Concussions On September 24, 2002 is when Bennet Omalu was getting ready to start an autopsy on the famous football player Mike Webster. Mike had died from blows to the head on the football field. But the Steelers claimed it was a heart attack. The blows to his head affected him most after he retired. He lost his job he lost his home and his wife, he was living in his truck. When Mike was still living with his wife he would sleep on the side of the road because he didn't remember how to get home. He would buy prescriptions he didn't need. The police said that he bought 19 necessary medicines. And it was all from concussions. While Bennet was working he could not find a cause of death. His body was in fine shape and had no problems. So Bennet …show more content…
But they couldn't analyze the body of this case. It was Justin Strzelczyk another former Steelers player. He was forced out of his house after threatening to kill his family. The police chased him going 90 mph down the wrong side of the highway and crashed into an oil tanker dieing in a fiery explosion. (Pittsburgh Post-gazette) After that more and more cases of CTE were found. The NFL had just been hiding the cases from the people. It is proven that 76 out of 79 NFL players will get CTE after they retire. And it has also been found in junior players later in life. 26 NFL players have died since Mike Webster's case was found by Bennet Omalu. Columbia Pictures later released a biographical movie on Bennet Omalu discovery in 2002 starring Will Smith.(Columbia Pictures) In all honesty the movie makes me want to never play football again. I would highly suggest the movie. Thanks to Bennet Omalu most all football teams now know what football will do to them. Bennet is now living in california in an oceanside house. But Bennet is still performing autopsies to this day. And CTE is now a professional medical term and it is a must for doctors to learn about in college. Through all of this Bennet knew even when times are tough you have to persevere and keep
Mike Webster was a center for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Mike Webster had many injuries as a result of playing football. He had broken bones, torn tendons, heart malfunctions, and his teeth were falling out. However, his worst one of all was the injury to his head. In 2003, after Webster passed away, Dr. Bennet Omalu did an examination of his brain.
Question 1 and mini-questions Who is Charlie Teo? https://www.curebraincancer.org.au/page/58/charlie-teo Charlie Teo is a Prof in brain surgery. He was the first person who discovered brain cancer.
In 1995, the Board of the NFL’s retirement plan agreed that injuries sustained during his football career had caused Webster to suffer total and permanent mental disability. In addition, Webster’s doctors concurred that blows to the head that Webster accumulated over his career damaged his frontal lobe, causing cognitive dysfunction. Following his death, Dr. Bennet Omalu, a Nigerian American, physician, forensic pathologist and neuropathologist performed an autopsy on Mike Webster’s body. As Dr. Omalu was conducting the autopsy, he pursued the root of Mike’s cognitive disabilities. Furthermore, Dr. Omalu diagnosed Mike Webster with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) , a degenerative brain disease found in athletes, military veterans, and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma.
Mike Webster, a former NFL player, who played for the Steelers in the 1970s have started to experience head trauma and health complications. He began to struggle with his normal routine and family relationship, ending up homeless. From Frontline documentary film, “A League of Denial” explains how “he later died from a cardiac arrest on September 24, 2002, where Dr. Omalu examined the cause of his death.” How this happened may correlate to the football player's head-on collision of the brain resulting in what is known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is known as a neurodegenerative disease that affects the person’s cognitive function, altering their behavior.
(pg 2-5) Webster suffered from dementia as a result of numerous hits and concussions. Webster eventually died at age 50 in 2002, and after his death his family eventually sued over the NFLs
Effects of CTE CTE is a disease in the brain that is caused by concussions. There has been a rising fears of this disease in the media lately. This fear has been surrounded by the sport of football. If you play this you are in danger of getting CTE. At least 31% of the people that have this disease have been suicidal at some point (Bonk).
In the true story based movie and the documentary, the dangers of head injuries in football are laid out for the viewer. Dr. Bennet Omalu discovered the brain injury chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE; however, the NFL was in denial about the effects football had on the brain and had on causing CTE. I believe that the NFL’s denial to the accusations were detrimental to many football players and that serious consideration should be taken into the way football is played overall. When Dr. Omalu originally diagnosed CTE on Mike Webster and the NFL denied that football was the cause for his death and disease.
Some of the tests revealed damage to the amygdala which controls mood. Additionally the NFL players scored much lower on memory tests, and had worse verbal skills (Hedin, 2015) 5. Due to the recent number of suicides & violent crimes committed by former players, there is more of a need to research the correlation between the head injuries in the NFL and brain disease even more C. Thesis Point 3: What steps the National Football league has taken to protect players long term health and safety 1. With the scrutiny the NFL has come under, they have developed a new protocol for the diagnoses and treatment of players with concussions 2. Under the new protocol, any player who exhibits sings of a concussion, even the most remote sign, must come out of the game and be checked out by the medical staff, they may not return to the same game if they undergo tests for concussion.
The NFL has modified the game by protecting the players by eliminating helmet to helmet blocking and by updating the players helmets with more cushion for the safety of their brains. After Steve Gleason and O.J Brigance spread awareness of the ALS , the NFL attempted to raise money for research towards this matter. Steve Gleason has also partnered with Microsoft to help support ALS patients with new equipment for communication. Due to the spread of awareness, this is forcing sports to make modifications and care for the athletes who were diagnosed with these diseases. Professional soccer although and other sports have not yet attempted to create change.
Anyone who has had a brain injury in the past needs to be aware of the symptoms of CTE, not only for themselves, but also for the people around them. Football causes about ten times the amount of significant brain injuries compared to other popular sports (What). A sport with as much violence as football needs to be taken seriously. Children who are not aware of the consequences and the magnitude of the injuries they can sustain need to be protected.
Concussions are a scary reality of playing NFL football. Every year there are more and more players that are having season ending, and career ending injuries due to hits to the head. There have been many NFL players that have had serious issues due to concussions. Former NFL superstar tight end Aaron Hernandez was convicted of executing a man with a half-dozen bullets inside an industrial park. He was sentenced to life without parole (“Aaron Hernandez’s”).
Concussion injuries have been a big speculation in the National Football League (NFL). Documents filed in federal court showed the NFL expects nearly a third of all retired players to develop some form of long term cognitive problem- such as Alzheimer’s disease or dementia in their lifetime as a result to head injuries or concussions suffered on the field. After years of denial the National Football League is starting to come clean. In this editorial the author is trying to inform the public about these accusations.
The study included nearly 3,500 former NFL players, with 10% already having been passed away. The ALS Association stated: “A player’s risk of death from ALS or Alzheimer’s was almost four times higher than the general population,” (“NFL
Omalu had innocently believed that the NFL would offer a positive reception to his study that exposed the dangers posed upon football participants’ mental health. Contrary to his expectations, the NFL demanded for an extraction of the article from 2005’s July issue of Neurosurgery. Three editors from the NFL’s committee for Mild Brain Injury wrote about serious flaws they had come across in his research. Other people who had been affected apart from Webster were the likes of Terry Long. After the first report denial by NFL, Omalu pushed forward with a second brain examination on Terry Long who had showed signs of distressing behavior after his immediate retirement.
In this breathtaking film, a pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu who was played by Will Smith does an autopsy of a famous football player, Mike Webster. As he does the autopsy he finds a brain disorder called CTE. He is determined to let people know that whatever that happened to Mike Webster was about football. He wants people to learn all about the faults about playing football. All the blows to the head affect the brain in many ways that it can cause some mild brain damage.