Bennet Omalu says "Football is child abuse"
- Thread starter I am Ironman
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I am not sure about 18, but I am sure about 6-7-8-9-10-11 years in gear playing organized tackle football. I think they shouldn't play until 8th grade, (maybe 7th?) and I think it should be via the schools, not a rec league.
Letting your kids be inactive, getting fat, and getting type 2 diabetes is more of a crime that happens every day .
Need to improve safety and concussion protocols and helmet development. No doubt about that issue.
A company called Vicis has engineered a new impact reducing helmet that is going to be used by some college and NFL players this year.
I have linked their site. It is pretty cool.
http://vicis.co/
Especially when the parents are cheering when kids spear each other and yelling at refs for a game that nobody will remember by the time they get in the car.
Other dangerous sports include soccer, cycling, skateboarding and cheerleading.
818 cycling fatalities in the U.S. in 2015 (most recent year info available).
818 cycling fatalities in the U.S. in 2015 (most recent year info available).
Sitting at a desk 8 more ours a day and being inactive is worse than Chain smoking.
Other dangerous sports include soccer, cycling, skateboarding and cheerleading.
818 cycling fatalities in the U.S. in 2015 (most recent year info available).
Yeah but how many more people cycle than play football.
20,000 auto deaths a year I believe.
True, but if you want to protect your kid, biking is clearly the more deadly passtime. And I own one of these:
The Second Mile is simply suggesting they wear bathing suits.
That's gotta be a flag of some sort......
I remember JoePa said on his radio show that kids should not play football until high school, too many bad coaches in youth football. Recommended playing basketball and soccer to develop footwork...cannot be a good football player without good footwork (true for just about every sport).
Not sure why everyone makes this a football only issue. They just found CTE in 4 European soccer players and it's been found in a number of hockey players. Saying it is child abuse is assinine. Lots of money to be made in pushing Omalu's narrative. There is no contact sport in the history of mankind that is 100 percent safe. I played football and it taught me hard work, teamwork and discipline. I am 48 and believe it was very beneficial to me as I went through life. So far I am ok. If I get dementia later in life so be it. I know a lot of people that have it including my grandmother who never played a contact sport. Frank Gifford had CTE but lived to the ripe old age of 84. Too many unknowns at this point and not enough studies There are some studies out there now questioning whether or not it is even truly a disease.
Are you suggesting that soccer is akin to football in terms of head trauma? Walking to school will also carry some measure of risk. But I don't feel that the risk of CTE is anywhere near football for sports like soccer, baseball and basketball. Perhaps research will prove that wrong there is clearly a problem with boxing and football. A secondary problem with Hockey. The rest are far down the line (rugby, Australian rules, etc. may be in there too).
Unknown at this point. ALS rate is significantly higher in pro soccer players than the average population Unknown about soccer. Think the recent revelations are only the top of the iceberg. Having said that I am damn glad my mom didn't bubble wrap me. Have to think technology will ultimately overcome the concussion problem. A lot of people say that's impossible but they said that about a lot of things in our lifetimes that technology overcame.
yeah...and what about a guy that runs a jackhammer all day? Its all emerging and pretty scary. The risk or incidents of CTE in NFL players is way off the charts though.
I would add wrestling to the list of extremely high risk sports.
A few guys that I know who played football and wrestled have told me they had much more head2head contact in wrestling than football.
A few guys that I know who played football and wrestled have told me they had much more head2head contact in wrestling than football.
Just doing the math, I don't believe that is true. a match is, what, seven minutes? PSU ran 81 plays against Wiscy in the B1G championship game. 31 passes and 51 rushes. That means Brian Gaia smacked heads with a DT on most of those plays...lets say 70?
Not saying wrestling isn't rough...or that it is more or less CTE risky, but can't believe there is less head trauma
If a parent knows that their kid has some sort of medical issue and against doctors orders they sign the kid up for an activity known to have the same risks of worsening their kid's medical condition and the kid dies or gets severely disabled as a result of their participation, then I could see criminal charges MAYBE getting filed. Outside of that, it opens a huge can of worms to prosecute parents for everything that has risk and does occur to their kid as a result.
You could die from a circumcision, exposing your boy to that risk as a baby could subject you to criminal charges? I don't think anyone will ever go there even if it is technically true.
You could die from a circumcision, exposing your boy to that risk as a baby could subject you to criminal charges? I don't think anyone will ever go there even if it is technically true.
There is plenty of head2head contact in wrestling, but not impact. More like side to side grinding....hence the cauliflower ears. But....it is no where near the type of impact in football which for some players is every single play, as pointed out above.
Omalu has pointed out the rates for CTE in Football are similar to Hockey, MMA, Boxing and Professional Wrestling.
He was also directly asked about Ali and whether he thought he had Parkinsons. The question was timely, just after his death. His response was basically this: He fully expected to find CTE and no evidence of Parkinson's if he had the opportunity to autopsy. He followed that the CTE sufferer will have Parkinson's like and Alzheimer's like symptoms, but upon autopsy he has found all of them to be CTE and without autopsy confirmed evidence of Parkinsons.
His overall point is that these are preventable. He doesn't mean the games should end, but they are preventable. He would agree with an earlier posters assessment that we are killing at much higher rate with obesity and diabetes.....much of which is also preventable.
It's a mess in any event. Blows to the head are never ever good. Not sure why anyone would think so, nor why anyone denies it's a big deal. It is. More knowledge is the path forward and hopefully good comes of it.
Thanks....but in this article, he is stating that the nature of the game makes CTE unpreventable and thus, equates it to child abuse.
I dislike rhetoric like "Letting your child play football is the definition of child abuse." I can see making an argument against kids playing football but it's not child abuse and calling it that minimizes real child abuse.
If letting your child play football really is child abuse then millions of parents need to be locked up right now. Does anyone really think that's the case?
If letting your child play football really is child abuse then millions of parents need to be locked up right now. Does anyone really think that's the case?
Exactly! Football's under attack in this country. Too manly a sport for many out there. This society does everything it can to curtail things inherently masculine. Just my humble opinion.
There are thousands of people who have played organized football, from pee wee to high school, college and pro. There is a very few who make it to the pros. In fact, there is a significant winnowing out from high school to college. Is the good Doctor suggesting that everyone of the young boys who chose to play football up to and including high school are going to be victims of CTE? That's crazy. Is there a risk of CTE if you play high school football? Sure, but I'd bet that there are more severe injuries from auto accidents among high school students than CTE among the high School football players.
I believe statistics show there are more head injuries in soccer than American football. Pretty sure about that.
But there's a balance to life too. We'll never get into a car accident if we never get into a car. We'll never fall out of a tree if we never climb a tree. We'll never fall down the stairs if we never climb the stairs. We may never get sun poisoning if we never go to the beach.
I think you get my point. Life itself is a risk. We will all die one day and that's the reality of it. No one's avoided it.
I've had 4 significant concussions. One was softball, one baseball, one football, one wrestling. The first one in softball was by far the most serious, a slow bleeder causing me to lose consciousness for two days. Soccer has its issues with collisions and heading balls. I agree that boxing and football logically would be inherently more likely to cause head trauma but as you say, any active sport brings risk along with it. I know I have suffered permanent side affects from concussions, but on the other hand, I'm still climbing mountains and power lifting in my mid 60's so maybe being active my whole life was better than staying inside glued to the TV or whatever ties kids up today. That said, anything that can be done to reduce head trauma is more than a good thing. I know I lost enough IQ points evidenced by my postings.
There are several exciting developments on the horizon. Dr's were recently able to reverse brain damage in a drowning victim for the first time ever. .
It's not a "single" incident concussion that causes CTE. It's the repetitive hits that happen over and over. The interesting thing about the BU study that started all of this recent discussion, and was buried deep in the report, is that every brain studied showed some sign of damage, even if it wasn't CTE.
