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110 N.F.L. Brains

nytimes.com

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Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#101

Post by endorphone »

nicpottier wrote: post #96
endorphone wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you have absolutely no idea if aggressive skiing is giving you CTE because no one has ever looked to investigate it. In football, as in boxing, the original investigation began because head trauma is obvious, but as the study broadened some of the worst cases of CTE were actually offensive linesmen. These are generally not the players who dish or receive hard hits, and many had never had a suspected concussion in…

I don't know about GP, but I'm an aggressive skier and very, very rarely hit my head. I have maybe a dozen falls a season, wear a helmet and am not colliding with anything. This is a silly comparison.

A sub-concussion doesn't require that you hit your head. It simply requires a g-force event -- like skiing quickly over rough terrain -- that shakes the brain around, building up the scar tissue that we know as CTE. Offensive linesmen engage with the opponent via their body/arms, seldom hitting with their head, but that rapid g-force of the body stopping is enough.

Again, someone studied football players because the impact is obvious. As it reaches out, players in even relatively low-g sports like soccer are being found with CTE.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#102

Post by kasey_junk »

Nelson69 wrote: post #99
kasey_junk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but boxing gives us a historical precedent. Boxing used to be the professional sport. It was also a sport that many youth across all spectrums of society participated in. Today it is confined to a niche professionally and is almost totally absent from most youth sport systems.

But isn't part of that the perceived corruption in boxing? MMA has stepped in and there are youth MMA "academies" all over the place. I know MMA fans might take exception but I think I'd lump them in with boxing fans of the past. Maybe there is some clear delimiter between MMA fans and boxing fan of the past; I can't think what it would be though.

Well one of the pitches of MMA is that its safer than boxing, especially in its modern incarnations and particularly when it comes to repeated head trauma.

Lots of the kids MMA events don't even allow head strikes and especially not the particularly dangerous elbow strikes while on the ground.

Boxing makes it hard to have that distinction. My prediction is that MMA will also go through this when people start realizing that the head trauma stuff is nearly as bad in MMA as boxing.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#103

Post by jychang »

accountyaccount wrote: post #69
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is unacceptable nowadays. The word has lost meaning. It's fine to inform someone of the risks. An informed society is better than a society that doesn't let you play football.

That's like saying an informed society is better than a society that doesn't have OSHA regulations... You can't dangle millions of dollars in front of (often poor, often minority) college students and say "well you were informed of the risks" and then wash your hands of all responsibility. I could inform you that you'll die 1/6 times you play russian roulette, but that doesn't mean that it should be ethically sound (…

IIRC, the calculations from NASA says that for a trained individual, the value of a human life is around $50 million. 1/6 of that is $8.3 million.

It may be unethical to play russian roulette, but is it still unethical to choose to play if you were paid $8.3 million (given that much worth in utility) first? Why not?

On the other hand, mining for minerals also has risk. Miners in Australia are highly compensated for it, getting paid over $100,000 per year.

What difference is there between the scenarios, assuming everyone involved is fully informed?

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#104

Post by deelowe »

Goladus wrote: post #59
saulrh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9% chance, the best possible case given the current data, of a horrible, slow, lingering death 20 years later is still unacceptable . What's the rate for getting mesothelioma after working with asbestos?

Unacceptable to whom? Is the US a free country or not?

I thought this was pretty obvious. The OP was implying that it's comparatively unacceptable given what's happened for other professions.

Also, let's not forget that there's accusations of a cover up by the NFL.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#105

Post by Nelson69 »

nicpottier wrote: post #96
endorphone wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you have absolutely no idea if aggressive skiing is giving you CTE because no one has ever looked to investigate it. In football, as in boxing, the original investigation began because head trauma is obvious, but as the study broadened some of the worst cases of CTE were actually offensive linesmen. These are generally not the players who dish or receive hard hits, and many had never had a suspected concussion in…

I don't know about GP, but I'm an aggressive skier and very, very rarely hit my head. I have maybe a dozen falls a season, wear a helmet and am not colliding with anything. This is a silly comparison.

It's sort of silly but it's sort of not. The evidence suggests that a few really big hits doesn't do it, it's repeated medium sized head traumas that does. (ie: it happens to line men more frequently out of footballers) Quantifying the size of that head trauma is really key. Does it have to be a "hit?" I mean repeatedly hitting mogul runs put shock on your whole body, you may not hit your head but you're absorbing that up and down shock and moving side to side fairly abruptly; more so that you do just running around and your brain absolutely experiences some amount of that. Age might have a factor too, age when this trauma or shock happen.

I ski and snowboard and I'm not planning on stopping, I think the benefits outweigh the risks. I'd say that about most sports but I'm not about to let either of my kids play football or box.

We need to study this stuff a lot more.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#106

Post by curun1r »

lsmarigo wrote: post #89
bhouston wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Heading soccer balls is proven to at least temporarily reduce IQ. I've never let my kids play that sport. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/1... http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/health/soccer-headers-concussi...

Bit extreme of a reaction to two severely flawed click-bait studies and relevant to that "fear as a product" article from yesterday. Washington Post: 14 men participating in the study. Each was asked to perform a rotational header — redirecting the soccer ball — 20 consecutive times during 10-minute sessions. tiny sample size + 20 consecutive headers in 10 minutes is astronomically rare occurrence in soccer, 3 header…

> 20 consecutive headers in 10 minutes is astronomically rare occurrence in soccer

For what it's worth, this is a completely reasonable number. In a game situation, sure, headers aren't that common. But during my youth soccer days, we practiced at least twice as often as we played and practice with headers was quite common. Ironically, they were trying to teach us the proper technique so that we wouldn't hurt ourselves. I can easily imagine practice sessions in which we headed the ball at least 3 times as often as that 20 per 10 min number.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#107

Post by stickfigure »

endorphone wrote: post #68
mikeh1010 wrote: post #12

I want to push back on the "every sport is dangerous" argument I'm seeing in here. There's a difference between "you might die right in the middle of this very fun activity" and "you might die slowly and horribly years from now when you're retired and in the midst of raising a family." I ski pretty aggressively, and of course I might die doing that. But every day I go home and know, "well it wasn't today! Today was j…

But you have absolutely no idea if aggressive skiing is giving you CTE because no one has ever looked to investigate it. In football, as in boxing, the original investigation began because head trauma is obvious, but as the study broadened some of the worst cases of CTE were actually offensive linesmen. These are generally not the players who dish or receive hard hits, and many had never had a suspected concussion in…

I don't think this comparison stands up, at least not for most reasonable interpretations of "aggressive skiing". It might not involve any crashes at all.

I think there's a fair distinction to be drawn between sports that might cause head trauma if you make a mistake, and sports in which head trauma is practically the defining characteristic (see also: boxing). I am three weeks away from having a son, and while I've got some years, I'll eventually have to make some decisions about what activities I want to encourage and discourage. It at least seems possible to learn to ski without repeatedly bashing your head. Not so for football.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#108

Post by slg »

kasey_junk wrote: post #61
gpawl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Football pays better than mesothelioma settlements.

Does it pay better than a career as a dockworker or insulation installer over the course of each career? Did it when the people being impacted by CTE today played? I think most people overestimate the career earnings of the average football player and especially don't discount for the dramatic increase in pay that happened in the last 20 years?

Or the fact that an overwhelming majority of football players don't ever collect a paycheck. It isn't like all of these NFL players just started receiving brain damage once they reached the NFL at the age of 22. They probably started playing football in their early teens. Odds are no one else on that player's middle or high school teams and only a hand full of people on their college team made the NFL. Yet they were all subject to the same type of head trauma.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#109

Post by tptacek »

wahern wrote: post #83
saulrh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9% chance, the best possible case given the current data, of a horrible, slow, lingering death 20 years later is still unacceptable . What's the rate for getting mesothelioma after working with asbestos?

I can't put together a simple number based on the papers I'm finding, especially if we're limited to mesothelioma. Cancer risks are reported in units of f/mL.yr (fibers per milliliter of air per year) or f/g (embedded fibers per gram of dry lung tissue). And there's a huge range to occupational exposure, which I'm not capable of relating back to the risk numbers. (I don't have the numerical skills.) But suffice it to…

That's the modern risk, right? Taking into account all the things those professions do to mitigate the risk? If you've seen someone remove asbestos in the past 20 years, it's obviously not as if they're just wearing jeans and a t-shirt and hauling armloads of the stuff.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#110

Post by accountyaccount »

jychang wrote: post #103
accountyaccount wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying an informed society is better than a society that doesn't have OSHA regulations... You can't dangle millions of dollars in front of (often poor, often minority) college students and say "well you were informed of the risks" and then wash your hands of all responsibility. I could inform you that you'll die 1/6 times you play russian roulette, but that doesn't mean that it should be ethically sound (…

IIRC, the calculations from NASA says that for a trained individual, the value of a human life is around $50 million. 1/6 of that is $8.3 million. It may be unethical to play russian roulette, but is it still unethical to choose to play if you were paid $8.3 million (given that much worth in utility) first? Why not? On the other hand, mining for minerals also has risk. Miners in Australia are highly compensated for i…

I feel like it boils down to options a bit.

If I don't take the opportunity to work in Australian mines, will I have a reasonable opportunity to find work and provide a comfortable living for my family?

If that answer would change whether or not I'd work in a mine, I'd consider that the work may be exploitative of a regional work shortage. At that point someone might feel as though sacrificing their health is their only option, and an informed decision is much harder to make.

Like many ethical questions, it warrants discussion even though there may not be a "right" answer either way.

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