Head trauma - Just part of the inherent risks of the game?

Neil3030

The issue of people injuring themselves for my entertainment is often something I chew over from a moral perspective; on the one hand it is completely barbaric, but on the other hand, you have to accept that with great rewards ($$$) come certain risks - and in football it appears to be that long term head trauma is one of them.

This article in the New Yorker is an excellent read and I urge people to take a few minutes from their day and muse over it. Granted, the dog-fighting analogy is pandering to those bloody New Yorker reading liberals, however the piece on the whole is not a witchhunt, but a balanced narrative on the dangers of American Football within the context of head injuries, citing case studies of post mortem brain scans on players and other advancements in the research investigating the extent to which the game produces head traumas.

The main problem seems to be that the indicators of disorders like dementia are not visible in brain scans and must be tested chemically after death. This obviously presents problems in terms of recruiting subjects, as it requires grieving families to hand over the brains of recently departed loved ones. There also seems to be very little offered in the way of control on several levels, as prevalence estimates of neurological impairments in football players require a broad sample of deceased players tested for the indicators - this doesn't seem to have been done. Rather, they appear to just test the brains of ex-players who died following indications or diagnoses of neurological impairments, which is very biased sampling from a methodological perspective.

It would also be interesting to compare these prevalence estimates, once ascertained, with other sports - is neurological impairment in football any more or less likely than, say, boxing, lacrosse, stock car driving, etc etc. This will hopefully be possible soon, in addition to research methodologies that can be performed on living participants with scanning technologies.

Then there's the issue of prevention - if violent collisions are just part of the game, is there really anything that can be done about it? (Interestingly, my dad suggested that outlawing helmets may help, as counter-intuitive as that may appear, since it would cease players intentionally using the head as a weapon, which unto itself is surely a strong contributory factor in the large volume of collisions in the game involving the head).

As a certain character from The Wire may suggest - it's all in the game. But it's the ones who don't make it to the big leagues that I feel for, particularly if their high-school/college careers produce irreparable damage. Either which way, the article has given me plenty of food for thought and I just thought I'd post here to see if anyone else shares the same concerns or views.

jdivision

One of my mates in the Irish league had to retire due to persistent concussions, I've had a few and they really mess you up for a few weeks after. There was a team here that used to head hunt people but they're no longer around.