Former CFL lineman Rick Klassen’s brain showed extensive CTE

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South Pender
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Qman wrote:
Wed Jul 26, 2017 8:22 am
South Pender wrote:
Tue Jul 25, 2017 1:27 pm
A recent and compelling peer-reviewed article from the Journal of the American Medical Association on CTE in NFL players contains some really alarming results.

The authors acknowledge that the study is not fully and perfectly controlled (something that's not possible in research on CTE), but its findings are sufficiently dramatic to support the conclusion, pretty convincingly, that playing football--at least at the pro level--will very likely lead to CTE.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/health/ct ... index.html
again this was talked about on 1040, one of the issues here is families who see signs of dementia, mental problems, etc are the ones donating the brains .. thats why the rates are soooooo high. while thousands of other players brains with no issues, aren't really being tested.

That's true and is what I was implying in my comments about the study not being fully controlled. There is selection bias in the results, and they (the results) don't allow us to predict the true proportion of pro football players that will later exhibit CTE. To my eye, however, the results were sufficiently alarming to conclude that this proportion is likely higher than we might have thought.

Ex-NFL and CFL players have played the game since childhood, and the years of accumulating head trauma--through high-school, college, and pro ball--can really add up and contribute incrementally to ultimate brain damage.
Last edited by South Pender on Mon Jul 31, 2017 10:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Quite an article about retired CFL lineman (and CBC’s Fifth Estate reporter) Bob McKeown's stance on CTE and his own concussion history:
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new ... in-disease
with more detail in his CBC piece last fall:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/bob-mckeo ... -1.3853245

I can't get this to play for some reason (or find out what he said in the interview elsewhere) but Ambrosie apparently said something about CTE on Friday:
http://www.tsn.ca/radio/edmonton-1260/a ... e-1.816613
EDIT:
I found the Ambrosie interview in the working link for the hourly recording of the TSN Edmonton show. The interview begins at 31:30, and the CTE discussion begins at 36:30. While he is cautious in what he says (expected due to ongoing litigation), the position appears to be that there is still so much to be learned and we need to work with the researchers to find ways to make the game safer.
http://www.tsn.ca/radio/edmonton-1260/a ... 2-1.816611
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Ran across this today from the doctor, Dr. Bennet Omalu, who is said to be the doctor who "discovered" CTE:

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... the-point/

Here's the part of this that got my attention:

"...I’ve always said that every child who plays football has a 100 percent risk of exposure to brain damage. And I’ve always said that at a professional level, 100 percent would have brain damage of some kind to some degree. That’s whether or not their brains are found to have CTE.”

Not much surprise that every child who plays football has a 100 percent risk of exposure to brain damage, but the second part--that 100 percent of pro football players would have brain damage of some kind--is more surprising and alarming.
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Two part article in Toronto Star about the methodology used in analysis of brain scans of retired CFL players and interviews with a few of them. The interviews aren't too surprising if you've watched the game for decades (the old "get your bell rung" carried to extremes).
https://www.thestar.com/sports/football ... ayers.html
https://www.thestar.com/sports/football ... sions.html
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Amid the talk about safety and no contact practice, Ambrosie had this to say when pressed about CTE
"I have made a promise and a pledge to myself and the players who I've played with, who are lifetime friends, that I will study and meet and ask questions and until I'm done that I'm not going to reach a conclusion."
I think he is saying what the Board of Governors is telling him to here, but there is plenty of living proof out there among former players of the '60s-70s. The outcome of his "study" will be interesting.
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/football/cfl/r ... -1.4292016
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