Hernandez suffered most severe CTE ever found in a person his age

[patfanken]

My first thought after I read the OP was that it made me wonder if Hernandez's result my make scientists question whether head trauma as being the sole cause of CTE, given how young he was to have these results.

I don't think we will ever know the true causes of this affliction until there is some way they can track it in people before they are dead. Right now the sample sizes are just too small to create anything more than a scientific "implication"

 

[Off The Grid]

For the good of the league and football we need an immediate biopsy of Ray Lewis' (he killed a guy) brain to check for CTE and validate this research.

"Can we have your Liver?"

"But...I'm using it, eh?"

Fanatical Yankee approves of this message.

 

[Off The Grid]

"Can we have your Liver?"

"But...I'm using it, eh?"

Fanatical Yankee approves of this message.

Sorry...very negligent in not providing the Video...

 

[XLIX]

Boston University is, and has been for some time, at the forefront of CTE research.

I am aware but that doesn't exactly answer the question.

 

[Simpelton]

hummm...who am I to question this group of elite doctors. However, I will have a hard time to believe he did what he did because of this condition.

There's very rarely a 1:1 correlation between a mental condition and a choice of action. However it'd be strange to deny in a situation like this that CTE could have been a serious influence in bringing Hernandez all the way to the point of murder.

 

[Simpelton]

My first thought after I read the OP was that it made me wonder if Hernandez's result my make scientists question whether head trauma as being the sole cause of CTE, given how young he was to have these results.

I don't think we will ever know the true causes of this affliction until there is some way they can track it in people before they are dead. Right now the sample sizes are just too small to create anything more than a scientific "implication"

I want you to think for a second about what you just said. You know what CTE is, right? The long term is "Cranial Trauma Encephalopathy." Literally from the Greek, that means, "skull trauma brain damage/malfunction/disease." That's not an exact translation but it's pretty danged close.

What other kind of cause of trauma, in your mind, could cranial trauma encephalopathy be talking about? Cause I have to think modern medical science would call damage based on any other source by some other name.

 

[patfanken]

I want you to think for a second about what you just said. You know what CTE is, right? The long term is "Cranial Trauma Encephalopathy." Literally from the Greek, that means, "skull trauma brain damage/malfunction/disease." That's not an exact translation but it's pretty danged close.

What other kind of cause of trauma, in your mind, could cranial trauma encephalopathy be talking about? Cause I have to think modern medical science would call damage based on any other source by some other name.

No one love medical science more than me because it has kept me alive 20 years past my genetic due date. But sometimes the story goes past just the name. The fact is no one yet has a clue why CTE forms in some brains and not others.

Played the game in an era where using your head as a battering ram was the way you played the game, and I played the game that way for a long time. So while my mental acuity isn't what it used to be, why is it that I haven't experienced the devastating effects 0f CTE, or what about the millions of guys who also played during that era.

There are so many questions that need to be answered about CTE. Because clearly the implication this is being fostered is that if you play football, you will get CTE. THAT of course is not the truth, otherwise you'd have millions of people walking around in a zombie like state. Are their genetic elements that lead some people to get it?? Are their environmental aspects? So many questions to be answered before people should make the direct link that football causes CTE. That's all I'm trying to say.

 

[IllegalContact]

There's very rarely a 1:1 correlation between a mental condition and a choice of action. However it'd be strange to deny in a situation like this that CTE could have been a serious influence in bringing Hernandez all the way to the point of murder.

And the point is what? That he basically scrambled his eggs because he did what he wanted to.......next!

Of course because of cte I see football as we know it ending down the line but for now, this is nothing more than his estate trying to get more money from the pats

Meanwhile, the popularity of mma blooms

 

[ForThoseAboutToRock]

On the Table, the Brain Appeared Normal

Pretty good article in NY Times about this. It's not sensationalized (though you can tell the doctors see the results as surprising).

The brain looked normal and healthy from the outside until they sectioned it and immediately started finding problems:

One interesting quote:

The septum pellucidum, a small membrane between the two halves of the brain, was atrophied to the point that it looked withered and fragile, even perforated. When the neuropathologist later went to look for others in a similar condition, the youngest comparable example was a 46-year-old boxer.

The fornix, a C-shaped bundle of nerves, was similarly deteriorated, stripped of its relative heft. The hippocampus, too. Even some of the most famously diseased brains that the neuropathologist had explored, from men who had died decades later, did not have such obvious signs of destruction when examined by the naked eye.

There's nothing in the article to suggest Hernandez's estate or lawyers slipping envelopes of money into labcoat pockets to help a case against the NFL - the article provides a reasonable alternative for the timing of this headline. This came to the news recently because a) the neuropathologist didn't do interviews when the analysis was complete in Sept. to avoid getting mixed in with what were sure to be numerous headlines; and b) she recently presented these findings at a conference - standard industry practice.