Hearing on brain injuries under way
The House Judiciary Committee has begun its hearing about the legal issues connected to the rate of brain injuries suffered by NFL players.
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said at the outset of the hearing: "These injuries are not the types of risks most players or their families would ordinarily associate with the game of football.... My 13-year-old son plays a game at 4:30... today.... The questions before us are several: How serious is the problem? What can we do about it? And where do we go from here?"
Conyers said that the NFL "has largely sought to discredit these reports" about concussions in players being linked to longterm brain injuries.
"We need an expeditious independent review of all the data," Conyers said.
He asked the NFL and its players' union, along with the NCAA and high schools, to provide medical data on the issue.
"When it comes to public health issues, such as the causes of longterm brain diseases, I do not believe it is adequate for the league or the Players Association to hide behind the collective bargaining agreement," Conyers said. "Surely in an $8 billion-a-year industry, we can find it within the budget to make sure the players are adequately protected and that any victims of longterm brain diseases are fully and fairly compensated.
"The serious issues presented by today's hearing involve matters of life and death. They go to the heart of one of our nation's most popular and profitable sports. And equally important, they affect millions of players of all ages and their families. So the sooner we can get to the bottom of these issues, the better."
Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Tex.), the committee's ranking Republican member, said during the hearing: "While we need to take this issue seriously, we should not jump to any conclusions. As the lead author of the Michigan study has stated, 'The study did not conclude that football causes dementia.'... The NFL should continue to study the longterm potential effects of head injuries on player health. The league should also study whether equipment improvements or stricter rules enforcement could help to reduce any longterm impacts of head injuries. And of course, college and high school officials should do the same.
"But Congress should not attempt to influence the upcoming collective bargaining process the NFL and its players' union are about to undertake. We should also avoid the temptation to legislate in this area. Football--like soccer, rugby and even basketball and baseball--involves contact that can produce injuries. We cannot legislate the elimination of injuries from the games without eliminating the games themselves."
A 37-page study commissioned by the NFL was conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and its findings were based on a telephone survey of 1,063 retired NFL players conducted last November and December.
Researchers found that 6.1 percent of retired NFL players age 50 and above reported receiving a diagnosis of dementia, Alzheimer's disease or other memory-related disease, compared to 1.2 percent for all comparably aged U.S. men, and 1.9 percent of players ages 30 to 49 indicated they'd received such a diagnosis, compared to 0.1 percent for the general population.
The researchers wrote in the study that assessing rates of dementia through a phone survey can be problematic.
"We did not administer cognitive tests and did not conduct neurological examinations," the researchers wrote. "The only information we collected about dementia was to ask the respondent (or proxy) if they had ever been diagnosed with 'dementia, Alzheimer's disease, or other memory-related disease.'... The vague category of memory-related disease makes the interpretation of this question somewhat difficult."
The researchers concluded that "further research on this issue is warranted."
By
Mark Maske
|
October 28, 2009; 10:31 AM ET
| Category:
League
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Union
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Posted by: stephl6 | October 29, 2009 9:50 PM
Google the following for more info:
Dr. Bennet Omalu
Posted by: emag | October 28, 2009 1:15 PM
while they are at it, take a look at college football too! the QB's there are even less protected than the NFL QB's are. heck, if it wasn't for late, vicious, helmet-to-helmet hits, Boise State wouldn't beat anybody! that's their primary skill set!
Posted by: physicianexec | October 28, 2009 12:58 PM
I heard that Congress is going to outlaw tackling in football and recommend that flag football be the law of the land. As an alternative, touch football would be OK. The American Society of Sissies is getting ready to make some recommendations that will allow their members to play professional football. Discrimination against sissies will be outlawed and an affirmative action program will be implemented requiring every NFL team to have at least 10 on each team.
Posted by: jackp1 | October 28, 2009 12:42 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
So, someone who doesn't want brain damage as a result of their job is a sissy? That's very rational.