When researchers first proposed that athletes suffering repeated head blows might face a real risk of long-term brain damage, both players and athletic associations dismissed the idea. But over the last few years, an ongoing wave of deaths, injuries, and evidence (such as this 2009 report revealing a consistent pattern of damage in the brains of dead athletes) has begun to erode such resistance.
It's in the context of the attitude shift that I want to call attention to an outstandingly good set of stories on the subject in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, home paper to a city that is home of a football team famed for its aggressive style of play. The series, by the paper's senior science writer, Mark Roth, is called The Tragedy of CTE (which stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy), and began this Sunday. The CTE focus is actually part of an ongoing look by the paper at some of the most notable brain disorders.
The reporting is finely detailed – right down to an estimate that the average college football player has sustained 8,000 blows to the head by the time he graduates – and explores both the growing body of evidence supporting the CTE issues and the uncertainties in making a clear, individual diagnosis (uncertainties emphasized by the professional athletic associations). It's information that both athletes (yes, including the Steelers) and sports fans need to know, the kind of science reporting that can help drive the conversation in an intelligent way.
And this is not a conversation that is going away. This week, the family of the late hockey player, Derek Boogaard of the Minnesota Wild, filed a lawsuit against the National Hockey League, asserting that the brutal nature of the game, especially in Boogaard's position of enforcer, and the failure of the league and the team to provide adequate warning, treatment or protection led to his 2011 death.
— Deborah Blum
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