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Leagues and Governing Bodies

NFLPA President Pledges Brain To Concussion Legacy Foundation For Postmortem Exam

NFLPA President and Bengals OT Eric Winston on Tuesday said that he is "pledging his brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation for postmortem examination," according to Tom Pelissero of USA TODAY. Winston said, "Obviously, there’s a lot of noise out there in this space. I think that’s a good thing, even though some of it hasn’t been proven yet, some of it still needs a lot more research." Pelissero notes Friday’s national release of "Concussion" is the "latest event to stoke public discourse about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and its connection to long-term health problems." But Boston Univ. professor Dr. Robert Stern, the lead principal investigator in a new study backed by a nearly $16M grant from the National Institutes of Health, is "among those cautioning against panic from the youth sports level on up about a disease that still can be diagnosed only after death." Stern, who also is the CTE Center's Dir of Clinical Research, said, "There has been a lot of hype about CTE that has gone beyond the science." He added, "We need to have the science move forward so we can answer those important questions like, ‘What are the symptoms of CTE exactly? When someone has symptoms, what can we do to have a better understanding of whether it’s due to CTE or not?'" Pelissero notes the Concussion Legacy Foundation in September reported 87 of 91 brains of late NFL players examined in recent years by researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs and BU had CTE, but that is a "small and inherently biased sample, given players’ families mostly donated them because of suspicions that existed before death." Donations from active players such as Winston, who has no symptoms, "are a logical and significant step as the Concussion Legacy Foundation launches its My Legacy campaign" (USA TODAY, 12/23).

FALSE ALARM? In N.Y., Ken Belson cites a source as saying that the NIH for a study "had asked to use some" of the NFL's $30M pledged donation for CTE research in '12, but after "encountering delays with the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, which is administering the money, it decided to finance the grant with other funds." The foundation said that the NFL "was willing to contribute to the new study, but it was the NIH's decision to finance it on its own." The NIH in its own statement "did not explain why the NFL was not contributing money but credited the league with supporting eight other studies related to brain injuries." The statement read, "We expect that the NFL will fund future studies to help improve player safety and health, on and off the field" (N.Y. TIMES, 12/23). In Chicago, Rick Morrissey writes for the NFL, it is "a bit of sleight of hand: Pay attention to this over here, not to that over there." The more people "focus on proper tackling, the less they’ll pay attention to the effects of repeated brain trauma." If parents of young football players "see answers in a newly designed helmet, they won’t ask so many questions about concussions" (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 12/23).

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