In a news conference at his offices, attorney Jose Baez says testing showed that Hernandez had a severe case of the disease.
CTE can be caused by repeated head trauma and leads to symptoms like violent mood swings, depression and other cognitive difficulties. Hernandez killed himself in April in the jail cell where he was serving a life-without-parole sentence for a 2013 murder. His death came just hours before the Patriots visited the White House to celebrate their latest Super Bowl victory.
CTE can only be diagnosed in an autopsy. A recent study found evidence of the disease in 110 of 111 former NFL players whose brains were examined.
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While CTE is no doubt prevalent, I doubt that 99%-plus of NFL players have it.
While CTE is no doubt prevalent, I doubt that 99%-plus of NFL players have it.
I don't think its as simple as not having it at vs. having it to a degree that you can't stop wanting to kill yourself or you can't control whether you kill others. I think there are probably gradations of having it.
I'm betting many players or former players have it to a degree that they don't exhibit symptoms. Maybe they live to a reasonably old age. Then they die, and we check their brains, and we find out they had evidence of CTE.
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self-selected, in that the players whose brains were examined were already exhibiting some of the signs of the disease?
While CTE is no doubt prevalent, I doubt that 99%-plus of NFL players have it.
I don't think its as simple as not having it at vs. having it to a degree that you can't stop wanting to kill yourself or you can't control whether you kill others. I think there are probably gradations of having it.
I'm betting many players or former players have it to a degree that they don't exhibit symptoms. Maybe they live to a reasonably old age. Then they die, and we check their brains, and we find out they had evidence of CTE.
Maybe you're right. I hope that the NFL and equipment companies are working overtime on advanced helmets that prevent CTE, because if not, football is eventually going to die in this country from not enough kids playing.
Nobody said he got it in the NFL. That is why it's so scary. You can get it in college. In high school. Maybe even peewee.
Well, since you've used CAPS, you clearly have your finger on the pulse of cutting edge science.
While CTE is no doubt prevalent, I doubt that 99%-plus of NFL players have it.
The researchers conducting these are super clear that there is selection bias. They're very upfront about that, as these brains are donated by families who suspect CTE. They're also on record saying to take caution to assume correlation, as none has been made.
But, they have said football is dangerous.
Credit to the Freakonomics team for this transcript. By the way, CTE researcher Ann McKee is quoted first.
McKEE: Yeah. I don’t think we’re at the point where we can talk about a definitive risk estimate for an N.F.L. player. I do think the 99 percent — although we have said in every interview and we said it very clearly in that paper — that number became larger than life. But that wasn’t because of the authors of the scientific manuscript.
URSCHEL: Frankly, there is a strong case of self-selection bias there and that cannot be ignored.
DUBNER: In other words, the brains that are being donated to this bank were from families or players who suspected that they had C.T.E. or something close to that. Is that what you’re talking about?
URSCHEL: Yes. I can’t say that I know for certain that it’s self-selection bias. But my instincts tell me it’s extremely likely that it is.
McKEE: It’s not a general population of all people in the community or all football players in the community. If we had those population studies, I’m sure the risk would be lower. However, the question is, “Would the risk be acceptable?” In my opinion, this study says, “No, it would not be acceptable.”
DUBNER: I assume the timing of the study and your decision were not coincidental?
URSCHEL: No, I don’t think it was necessarily coincidental but I don’t think it was necessarily directly causal. The best, the easiest way I can explain it is that it was causal in one respect but not in the way that most people think it was. The way that it was causal is that it really reopened the dialogue within, talking to myself and also between myself and my fiance. It really opened a dialogue that I had not opened in an extremely long time.
DUBNER: Why was that? I mean, can I psychoanalyze you for one second?
URSCHEL: Yes, of course, feel free.
DUBNER: Is [it] because you loved playing football so much that even though the rational part of your brain — that maybe contained the mathematical abilities in your brain — you were able to override that or quiet it down so that you could keep doing what you wanted to do?
URSCHEL: Yes! That’s a good way to put it. This thing comes out and obviously it’s not 99 percent. Like it’s 99 percent in the study but it’s like, for me, is my chances 99 percent? I highly doubt it. Is it 0 percent? I highly doubt it. But it’s not 99 percent and the biggest thing it did was it made me say, “I should actually probably think about this again.” Not like, “This new evidence is extremely overwhelming [and changes] my opinion.” It’s more like, “This really brings something to my attention in a very real way that, quite frankly, I was more or less aware of but attempting to ignore to a degree.” In the back of my head, I had already been having these thoughts to some degree about my longevity and how long I wanted to play. The main thing that I thought about [was], “What was I most passionate about and what was I most excited about in life going forward?” When I thought about, “What are these one or two or three things?” Football, all of a sudden, was not one of these top two or three things. Football is actually actively hindering me from doing some of these things. Well, then it became a real conversation.
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He wasn't sexually abused? I don't get the comparison
While CTE is no doubt prevalent, I doubt that 99%-plus of NFL players have it.
The lower limit is more interesting. During the time that study was conducted, they tested the brains of about 10% of the NFLers who died. About 1100 died, about 110 tested. If you assume that not a single one of the other 990 who went untested had CTE, you get a CTE occurrence of 9% or 10%. That's about twice the rate of the general population.
So taking the most optimistic view of the data, playing football in HS + college + NFL, appears to roughly double the risk of CTE.
The data doesn't "prove" anything more than that, but I bet the real % is closer to 99% than 9%. When you see guys who died young, like Aaron Hernandez, with advanced CTE, that indicates you don't have to play for 15 years or something. You can get it after just a few years of regular game play.
And it's not necessarily something that sets in later in life. It's not "Play now, get your money, but you'll have trouble when you're 60." It's like, ":lay now, and you'll have trouble, maybe now, maybe later. If you're lucky you'll get your money first, but maybe not."
You cannot be a fan of the game, and watch the thumpers be relageted to wheelchairs, and think the NFL, isn't complicit. I've seen players come back on the field following "concussion protocol," that are absolutely lost.
As I understand it from articles I've read, the incidence of CTE in the general population is around 5%.
And that includes everyone: boxers, competitive martial artists, football and soccer payers and other people who have their brains jostled a lot.
Great byproduct of free speech is the heads up on who to avoid in life. Discussing CTE is a veritable Bat signal for some dodos to come out.
Of course there's selection bias. All disease study begins with a biased population at some point.
And then populations and studies expand and the standard sciences of disease study kick in.
But by all means ignore the directional evidence and close up shop because you might not like the results.
Do you know how many Congressman's brains it takes to make a pound?
More seriously, the incidence might only be double that in the general population--which I doubt--but how many in the general population have the version that causes the symptoms of early onset Alzeimers, plus plus plus? How many in the general population have a brain so badly deteriorated that they shoot themselves in the chest, in order to save the brain for the scientists?
Anyone who thinks that you can ignore the degree of CTE in order to justify that there isn't any problem...just might have CTE.
FWIW, this helps to explain what happened with Hernandez.
I honestly feel NFL as we know it is enjoying it's final years - lawsuits will inevitably cause dramatic changes. I've said it before - look to the Sprint football model - weight limit's - for the future.
I don't know about boxers - the very essence is to pound the head.
But considering the soldiers can be killed "merely" by the concussion/shock wave of an explosion, I would agree with you. Supposedly internal organs can be jellified by large explosions and soldiers die without being hit by the shrapnel.
Considering Hernandez barely played in the NFL, you would have to figure most of the damage came from college and high school.
CTE is serious and needs to be managed very professionally, so no disrespect.
But this dirt bag was a gang member as a teen and shot someone in face at age 19 while at Miami. CTE did not have anything to do with his psycopathology at that time. Now its all going to be blamed on CTE.
I wonder how do rugby players stack up to football players regarding CTE.