Midweek Fixture: A bad week for concussion deniers

This photo shows sections from a normal brain, top, and from the brain of former college football player Greg Ploetz, bottom, in stage IV of CTE. Photo / Supplied

It has been a bad couple of weeks for concussion deniers, if such a phenomenon still exists.

The most shocking news for many was the "revelation" that 99 per cent of brains of former NFL players came back positive for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

Which wasn't really a revelation at all but it made for some harrowing imagery.

The brains were donated to the Boston University School of Medicine because the former players or their families suspected they were damaged and believed that head injuries suffered playing American football were the likely cause.

In other words, there was an inherent bias in the study. There was no control group from which any accurate estimate as to the percentage of NFL players who might be affected by the disease could be gleaned.

But there were several other nuggets in the study that lead author Dr Ann McKee says, are "impossible to ignore".

While everybody focuses on the 110 of 111 former NFL brains being affected by CTE, the more frightening number in many respects was that three out of 14 high school players' brains were affected and 48 out of 53 college football players.

Even given the lack of control group, what this tells us is that CTE's seemingly irreversible effects - 71 per cent of those who showed severe CTE pathology had dementia symptoms - can be established early.

The biggest positional group affected were linemen, who are involved in collisions on virtually every play, providing a clue (but no definitive proof) that the role you play in contact sports could increase or decrease your chances of cognitive impairment later, and in some cases not much later, in life.

The release of the study was widely picked up by major media outlets around the world and came with a follow-up: Baltimore Ravens' linebacker John Urschel, a bona fide mathematics genius, decided the CTE odds were stacked against him and retired from the sport at the age of 26.

Less widely reported, however, was the fact that Congress had to ask NFL commissioner Roger Goodell why his organisation had withheld $18 million of the $30m they had committed to the National Institutes of Health for CTE research.

The letter also asked the NFL whether it planned to renew the agreement and planned to provide additional funding beyond its original commitment. The suggestion wa that the NFL rescinded the money because it disagreed with the NIH using a particular CTE researcher.

The NFL reportedly later wrote to owners - including the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones who is on record as saying it is "absurd" to acknowledge a link between his sport and CTE - saying it would honour the payment but the ballyhoo highlights the biggest impediment to the rapid progress we need in this field.

The connection between CTE and contact sports, including rugby and league, is not yet a public health issue. There is no argument you can make that would support the diverting of public funds to this cause ahead of, say, rheumatic fever or paediatric cancer research.

To that end, the scientific community relies on the sports themselves for funding. The sports, understandably, want to move slowly, carefully. You can see where this is leading, can't you? In fact, we've already lived it to an extent with the fraught AUT study into the health of retired rugby players.

The Boston study might have shortcomings by design, but if it skews the debate in an alarmist way, then at least that's better than the alternative.

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There was a number of considered responses to last week's column on turning the America's Cup from a "challenge" event into an "open" event, in part to attract more entrants and make it less of a billionaire's playground, and in part to simply make it a fairer competition.

I have included the below email because it articulates what several said.

Well done on your opinion piece about how to save the America's Cup.

I do not agree with your central theme that it should not be a challenger and defender event - this is core to the America's Cup.

Otherwise it is just another regatta, and there are plenty of grand prix keel boat and J-Class regattas for owner-drivers to compete in with rock-star crews.

If [Grant Dalton] gets the structure right, and we see 8-10, or more, challengers in Auckland for the 2020-21 summer then it will be an outstanding event.

Best regards, David Glen

I do understand David's point, but I don't buy the argument that you keep something just because it's been that way for a long time.

You can point to any number of traditions that were once considered central to their sport that we're better off without - no shot-clock in basketball, uncovered cricket pitches, segregated baseball - and the America's Cup should be no different.

Unless there is the prospect of genuine defender series running in conjunction with a challenger series, then, to these eyes, the old way of doing the America's Cup is selling its potential short.

LONG READ OF THE WEEK ...

After an uneven start that could have used a sharper edit, perhaps, this bloosoms into a terrific piece on the search for "lost" West Indian speed demon Patrick Patterson, from the Indian Express.