Football is destroying itself
(via Kottke) Grantland has two articles, one by Jonah Lehrer and one by Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier, about how concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) may end the sport of football in the near future.
Remember “punch-drunk” boxers? It turns out they were literally pummeling their brains into an Alzheimer’s-like state of neuron death. Chronic exposure to concussions and subconcussive impacts tears apart the brain’s neurons and eventually causes it to destroy itself from the inside out. No one knows why or how, but it’s becoming clear that it’s trauma-induced brain damage, and it’s completely irreversible.
