SPORTS: MEDICINE : MEDICAL: CONDITIONS: CONCUSSIONS : LAW: CASE: DECISIONS : SPORTS: FOOTBALL: PROFESSIONAL : MEDICAL: DISEASES: DEMENTIA: The Crisis

[David P. Dillard]

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SPORTS: MEDICINE :

MEDICAL: CONDITIONS: CONCUSSIONS :

LAW: CASE: DECISIONS :

SPORTS: FOOTBALL: PROFESSIONAL :

MEDICAL: DISEASES: DEMENTIA:

The Crisis

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The Crisis

The great loss of information in the wake of the NFL concussion lawsuit
settlement

By Charles P. Pierce

September 4, 2013

Grantland

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9632293/the-nfl-concussion-settlement

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I understand fully why the players settled. A little money up front is
better than the possibility of no money ever, especially if you're dealing
with the kind of staggering medical bills that come with Alzheimer's or
other NFL-related dementias, and the staggered nature of the settlement
payouts seems to indicate that the most severely damaged of the retired
players will get the most money to help with their care. (There also were
some formidable legal hurdles to be overcome regarding the number of
plaintiffs, and how the NFL could hide behind er seek the protection of
collective bargaining agreements that it had negotiated down through the
years.)

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But the NFL didn't agree to this settlement to pay anyone's hospital
bills. That $765 million was to buy silence. It was to abort an
embarrassing discovery process. It was to bury the evidence of how little
the NFL ever has cared about the health of the people who work for it. As
part of the settlement, all the files about what the NFL knew, and how it
knew it, and even the results of its own research into what the game does
to the people who play it (which might have had significant public health
benefits far beyond the NFL itself) will remain locked away. The NFL is
now a fertilizer plant that doesn't want the inspectors on the property.
ESPN, which owns Grantland, has apparently even conspicuously bowed out on
a deal with PBS's Frontline on the concussion crisis. For the moment, at
least, pending other possible lawsuits, the game itself is the ammonium
nitrate, building up to another explosion, far from prying eyes.

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I have a particularly nasty dog in this fight. In 1989, my father died
after a prolonged struggle with Alzheimer's disease. All four of his
siblings followed him into the shadowlands of that fascinating, maddening
affliction. (As a writer, I have to admit, there is something darkly
compelling about Alzheimer's because it attacks the two things most
central to a writer's craft language and memory, which together make up
an individual's identity. Alzheimer's makes a new character out of a
familiar person.) I know what that disease is like. I know about the
hundred heartbreaking moments that come with it, and how it can make a
family disease into a family curse. There is nothing quite like the moment
when your father looks at his newest grandson and tells you what a nice
little dog you have.

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So, for reasons of my own, I have followed closely the unfolding saga of
what football did to the people who played it. I have some idea of what
their lives, and the lives of the people around them, have been like. We
were lucky. Alzheimer's came to wide public attention just about the time
my father was diagnosed. (Although when he disappeared for three days
after going out to the flower store, the state police told my wife that,
sometimes, men that age run off with their secretaries. Hurrah, I say, for
Increased Public Awareness.) The process of bringing the spotlight to
concussion-related dementias was very similar to how Alzheimer's itself
came to prominence, with one important difference. There was no powerful
corporate interest lined up to finance an industry of Alzheimer's denial.

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Make no mistake. Football in all of its manifestations didn't want this
research, and it sure as hell didn't want the results. It dragged its
feet. It howled in wounded self-regard.

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The complete article may be read at the URL above.

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Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jw...@temple.edu
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