The debate over how to respond to the growing research linking brain trauma to injuries sustained in sports "has spread to Europe," according to John F. Burns of the N.Y. TIMES. Medical experts "are calling for change, some leagues and athletes are resisting in the name of tradition and spectator appeal, and lawmakers are inquiring about how officials are handling the possibility that their sports could be tied to long-term cognitive impairment," similar to the one that has played out in American sports, most notably football. Potential health and financial implications of inaction, officials and politicians acknowledge, "are forcing leagues and federations to consider changes that have been long resisted." Rugby Football Union Chief Medical Officer Simon Kemp said, "We need a fundamental change of culture." In rugby, "change has been impeded by the fact that the game is in an unprecedented boom." Resistance has been just as strong in football, a sport with far fewer of the violent collisions inherent in rugby, "but nonetheless a sport in which three top players in England’s Premier League were knocked unconscious in the first four months of the season." Chris Bryant, a former Labour government cabinet minister who has pressed the issue of head injuries in Parliament in Britain, said, "Given what’s happened in the U.S.A., this has the potential for dramatic impact here" (N.Y. TIMES, 4/5). In Sydney, Brad Walter wrote the National Rugby League "will consider outlawing all lifting tackles in a bid to prevent another incident like the one which has ended the career of Newcastle forward Alex McKinnon but has ruled out a ban on three man tackles." McKinnon suffered spinal damage in a tackle "deemed to be a grade two dangerous throw by the NRL judiciary at the hearing last Wednesday" (SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 4/7).
