed thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents, traces how the league handled research under Tagliabue's guidance.

In 1994, Tagliabue established the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee to act as the league's concussions investigatory committee. According to the book, the committee published its controversial research in a medical journal, "Neurosurgery," that was edited by a consultant to the New York Giants. The Fainarus write that the consultant, USC neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Apuzzo, was a "sports guy wannabe" who frequently worked into conversations that he'd just had lunch with Tagliabue and was thrilled to stand on the sidelines during games.

Some of the studies the NFL had published in "Neurosurgery" had startling conclusions: Concussions were minor injuries; multiple concussions did not increase the risk of further injury; and football did not cause brain damage. "Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis," the NFL's doctors asserted, according to the book.

Often, the Fainarus write, Apuzzo ignored peer-reviewers' objections of the league research before rubber-stamping it into the journal. The actions led some concussion researchers to privately ridicule "Neurosurgery" as "The Official Medical Journal of the National Football League" and the "Journal of No NFL Concussions," the authors write. Apuzzo declined to be interviewed for the book; he also declined to be interviewed for this story.

Dr. Kevin Guskiewicz, a researcher who joined the league's new concussion committee after the NFL dismantled the MTBI group, rejected the "Neurosurgery" papers, which he described as "industry-funded research at its best," according to the book.

Dr. Mark Lovell, who directed the NFL's Neuropsychological Program for 16 years, told the book's authors that concussion committee leaders inserted provocative language in research papers after they had been read and approved by other members, including him. In one passage, Lovell called "stupid" a claim by league researchers that it was "unlikely that athletes who rise to the level of the NFL are concussion prone." He also said he did not write that sentence. When the Fainarus reminded Lovell that he was listed as an author, he replied: "No, no, no. I mean, is my name on that sentence?"

The book levels sharp criticism of the handling of the health and safety issue by Goodell, who succeeded Tagliabue in August 2006. The authors write that Goodell inherited a concussion mess from Tagliabue but that Goodell took nearly three years to acknowledge a link and moved slowly to publicly address the growing crisis.

The book also does not spare independent concussion researchers. The Fainarus write of conflicts of interests, eccentricities and ego clashes among the independent researchers who wanted a piece of the concussion research. What emerges is a tale of researchers seeking to be part of a morbid brain chase, the prize of which is not only medical prestige but also money in the form of millions of dollars in donations and grants for continued research.

Under Goodell, the NFL has been a major contributor to funding such research. In 2010, the NFL gave Boston University $1 million and designated the center as the league's preferred brain bank. The league also pledged to encourage retired players to donate their brains to BU. But in 2012, four months after the suicide of former San Diego Chargers linebacker Junior Seau, and after multiple former players had been diagnosed post humously with CTE by Boston University researchers, the league distanced itself from BU and donated $30 million to the National Institutes of Health.

The book also describes how the league intervened in the scramble among researchers on who would be chosen to study Seau's brain, which would ultimately be diagnosed with CTE by the National Institutes of Health.

By relying on interviews, documents and private emails, the Fainarus describe the extent to which independent researchers felt pressured and harassed by the league. A neuropathologist named Ron Hamilton said the NFL attempted "to set up a barrier," to let "everybody know that [we] were just insane." Steve DeKosky, one of the nation's leading Alzheimer's experts, wrote in a private email to his colleagues that the NFL was "stunning in its hypocrisy."

The book also relates the story of Mike Webster, the ex-Pittsburgh Steelers center and member of Hall of Fame who was the first NFL player to be diagnosed with CTE. In the final years of his life, Webster frantically accumulated an arsenal of weapons and had seriously considered turning them on NFL officials, whom he blamed for his deteriorating mental condition, Webster's son told the authors.

"No Revenge, No Sir," Webster wrote in a rambling letter to his family not long before his death in 2002. "Not Revenge, But Reckoning."
 

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That may all be true but players knew the risks, yes, even concussions. The term punch drunk is 100 years old. I don't see guys opting out of the NFL unless they're already showing symptoms. Nothing other than the league forcing the player's hands would have changed anything. A few years back the NFL had representatives visit every team with safer helmets and data as to better protection from concussions in a 2 of the 5 approved NFL models. Something like 80% of the players opted to keep the high risk helmets that they've been using. It took league mandates in rules and equipment to help protect players from themselves and thereby the league by association.

I feel bad for Jim McMahon's predicament but his hardest head shots were with his Oline after a TD.
 

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That may all be true but players knew the risks, yes, even concussions. The term punch drunk is 100 years old. I don't see guys opting out of the NFL unless they're already showing symptoms. .

This is why I don't understand why the NFL would hide any scientific knowledge they had. How many players would turn down the opportunity even fully knowing the risks?
 

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remydat

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That may all be true but players knew the risks, yes, even concussions. The term punch drunk is 100 years old. I don't see guys opting out of the NFL unless they're already showing symptoms. Nothing other than the league forcing the player's hands would have changed anything. A few years back the NFL had representatives visit every team with safer helmets and data as to better protection from concussions in a 2 of the 5 approved NFL models. Something like 80% of the players opted to keep the high risk helmets that they've been using. It took league mandates in rules and equipment to help protect players from themselves and thereby the league by association.

I feel bad for Jim McMahon's predicament but his hardest head shots were with his Oline after a TD.

This would be like me going to a doctor and saying "Doc, I am concerned by these blows to the head I absorb on my job," and having the doctor say, "Concussions are minor injuries; multiple concussions did not increase the risk of further injury; and football did not cause brain damage. Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis,"

How can you sit here and say they knew the risks when the official NFL policy was that concussions were MINOR INJURIES? Whatever fears on concerns I may have about a blow to the head is being completely downplayed or contradicted by people who went to medical school. To suggest NFL players knew the risks given what is alleged is odd if those allegations are true.

Now you are correct that they probably still decide to play even though they knew the risks but that doesn't excuse what they did.
 

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This is why I don't understand why the NFL would hide any scientific knowledge they had. How many players would turn down the opportunity even fully knowing the risks?

Exactly. That is the real dumb thing about this. If they had just been upfront about things and then put safequards in place, it is likely this stuff could have been resolved because at the end of the day, a player is basically gambling his life and health for millions during the prime years of his life. A lot of people would still make that sacrifice. Instead the NFL pinched pennies and basically increased their potential liability by hiding this if the allegations turn out to be true. I think the below was the most telling of the excerpt that was released.

The rancor would spill into the ensuing days. Dave Viano, who co-chaired the MTBI Committee with Casson, tried to get Guskiewicz to sign on to a statement that doubts remained about the effect of repeat concussions. Guskiewicz said the statement was similar to one contained in a pamphlet released to NFL players that fall. That pamphlet contended:

Current research with professional athletes has not shown that having more than one or two concussions leads to permanent problems if each injury is managed properly. It is important to understand that there is no magic number for how many concussions is too many. Research is currently underway to determine if there are any long-term effects of concussions in NFL athletes.

"How can you put out this statement? Do you really think you're going to pull the wool over the eyes of these people?" Guskiewicz said he wrote Viano, referring to league medical personnel who had attended the summit. "And he spouted back to me something like, 'That's insulting to me and to our committee that you would suggest that we're trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes.'"

"Really???" Guskiewicz said he wrote.

"I was just like, 'Come on, get real. Who do you think you're talking to?'" said Guskiewicz. "That was when I realized that he was all about protecting the [league], its name, and not about his own integrity. And that's where I lost respect for him. I thought he was one of the few true scientists on that committee."

But Guskiewicz had detected a faint glimmer of hope right after he left the meeting. He had run into Jeff Pash, the league's general counsel and the No. 2 executive at the NFL. Pash, much to his surprise, was complimentary.

"Keep doing what you're doing," he told Guskiewicz.

Guskiewicz came to believe the concussion summit was "the game changer, the turning point," but not for the reasons the NFL would cite in the statement he'd refused to sign. Guskiewicz realized that Goodell and Pash "were in the back of that room saying, 'I've got a freaking train wreck on my hands here.'"
 

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This would be like me going to a doctor and saying "Doc, I am concerned by these blows to the head I absorb on my job," and having the doctor say, "Concussions are minor injuries; multiple concussions did not increase the risk of further injury; and football did not cause brain damage. Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis,"

How can you sit here and say they knew the risks when the official NFL policy was that concussions were MINOR INJURIES? .

One thing that I keep thinking back to is an article I read about boxing when I was in high school (I'm 38 yrs old). It was basically describing the brutal force that the brain of boxers take. It described the physics behind it. Saying essentially that when struck in the head the skull goes in motion but the brain slightly lags behind but then catches up and slams into the skull. Thus causing brain damage. Whether this theory still holds true 20+ years later, idk. But if some random kid can randomly find some scientific reasoning between brain damage and sports I'm pretty sure others beyond the NFL knew of this sort of radical notion that repeated hits to the head are bad for the brain.
 

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A major corporate organization withholding vital information about the wellness of it's employees?
Sounds about right in today's world.
 

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That may all be true but players knew the risks, yes, even concussions. The term punch drunk is 100 years old. I don't see guys opting out of the NFL unless they're already showing symptoms. Nothing other than the league forcing the player's hands would have changed anything. A few years back the NFL had representatives visit every team with safer helmets and data as to better protection from concussions in a 2 of the 5 approved NFL models. Something like 80% of the players opted to keep the high risk helmets that they've been using. It took league mandates in rules and equipment to help protect players from themselves and thereby the league by association.

I feel bad for Jim McMahon's predicament but his hardest head shots were with his Oline after a TD.

Huh? THey knew there was a risk of concussion, not even that big of a risk. But like just like what everyone knew before the last 10 years, concussions were usually minor and no big deal. It took a great blow to the head to get a major concussion. They did not also know that it's not the hit or severity of the hit that causes the concussion, its the brain moving when your head stops thats creates the collision that causes the concussion. None of this was none by football players. It was a small risk. I played football through college and no one worried about concussions.
 

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One thing that I keep thinking back to is an article I read about boxing when I was in high school (I'm 38 yrs old). It was basically describing the brutal force that the brain of boxers take. It described the physics behind it. Saying essentially that when struck in the head the skull goes in motion but the brain slightly lags behind but then catches up and slams into the skull. Thus causing brain damage. Whether this theory still holds true 20+ years later, idk. But if some random kid can randomly find some scientific reasoning between brain damage and sports I'm pretty sure others beyond the NFL knew of this sort of radical notion that repeated hits to the head are bad for the brain.

I'll see if I can track it down, but I remember hearing something about there being 4 or 5 different collisions when you suffer a concussion. One is the impact itself, then the brain hitting skull ... something like that. But I remember being amazed that there was so many different moments of impact.
 

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Huh? THey knew there was a risk of concussion, not even that big of a risk. But like just like what everyone knew before the last 10 years, concussions were usually minor and no big deal. It took a great blow to the head to get a major concussion. They did not also know that it's not the hit or severity of the hit that causes the concussion, its the brain moving when your head stops thats creates the collision that causes the concussion. None of this was none by football players. It was a small risk. I played football through college and no one worried about concussions.

How is brain damage a small risk?
 

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How is brain damage a small risk?
Who said that brain damage is a small risk, concussions was a small risk back then, that is a fact. WHo knew back then brain damage was a risk? All we knew is that it would take a HUGE blow to the head to cause brain damage, something that was so rare. Now we know different.
 

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Who said that brain damage is a small risk, concussions was asmall risk back then, that is a fact. WHo knew back then brain damage was a risk? All we knew is that it would take a HUGE blow to the head to cause brain damage, something that was so rare. Now we know different.

Who didn't know? Because by the evidence posted by the OP, there was actually plenty of people who knew, but then actively campaigned to keep that information quiet. And that's the problem.
 

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I'll see if I can track it down, but I remember hearing something about there being 4 or 5 different collisions when you suffer a concussion. One is the impact itself, then the brain hitting skull ... something like that. But I remember being amazed that there was so many different moments of impact.

THis is correct and this was unknown not too long ago.
 

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Who didn't know? Because by the evidence posted by the OP, there was actually plenty of people who knew, but then actively campaigned to keep that information quiet. And that's the problem.

If I am following Winman's thought process right I think he was referring to the players. Bearly was suggesting that players knew the risk and his responses were saying why players didn't really know the risk. Obviously if the allegations about the NFL are true, we now know years after the fact that they not only knew the risks but actively tried to hide it from players.
 

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Huh? THey knew there was a risk of concussion, not even that big of a risk. But like just like what everyone knew before the last 10 years, concussions were usually minor and no big deal. It took a great blow to the head to get a major concussion. They did not also know that it's not the hit or severity of the hit that causes the concussion, its the brain moving when your head stops thats creates the collision that causes the concussion. None of this was none by football players. It was a small risk. I played football through college and no one worried about concussions.

Gotta agree. I was playing through high school and intended to continue playing as long as I could. This was a little over a decade ago. I knew about all the physical risks and long term physical ailments, but not once did I ever think it could effect my long or short term mental health.
 

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Huh? THey knew there was a risk of concussion, not even that big of a risk. But like just like what everyone knew before the last 10 years, concussions were usually minor and no big deal. It took a great blow to the head to get a major concussion. They did not also know that it's not the hit or severity of the hit that causes the concussion, its the brain moving when your head stops thats creates the collision that causes the concussion. None of this was none by football players. It was a small risk. I played football through college and no one worried about concussions.

Perhaps the risk became greater once they started juicing or even the juice adding directly to issues. There's lots of gray areas here and the league shouldn't take all the heat even if also culpable.

Everybody knows that if you get hit in the head enough, there will be issues. Not hard to grasp unless you're preconcussed. The idea that players didn't know if they wanted to know is sticking your head in the sand stuff. Guys died every year playing football in college early on. It's a dangerous sport and everybody knows it. Mohammad Ali's issues were well documented in the early 80s.

I do think there needs to be funding to help these players and the owners tried to get some more into the last agreement. Players association generally don't want to pitch in and choose too keep their % for themselves. See what Ditka said about Upshaw if you don't believe me. Regardless of fault, once known, it should become a players association program and Ditka has long advocated percentage of pay based funding for retired players. When you bargain a contract based agreement using percentages of take, insurance and pension issues become the responsibility of the union.
 

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I'll see if I can track it down, but I remember hearing something about there being 4 or 5 different collisions when you suffer a concussion. One is the impact itself, then the brain hitting skull ... something like that. But I remember being amazed that there was so many different moments of impact.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1147969/

1962? I'm too lazy to verify whether the SI vault article dates are accurate.

"Scientists indicate that the human brain weighs about three pounds. It is fluid-packed but not secured within the skull. A blow to the head causes it to wobble, slide and bounce back and forth, inside its cranial container. If a moderate blow can bang the brain against its sidewall, a more severe blow can bring it into contact with the bony sphenoidal ridge to produce selective damage to the frontal lobes, either bleeding or bruising. Where there is destruction of nerve cells the damage is permanent and, when repeated, cumulative."
 

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