NFL reneges on CTE funding promise

[Spesh]

The NFL, which spent years criticizing researchers who warned about the dangers of football-related head trauma, has backed out of one of the most ambitious studies yet on the relationship between football and brain disease, sources familiar with the project told Outside the Lines.

The seven-year, $16 million initiative was to be funded out of a $30 million research grant the NFL gave the National Institutes of Health in 2012. The NFL has said repeatedly that it has no control over how that money is spent, but the league balked at this study, sources said, because the NIH awarded the project to a group led by a prominent Boston University researcher who has been critical of the league.

In a news release announcing the study Tuesday morning, Boston University said the NIH would pay for the project but made no mention of the NFL. The study seeks to capture what has been described as the holy grail of concussion research: the ability to diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in living patients.

Asked why the NFL did not want to fund the study, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy on Monday referred questions to the NIH, writing in an email: "The NIH makes its own funding decisions." On Tuesday, McCarthy tweeted that the story was "wrong."

The NFL's decision not to fund the Boston University CTE study delayed its announcement for months, and the issue ultimately reached the office of NIH director Dr. Francis S. Collins, according to sources. As late as this week, some officials held out hope the league would change its mind, but the NIH remained committed to funding the project regardless.

"This problem is larger than the NFL," said Dr. Walter Koroshetz, director of NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. "We're trying to get answers for people. There are a lot of concerned people out there, especially parents of kids."

When the NFL's "unrestricted" $30 million gift was announced in 2012, the NIH said the money came "with no strings attached"; however, an NIH official clarified the gift terms two years later, telling Outside the Lines that, in fact, the league retained veto power over projects that it funds.

Sources told Outside the Lines that the league exercised that power when it learned that Robert Stern, a professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Boston University, would be the project's lead researcher. The league, sources said, raised concerns about Stern's objectivity, despite an exhaustive vetting process that included a "scientific merit review" and a separate evaluation by a dozen high-level experts assembled by the NIH.

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_...versity-head-trauma-study-concerns-researcher

How utterly unsurprising.

 

[TheWalrus]

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_...versity-head-trauma-study-concerns-researcher

How utterly unsurprising.

Agreed. Stern was heavily featured in League of Denial, btw.

As long as the diagnosis can only be postmortem, the NFL can claim selection bias, ie that brains are only going to be donated by the families of people who suspect problems. Any method of diagnosing CTE in living people is a major, galactic threat to the NFL bottom line. Every NFL player would sign up for that test. One would imagine a significant portion of those diagnosed would retire. And what happens when our favorite -- still living -- players are diagnosed? Based on comments I've read from Zach Thomas, he thinks he has it. Does Dan Marino? Does Barry Sanders? Does Jerry Rice?

 

[Dolfan Denny]

Agreed. Stern was heavily featured in League of Denial, btw.

As long as the diagnosis can only be postmortem, the NFL can claim selection bias, ie that brains are only going to be donated by the families of people who suspect problems. Any method of diagnosing CTE in living people is a major, galactic threat to the NFL bottom line. Every NFL player would sign up for that test. One would imagine a significant portion of those diagnosed would retire. And what happens when our favorite -- still living -- players are diagnosed? Based on comments I've read from Zach Thomas, he thinks he has it. Does Dan Marino? Does Barry Sanders? Does Jerry Rice?

And if it revealed widespread problems, every responsible mother would stop her son from playing Pee Wee football, and there goes the NFL.