Dave Pear's Blog

First of all, best of luck to Deion Sanders, who is such a brilliant genius that he doesn’t expect any cognitive problems in his future. Good luck with the child support, hope you don’t tell your next wife about the divorce in a text message – all the best in your stellar career and perfect NFL life.
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Deion Sanders doubts NFL’s concussion problem, says former players are looking for payday

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Now this is a what a safety warning should look like. Larry Kaminski just received this letter and study summary from the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety*, the federal research agency that works with OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), the Dept. of Health and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control). BTW – OSHA is is the main federal agency charged with the enforcement of worker safety and health legislation. This new information is a warning about the long-term effects from brain injuries that they have observed in a disproportionately higher number of football players when compared to the general population. Dementia, Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS) and Alzheimers are cited in their study. With concussion lawsuits literally taking over much of the media coverage on football even with the run up to Super Bowl, we wonder how many more studies and how much more money the NFL is going to keep throwing at this? (Be sure to fill in their survey and mail it in after you’ve finished reading their summary.)
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Once again, we’ve uploaded a copy of this NIOSH packet to Scribd for easy viewing on our Blog and to make it available for downloading and printing. You can also click the Enlarge icon in the lower right corner of the menu at the bottom of the viewing screen to go Full Screen for easier reading (just hit the ESC key to close):
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NIOSH NFL Brain Injury Study

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As is often the case, it started with this short note we received from Elizabeth Pierce last week:

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My father was a former NFL player who passed away after 20 years of dementia.

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In our last post, we uploaded the 88 Plan Summary which was 32 pages long (click HERE to read that earlier post).

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Dr. Daniel Amen has just allowed us to post a great interview in which he discusses his interest in studying the current debate and issues, how his clinic is studying the problem, as well as some of the new findings that have started to come out of these ongoing studies. (The entire interview is only 13:00 minutes long and covers a lot of topics so please take a few minutes to watch this for yourself and your loved ones.)

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More momentum on the concussion front as the brain injury story continues to makes its way upstream into the mainstream media. This seems to be one story that’s becoming harder and harder for the NFL to suppress or spin – Thank you, Doctor No!

AAA

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One of the presentations that drew a lot of attention during The Summit was from Bruce Laird of Fourth and Goal. Fourth and Goal has been in ongoing discussions with the NFL to use the NFL Alumni organization as a possible platform for advocacy of disability and pension reform. At the conclusion of The Summit, the group voted to continue moving forward without embracing any single organization at this early stage while encouraging and supporting all organizations that will advance retired players’ issues. (You can look at the evolving Summit blog by clicking HERE and you’ll find Bruce Laird’s presentation under the PowerPoints tab – or click HERE.)

Bernie Parrish has already voiced some of his strong opinions in no uncertain terms (HERE and HERE) and this is definitely going to make it a very hot summer topic. There’s no middle ground or gray area on this one. Do the retired players embrace an existing organization that has been looked on as another business-as-usual club for elite members or will they be embracing an organization that’s been reborn into something that can actually serve the membership at large with complete transparency and representation for each and every one of its members? Only time will tell and everyone’s watching closely.

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