A leading doctor claimed that "football may have missed the chance to save players from irreversible brain damage" after the Professional Footballers’ Association failed to act on his "repeated suggestions for research more than two decades ago," according to Jeremy Wilson of the London TELEGRAPH. Dr. Mike Sadler said that he "tried to raise the issue" in letters to PFA CEO Gordon Taylor between '93 and '97 but he received "no help or encouragement" and what he described as a "quite dismissive" response. There were "fresh calls" on Monday from the Jeff Astle Foundation, a charity set up to support the families of former footballers with dementia, for Taylor to stand down and for a parliamentary inquiry into an issue that it said has been "swept under the carpet." The FA and PFA did launch "limited research" before Astle died in '02 of what a neuropathologist attributed to the type of dementia -- chronic traumatic encephalopathy -- that is "caused by repeated head trauma." That study was published in '15, but "ultimately disowned by the FA and deemed inconclusive by the PFA" (TELEGRAPH, 3/20).
