Former NFL player Phillip Adams found to have severe CTE / Discussion on CTE and the future of the NFL

[Matts4313]

Just now, incognito_man said:

you must be trolling now lol

you can't be this dumb

Well I am def not "clear headed" right now if ya know what I mean - but there are literally dozens of articles that all point to the same thing - the number is closer to 10%. I think the 99% study was somehow rigged for results. Perhaps the dead brains were all suspected of having CTE. Which is why those were specifically chosen/donated/whatever. 

Anyways, here were a few other articles I perused:

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Many, perhaps most, football players do not develop disabling cognitive problems, and there are likely many other brain traumas that could potentially result in the prevalence of the tau protein that is associated with C.T.E.

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A paper published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that among 111 brains from NFL players donated to a brain bank created to study the long-term effects of repetitive head trauma, 110 had CTE. Sounds bad. But as alarming as those numbers seem, they really can’t tell us much about the actual risk of CTE among football players, nor can they reveal how common the condition is among people who’ve played the game. If you wanted to know the true prevalence of CTE among NFL players, you’d have to check the entire population of NFL players for CTE. That’s impossible because right now, CTE can be definitively diagnosed only by looking at the brain post-mortem. And the the brains that were examined for the JAMA study didn’t end up in the brain bank by chance — they were donated, for the most part, because the deceased’s next of kin suspected he might have had CTE.

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A landmark 2017 study by Boston University researchers found that the brains of 110 of 111 deceased NFL players they examined showed signs of CTE. Tthese brains were likely donated by families of players who had exhibited neurologic and psychiatric symptoms, this skewing the sample.

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 Cullum’s group studied 35 former NFL players age 50 and older who had sustained multiple concussions throughout their careers. The findings showed no significant association between the length of the individuals’ careers, the number of concussions and their cognitive function later in life.

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The following sports/recreational activities represent the categories contributing to the highest number of estimated head injuries treated in U.S. hospital emergency rooms in 2018.

 

• Cycling: 64,411
• Football: 51,892
• Baseball and Softball: 24,516
• Basketball: 38,898
• Powered Recreational Vehicles (ATVs, Dune Buggies, Go-Carts, Mini bikes): 30,222
• Soccer: 26,955
• Skateboards: 10,573
• Exercise & Equipment: 37,045 
• Horseback Riding: 6,141
• Golf: 6,357
• Hockey: 7,668
• Trampolines: 8,956
• Rugby/Lacrosse: 10,901
• Skating: 7,143
• Playground Equipment: 38,915

The top 10 sports-related head injury categories among children ages 14 and younger:

 

• Playground Equipment: 35,058
• Football: 31,277
• Basketball: 20,242
• Cycling: 19,921
• Baseball and Softball: 12,065
• Soccer: 12,709
• Swimming: 9,265
• Trampolines: 7,921
• Powered Recreational Vehicles: 6,036
• Skateboards: 3,101

^^^ That one is extra funny. Your kid is more likely to get a head injury by taking him to the park than by playing football^^^

 

I also just realized you and I were looking at different articles because I specifically was looking for athlete vs non athlete. You were looking at NFL only.

[Matts4313]

Basically that 99% article could be restated:

"111 NFL players that were suspected of having CTE, did in fact have CTE. But we havent done enough research to comp it to all the other 20,000 NFL players who were *not* suspected of CTE"

[incognito_man]

I'm well aware that the 110/111 study suffers from selection bias. However, there are no studies (I've seen) that indicate it's anywhere near 10% as you continue to claim.

[Matts4313]

What might be the corresponding lower bound? As the New York Times points out, the BU sample represents about one-tenth of the former NFL players who’ve died since the study began. If we assume that every other player in that group had a healthy brain, the total prevalence for CTE would be in the vicinity of 9 percent. From this we can conclude that the true rate of the disease is somewhere between 9 and 99 percent.

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If it’s really true that more than half of NFL retirees have CTE, and if it’s really true that more than 90 percent of men with that condition have symptoms while they’re still alive, then the numbers don’t add up. This suggests either that CTE is not as widespread as we thought or that the symptoms of CTE are not as severe as we’ve imagined, or both. At the very least, if we take the study’s headline-making finding at face value—that 99 percent of football players’ brains are likely to bear the signs of CTE—then we must acknowledge that, in the vast majority of cases, the presence of those neurofibrillary tangles will have no effect on those players’ well-being.

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In the absence of more and better data, we have no good way of working through all the uncertainty around CTE. We know for sure there is a problem, but we haven’t yet defined its scope and implications. McKee et al. understand this very well. Indeed, they aren’t claiming otherwise in their latest paper. “Estimates of prevalence cannot be concluded or implied from this sample,” they write, adding that the latest data don’t allow for any “estimation of the risk of participation in football and neuropathological outcomes.” Given how their work continues to be covered, it’s clear this message isn’t getting through.

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^^^^^^^^^^^^Your own study says not to take the results of their study seriously as nothing can be concluded. As I expected -the 99% is complete bullpoop ^^^

All from: https://slate.com/culture/2017/07/the-press-is-overhyping-the-latest-study-on-cte-in-the-nfl.html

 

Edited December 16, 2021 by Matts4313

[Matts4313]

6 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

I'm well aware that the 110/111 study suffers from selection bias. However, there are no studies (I've seen) that indicate it's anywhere near 10% as you continue to claim.

10% was for professional athletes, as I mentioned at the bottom of my post. 

[incognito_man]

I don't even know what you're arguing at this point. I do not have "my study". I am well aware that the absolute prevalence of CTE among football players is unknown. I also understand that more recent studies have begun to place numbers of risk increases (i.e. risk of developing CTE increases by 30% for every year of football played: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/cte-football/)

What is abundantly clear is that CTE is real, it affects an alarmingly high percentage of football players (exact numbers unclear, however), and that it carries with it additional risk of troubling brain disease and behavior. 

All of this together is eventually going to lead to rejection of the sport unless it finds a way to mitigate the risks. That is certain.

[jrry32]

At this point, we all know what football is. Yet, we're still watching it, and people are still playing it.

[Matts4313]

9 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

What is abundantly clear is that CTE is real, it affects an alarmingly high percentage of football players (exact numbers unclear, however), and that it carries with it additional risk of troubling brain disease and behavior. 

This is take is literally debunked by the researcher who claimed 99%. Like all of this take. They have no clue how high it is. And they have no clue how big of an additional risk CTE has in terms of affecting your life. Lastly, they have no clue of the risk of playing football.

Edited December 16, 2021 by Matts4313

[Matts4313]

Just now, jrry32 said:

At this point, we all know what football is. Yet, we're still watching it, and people are still playing it.

And its still insanely popular. The ratings are still great even with pandemic-decline. 

[Packerraymond]

On 12/14/2021 at 7:17 PM, incognito_man said:

The gladiator reign lasted for nearly 1,000 years in Rome - how much longer does the NFL have do we think?

(I am just going to keep creating this thread - BS that it was locked)

As long as it keeps making 10 billion dollars a year, forever. 

[incognito_man]

15 minutes ago, jrry32 said:

At this point, we all know what football is. Yet, we're still watching it, and people are still playing it.

but participation is decreasing in a decelerating way

we can be in denial if we want to, but football being played as it is today (resulting in CTE and the consequences thereof) has an expiration date.

[jrry32]

1 minute ago, incognito_man said:

but participation is decreasing in a decelerating way

we can be in denial if we want to, but football being played as it is today (resulting in CTE and the consequences thereof) has an expiration date.

As long as the money is there, the talent will be there.

[Packerraymond]

1 minute ago, incognito_man said:

but participation is decreasing in a decelerating way

we can be in denial if we want to, but football being played as it is today (resulting in CTE and the consequences thereof) has an expiration date.

We've been sticking two people in confined quarters, fighting until one is incapacitated or taps out for centuries. Football is not going anywhere because the sheltering parents of the world have pulled their kids out of it. That's a drop in the bucket to what would be necessary to hurt the future of the game.

[incognito_man]

3 minutes ago, jrry32 said:

As long as the money is there, the talent will be there.

Duh. But the money isn't always going to be there.

The big breakthrough will be when CTE can be diagnosed/measured on living brains. Then you're going to get guys getting tested earlier and earlier and for a LOT of them, they'll hang it up when faced with some real risk numbers.

Something like "Well, you have a 50% greater chance of developing nearly onset dementia if you play another 2 years".

That day will come.

[incognito_man]

3 minutes ago, Packerraymond said:

We've been sticking two people in confined quarters, fighting until one is incapacitated or taps out for centuries. Football is not going anywhere because the sheltering parents of the world have pulled their kids out of it. That's a drop in the bucket to what would be necessary to hurt the future of the game.

Humanity evolves.