Articles[]
- Concussion/Jayden (article) Student had a concussion that went without it being diagnosed for months.
- http://nesn.com/2016/03/report-nfl-omitted-more-than-100-concussions-from-concussion-studies/?mb_edition=5614&linksrc=mb_story_related_8_20554603
- Over use injuries with children in sports, http://www.alicetx.com/article_bc33aec9-f720-55de-8c1a-026f1540943b.html
- http://www.masslive.com/elpueblolatino/index.ssf/2015/04/just_in_time_for_spring_sports.html
Water polo and concussions[]
- http://www.waterpoloplanet.com/concussion-and-water-polo/
- https://americanwaterpolo.org/concussion-policies/?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email
NFL and Concussions[]
The NFL has long-touted the way it has handled C.T.E. and concussion research related to its sport but whatever flimsy legs they’re still standing on have been cut out recently by a New York Times discovery that their own research was incomplete, if not deliberately fixed.
Four Congress representatives are asking the NFL for documents and information to explain why the NFL tried to intervene in the concussion research done by a Boston University researcher, as reported by Outside the Lines.
The letter was sent to Roger Goodell and includes new information which showed how the NFL tried to replace Dr. Robert Stern, who was critical of the league and its handling of head injuries, and replace him with league-friendly researchers.
“Efforts by outside entities to … exercise influence over the selection of NIH research applicants are troubling, and we are committed to a full understanding of the sequence of events that led to this dispute,” the legislators wrote. The letter was signed by Reps. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J.; Gene Green, D-Texas; Diana DeGette, D-Colo.; and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
In the letter to Goodell, legislators wrote: “Despite this information, the NFL did not commit to fully funding the CTE study, according to the documents and briefings we have received.”
Green, the Texas congressman and one of the letter’s signatories, told Outside the Lines in March 2016 that “The NFL usually gets their way. But that’s not how you get the real valuable information. You don’t game the study, particularly through NIH.”
The study cost $16 million and was supposed to be funded by a $30 million gift from the league to the National Institute of Health, but it withdrew funding after the league claimed Stern was biased against them.
The league and the foundation for the NIH, which administered the grant, denied that the league intervened into the study.
This revelation comes at a time when the league is at a crossroads in the concussion crisis. The aforementioned New York Times report underscores what many have thought. Jerry Jones, the league’s most visible owner, compacted issues by denying any links between repeated head trauma and CTE.
Kraft: Worth it???[]
Robert Kraft is well-aware of the report published in March 2016 in The New York Times stating the NFL omitted at least 100 concussions as part of its concussion research from 1996 to 2001. The New England Patriots owner also is well-aware of the league’s rebuttal to the story and the positives that can come from playing football despite the inherent health risks involved with contact sports.
“I’ll just say this, any contact sport, whether it’s women’s soccer, hockey or football, there are going to be concussions,” Kraft said in March 2016 at Team IMPACT’s Game Day Gala at Boston’s Seaport World Trade Center, according to CSNNE.com. “I’ll tell you this, that I think the game has never been safer from an equipment point of view, from a medical point of view.
“I know I played, two of my sons played, my three grandsons play so we have three generations playing the game, and I think the life lessons that you get playing football are worth the risk.”
Concussions are part of football. It’s extremely unfortunate and the NFL insists it’s doing whatever it can to prevent dangerous head trauma. But it’s impossible to eliminate head injuries altogether. So while every safety precaution imaginable should be considered, it often comes down to individuals deciding whether to put their health in danger for the love of the game and everything else that comes with it. Count Kraft among those who would be willing to roll those dice.
NYT Fact Checking[]
Roger Goodell and the NFL have been making headlines for saying that an admission by Jeff Miller, the NFL’s senior vice president of health and safety policy, that there was “certainly” a link between football-related head trauma and C.T.E. was consistent with the league’s position over the years. That’s a bit of revisionist history considering the league denied any connection between the sport and the brain injuries for years and has only recently admitted that there may be one.
Part of the reason the NFL has changed its stance from denial to “well maybe” is because of a series of league-funded studies between 1996 and 2001 that seemed to downplay the concussion risks associated with playing football.
The New York Times dug into those studies recently and found that while the studies diagnosed 887 individual concussion cases, more than 100 other concussions (roughly ten percent of the overall number) that were reported by teams were never included in the database. As such, the NFL was able to call on data that was, at-best, incorrect, and at-worst, fixed to look better on behalf of the league.
After The Times asked the league about the missing diagnosed cases — more than 10 percent of the total — officials acknowledged that “the clubs were not required to submit their data and not every club did.” That should have been made clearer, the league said in a statement, adding that the missing cases were not part of an attempt “to alter or suppress the rate of concussions.”
One member of the concussion committee, Dr. Joseph Waeckerle, said he was unaware of the omissions. But he added: “If somebody made a human error or somebody assumed the data was absolutely correct and didn’t question it, well, we screwed up. If we found it wasn’t accurate and still used it, that’s not a screw-up; that’s a lie.”
The study did not include concussions that were recorded on behalf of stars like Steve Young and Troy Aikman. Meanwhile, the Dallas Cowboys did not record one concussion whatsoever according to the study. For the record, Troy Aikman was diagnosed with a concussion four separate times on team injury reports between 1997 and 2000.
According to the Times, it also remains unclear why the NFL, the epidemiologist in charge of ensuring accurate data collection, and the editor of the medical journal that published it did not question the results at the time.
The NFL has released a statement regarding the story and they stand their ground on the validity of their numbers and actions, including the acknowledgment by many players involved in the $765 million settlement in 2013 that the league was mimicking Big Tobacco’s tactics when denying that smoking causes cancer.
Today’s New York Times story on the National Football League is contradicted by clear facts that refute both the thesis of the story and each of its allegations. As the Times itself states: “The Times has found no direct evidence that the league took its strategy from Big Tobacco.” Despite that concession, the Times published pages of innuendo and speculation for a headline with no basis in fact.
The Times’ sensationalized story is further refuted by the NFL’s ongoing commitment on the issue of player health and safety – notably, to the support of research, including that of our most vocal critics, on the long-term effects of concussions in all sports, and to change our game in an effort to make the sport of football as safe as it can be. We have committed tens of millions of dollars to fund independent research, made 42 changes to our rulebook since 2002 to make the game safer, and have advanced concussion awareness and safer tackling at all levels of the sport. And we provide a host of benefit programs which, together with the proposed settlement of our players’ concussion litigation, will ensure that our retired players are properly cared for in the future.
The Times quickly refuted the NFL’s claims in a series of tweets:
It’s amazing what a little fact-checking can turn up, not to mention how it reveals what little fact-checking so many organizations are willing to do when it doesn’t benefit them.
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