The Autopsy That Changed Football
Growing up in Nigeria, Dr. Bennet Omalu knew next to nothing about American football. He didnt watch the games, he didnt know the teams, and he certainly didnt know the name Mike Webster.
That changed in 2002 when Omalu was assigned to perform an autopsy on the legendary Steelers center. Webster had died at 50, but to Omalu, he looked far older. Football had taken a punishing toll on his body. It was Omalus job to measure the damage.
As a neuropathologist, Omalu was especially interested in the brain. Inside Mike Websters brain, hed make a startling discovery: a disease never previously identified in football players. The condition, known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, was the first hard evidence that playing football could cause permanent brain damage. Players with CTE have battled depression, memory loss, and in some cases dementia.
I had to make sure the slides were Mike Websters slides, Omalu told FRONTLINE. I looked again. I saw changes that shouldnt be in a 50-year-old mans brains, and also changes that shouldnt be in a brain that looked normal.
Omalu published his findings, believing NFL officials would want to know more. They didnt. In public, league doctors assailed his research. Omalus conclusions confused the medical literature, they argued. In a rare move, they demanded a retraction.
In private, the message seemed different. As Omalu recalls in the following clip from League of Denial: Inside the NFLs Concussion Crisis, suddenly the criticism was no longer about his research. Rather, a league doctor would tell him, the trouble was in the implications for football.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/league-of-denial/the-autopsy-that-changed-football/