Nfl's Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Analysis

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Meanwhile Grove (2012) explains, the NFL's Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI) committee called for a retraction of Dr. Omalu’s findings. The organization wanted this to happen because the conclusion in Dr. Omalu's article ran counter to all of the findings in the committee's research that they had conducted. The NFL claimed Dr. Omalu's research and his conclusions were misinterpreted and therefore not applicable to medical literature on CTE issues. Therefore, the MTBI Committee deemed the description of CTE in Mike Webster’s autopsy to be incorrect. To support their stance, the MTBI committee relied upon Webster's history in the league, noting that he had never missed any game time due to a head injury. Therefore, “the committee and the PR …show more content…

After neuropathologist Ann McKee told reporters in 2009 that the brain of a dead 45 year old ex NFL player named Tom McHale looked like that of a 72 year-old former boxer adding, Mckee told reporters that “I have never seen this disease in the general population, only in these athletes” (Gordon, 2013, ¶6). She later received a call from Ira Casson, co-chair of the MTBI committee, who wanted her to travel to the league's New York City offices to present her work. The meeting felt very antagonistic to many of the individuals who filled the room reports …show more content…

Players' in the NFL have the most success in winning claims of negligence because the NFL has consistently breached its duty to protect the neurological well-being of its players by not enacting adequate rules, policies, and regulations that protect the players. “The NFL possesses a general duty to exercise reasonable care because its conduct as the governing body of a violent game creates a risk of physical harm” (Nowinski, 2007, p.121). The league breached the duty to warn the players that professional football can cause long-term mental health risks, which the players might not discover through the exercise of their duty of care. The players are acting within the scope of their employment each time they play football, and every time they play it is the league's responsibility to provide safe working conditions. In August 2013 the NFL reached a class action settlement with 4500 former players and deceased players' families, in which the League agreed to pay $765 million to resolve the disputes. It has been reported that terms of the settlement include no admission of wrongdoing by the NFL, and more importantly no obligation to reveal data from its own sponsored research into neurological and degenerative brain diseases (Robeson & King, 2014, p.

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