Aaron Hernandez suffered from most severe CTE ever found in a person his age
Source: The Washington Post
By Adam Kilgore November 9 at 3:50 PM
BOSTON Aaron Hernandez suffered the most severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy ever discovered in a person his age, damage that would have significantly affected his decision-making, judgment and cognition, researchers at Boston University revealed at a medical conference Thursday.
Ann McKee, the head of BUs CTE Center, which has studied the disease caused by repetitive brain trauma for more than a decade, called Hernandezs brain one of the most significant contributions to our work because of the brains pristine condition and the rare opportunity to study the disease in a 27-year-old.
Hernandez, a former New England Patriots tight end, hanged himself with a bedsheet in April in a Massachusetts prison while serving a life sentence for the murder of his friend Odin Lloyd in 2013.
In a diagnosis that linked one of footballs most notorious figures with the sports most significant health risk, doctors found Hernandez had Stage 3 CTE, which researchers had never seen in a brain younger than 46 years old, McKee said. Because the center has received few brains from people Hernandezs age, McKee could not say whether Hernandezs brain was representative of a 27-year-old who had played football as much as Hernandez. But she found the advanced stage of CTE alarming.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/aaron-hernandez-suffered-from-most-severe-cte-ever-found-in-a-person-his-age/2017/11/09/fa7cd204-c57b-11e7-afe9-4f60b5a6c4a0_story.html
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)and what about bull riding?
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)Bull Riders. Their actual would be even greater just by the laws of Physics. A Hockey Helmet is not going to give one much protection.
christx30
(6,241 posts)There's too much money in it. So what if people get brain trauma that haunts them for the rest of their lives? Who cares what they do to friends and loved ones? We taxpayers didn't spend billions on stadiums for nothing. As long as there are people willing to go out on that field, they'all keep making money for billionaires.
God, I hate that sport.
RobinA
(9,893 posts)Joe Football getting CTE will end football, it will be the lawsuits from Joe Footballs widow or Joe Footballs victim. Money will keep football going past its sell by date and money will kill it. If it gets killed. Im not sure where this is going, but I have a hard time believing football can survive if the CTE thing really gets rolling.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)There must be a class action lawyer working on it right now.
The only obstacle I can see is that it's voluntary self-harm.
Maybe some lawyers could explain how to get around that.
TheDebbieDee
(11,119 posts)planned and carried out his suicide? Can someone explain how this is possible?
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,345 posts)TheDebbieDee
(11,119 posts)I was wondering how someone with such poor impulse control could have planned and carried out a complex plan to perform his suicide...
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,345 posts)TheDebbieDee
(11,119 posts)and after figuring out a way to stick it to the Pats while leaving his daughter an estate, it required quite intricate planning actually...
RobinA
(9,893 posts)people with organic brain disease arent consistent in their dysfunction. This time they can control impulses, the next time they cant. It isnt all or nothing.
exboyfil
(17,863 posts)Unlike Hernandez his estate did not sign away the rights to sue by the NFLPA accepting a settlement.
mopinko
(70,104 posts)my suspicion is that domestic violence is causing a lot of damaged brains, which leads to a lot of criminal behavior.
if he was already acting badly at 15......
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)and he never really left that life behind even as he became a millionaire pro athlete...
HAB911
(8,892 posts)GusBob
(7,286 posts)How many brains of that age have they studied?
The text of the article clearly indicates very few
RobinA
(9,893 posts)what a normal 27 year old brain looks like and they know what Frank Giffords brain looked like as well as a bunch of similarly aged CTE brains and non- CTE beains.