NFL players union funding $100 million Harvard study on injury
Source: Chicago Tribune/Reuters
Scott Malone
11:21 a.m. CST, January 29, 2013
BOSTON (Reuters) - The union that represents U.S. professional football players has given Harvard University a $100 million grant for a study of the range of health problems, from brain damage to heart conditions, that affect current and former players.
Researchers withHarvard Medical School plan to spend a decade studying hundreds of former players who are members of the National Football League Players Association, university officials said on Tuesday. The aim is to develop strategies to limit the long-term damage that players suffer from years of hits on the field.
The recent suicides of a spate of formerNFL players, including 12-time Pro Bowl linebacker Junior Seau, have raised concerns about the toll that blows to the head take on the brains of current and former players.
Scientists have found that years of steady, small hits can lead to a condition calledchronic traumatic encephalopathy, which at its start can cause victims to have a hard time concentrating on small tasks and eventually can lead to aggression and dementia.
Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-nfl-players-union-concussions,0,1529684.story
benld74
(9,901 posts)Zero dollars and zero cents.
Am I close?
UTUSN
(70,640 posts)Response to n2doc (Original post)
blueclown This message was self-deleted by its author.
libdem4life
(13,877 posts)damage, with less and less referee interference. Injured players are no longer on the Injured List. They are either Healthy or Not Healthy. They are increasingly encouraged and congratulated for "playing through it" rather than seem "weak" or "unhealthy".
This often inhuman behavior is at the behest of the owners, coaches, players, media and fans. The more about money a "sport" becomes, the less value to the human cost. There are those waiting in the wings ... yea leaving their education behind ... to cash in for a chance to be on the Professional Sports Lotto. (The $100 million for research is peanuts ... merely one top player's contract.) And why it takes a decade to figure this out? Smacks of attempts to control the outcome. It's not rocket science.
Sports and War scenarios have many similarities. NFL Vets have a large financial advantage over War Vets, however.
zellie
(437 posts)Football trauma lets to CTE and there is no way to calculate how many hits it takes before you get brain damage.
No helmet, no rules and no penalties will stop that.
Threedifferentones
(1,070 posts)I've watched thousands of hours of football in my life, and played some in HS. But even though I still love it, I think football will die out for one simple reason: knowing what we do now, no matter how much I like that game, there is no way I am letting a child of mine play it. It simply is not worth it. And if you don't play football in grade school, you generally never will.
As more parents decide this, fewer kids will play the sport, and thus future generations will have fewer fans. Now I know football will probably remain popular for decades to come, and I for one will still be cheering my home team and my Alma mater as grown men try to knock each other's heads off. But due to the obvious head trauma and joint damage it inflicts on players at all ages and skill levels, American football IMO is at the zenith of its popularity and will ultimately die out.
Studies like this will hasten the decline, which means the player's union in some ironic sense is paying to put themselves out of work.
zellie
(437 posts)Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)Using the human body as a battering ram has long-term health implications.