Thursday, February 10, 2011

Super Bowl Concussion Hype Week, Part 2: What’s the Deal with the NFL and the Journal Neurosurgery?

[posted 2/2/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]


SEE ALSO:

“Pittsburgh Steelers’ Physician Joseph Maroon Key Figure in Sports Concussion Probe,” http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/pittsburgh-steelers-physician-joseph-maroon-key-figure-in-sports-concussion-probe/

“NFL Concussion Hype Week, Part 1: Los Angeles Times’ NFL Writer Pens a Promo for Riddell Helmets,” http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/super-bowl-concussion-hype-week-part-1-los-angeles-times%E2%80%99-nfl-writer-pens-a-promo-for-riddell-helmets/

I don’t think Dr. Joseph Maroon – team neurologist for the Pittsburgh Steelers, National Football League concussion consultant, and medical director for World Wrestling Entertainment – gets off the hook in the Federal Trade Commission investigation of Riddell helmets just by asserting that the company inflated the claims of the assessment of the helmets’ safety in the article Maroon co-authored for Neurosurgery, the journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, a professional group.

Nor do I think Neurosurgery itself gets off the hook for publishing a decade’s worth of research, much of it funded by the NFL, that arguably retarded rather than accelerated professional and public awareness of the magnitude of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and related issues.

I have not received a response to my email to Dr. Nelson Oyesiku of Emory University, the current editor-in-chief of Neurosurgery. (Interestingly, Oyesiku is Nigerian – as is Dr. Bennet Omalu, who discovered CTE.)

Here are the questions I asked Oyesiku:

1. There is currently a Federal Trade Commission investigation of promotional claims by the Riddell football helmet manufacturer that were based on data in a 2006 article in Neurosurgery.

Does the journal have a comment on this controversy?

Are there historical examples of allegations of exaggerated claims from Neurosurgery-published research by another marketer of a consumer product? I exclude here the categories of professional debates over the efficacy of particular pharmaceuticals, surgical techniques, therapies, and the like; I am referring only to products sold in general consumer markets. If the answer is yes, could you provide some parallel examples?

2. Questions have arisen concerning the relationships of authors of articles published in Neurosurgery with the National Football League.

Particular controversy surrounded work by Dr. Elliot Pellman, then chair of the NFL’s concussion policy committee, with a series of articles, beginning in 2003, in Neurosurgery, which at the time was edited by Dr. Mike Apuzzo, a consultant for the New York Giants. Dr. Robert Cantu, then a senior editor of the journal, suggested that the sample size of the data would not have warranted publication of a similar article about a subject other than football head injuries. And according to reports, Dr. Pellman revised one of the articles post-peer review and prior to publication, and without consulting co-authors. Did the Congress of Neurological Surgeons publish any subsequent correction or clarification? Was any other action taken?

Was this scenario covered by the Congress’s existing code of ethics? If so, in what particular passages? If not, were changes contemplated in the wake of the Pellman episode?

3. Dr. Kevin Guskiewicz, director of the Sports Research Laboratory at the University of North Carolina, was quoted by ESPN as saying, “The data that hasn’t shown up makes [the NFL doctors' work] questionable industry-funded research.” What is your response to that allegation?


Irv Muchnick

Super Bowl Concussion Hype Week, Part 1: Los Angeles Times’ NFL Writer Pens a Promo for Riddell Helmets

[posted 2/2/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]


SEE ALSO: “Pittsburgh Steelers’ Physician Joseph Maroon Key Figure in Sports Concussion Probe,” http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/pittsburgh-steelers-physician-joseph-maroon-key-figure-in-sports-concussion-probe/

Sam Farmer, the NFL writer for the Los Angeles Times, offers a great example of the benighted coverage of the football concussion crisis by most of the media. See “New helmets should be a hit,” January 29, http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-nfl-equipment-20110130,0,5864830.story.

In what is basically a promo for Riddell helmets, Farmer doesn’t get around to mentioning that Riddell is currently under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for allegedly exaggerating the safety claims in NFL-funded research at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, as published by the journal Neurosurgery in an article co-authored by Dr. Joseph Maroon, a doctor for both the Pittsburgh Steelers and World Wrestling Entertainment.

Asked for comment, Farmer emailed back, “Thanks for your information. Be well.”

NEXT: What’s the deal with the NFL and the journal Neurosurgery?



Irv Muchnick

Monday, February 7, 2011

Pittsburgh Steelers’ Physician Joseph Maroon Key Figure in Sports Concussion Probe

[posted 1/31/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]


After the Pittsburgh Steelers play in next Sunday’s Super Bowl, one of the sports world’s most important back stories will play out in Congress and the federal bureaucracy: a Federal Trade Commission investigation, initiated by Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, of the safety claims of Riddell helmets, the official supplier of the National Football League.

To college, high school, and youth league programs, Riddell has promoted its Revolution model as promising a 31 percent reduction in the risk of concussions. The claim is based on a study at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, underwritten by the NFL and published in 2006 in the clinical research journal Neurosurgery. A co-author of the article was Dr. Joseph Maroon, a team neurologist for the Steelers, a prominent member of the league’s traumatic brain injury policy committee, and the medical director of World Wrestling Entertainment.
Maroon told The New York Times that Riddell took out of context for a lay audience the data from his academic research. In sports vernacular, the physician threw the helmet manufacturer “under the bus.”

Now Senator Udall and others need to ask more pointed questions of Maroon himself, a central figure in the national sports concussion crisis – which is not just an imminent legal headache for the NFL but also an urgent concern for the health and safety of millions of younger, amateur, much less protected and informed athletes.

The head trauma issue reached critical mass in public consciousness with the discovery by doctors of tau protein accumulations in the brains of dead performers in contact sports; pioneer researcher Dr. Bennet Omalu and others named this phenomenon “chronic traumatic encephalopathy,” or CTE. The NFL’s slowness to acknowledge the reality of CTE became the focus of 2009 hearings of the House Judiciary Committee, which in turn led to the resignations of the co-chairs of the the league concussion policy committee. Most of the heat was directed at Dr. Ira Casson, who no-showed the hearings.

Another NFL policy committee casualty was its chairman until 2007, Dr. Elliot Pellman, who had brutally manipulated the commercial and scientific interests of league-funded research – in one case making last-minute revisions of an article for Neurosurgery after it was peer-reviewed but before it was published, and without even consulting co-authors. After the 2009 Judiciary Committee public grilling, the league dropped Pellman altogether from its internal committee.

Dr. Maroon, who did provide perfunctory testimony to the Judiciary Committee and remains an NFL consultant, was not the villain of the event. However, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez of California alertly pointed out that Maroon and other Pitt med center clinicians who help formulate league policy market their privately owned company’s product, a concussion-management system called imPACT, to the NFL and other sports entities worldwide.

As with the other doctors, Maroon’s independence and transparency are highly questionable. And his outside business empire is even more formidable.

That empire includes his portfolio as medical director of World Wrestling Entertainment. After the double murder/suicide of pro wrestler Chris Benoit in 2007, WWE hired Maroon to install imPACT there and to oversee other aspects of what the company calls its “wellness policy.” In this role, Maroon has either uttered or enabled a series of false or misleading public statements, including his own preposterous remark – during last year’s Connecticut U.S. Senate campaign of former WWE chief executive Linda McMahon – that “we have no talent now on steroids.”

In 2009, for an ESPN report on the CTE findings in the brain of another dead young wrestler, Andrew Martin, WWE asserted that it had never been given access to the Benoit brain studies. In fact, Maroon attended an October 2008 meeting at the West Virginia Brain Injury Research Institute at which Drs. Omalu and Julian Bailes showed Benoit specimens; another independent attendee said Maroon had “brokered” the meeting. (WWE now says that its statement meant that it challenges the “chain of custody” of Omalu’s histologic slides.)

In addition, Maroon aggressively promotes products for at least two unregulated supplement companies. If he doesn’t have an equity interest in one of them, Vinomis Labs, he does in the company that licensed research to it. Maroon’s University of Pittsburgh colleague Dr. Bryan Donohue – also WWE’s consulting cardiologist – is a company investor and officer.

The root of the investigation of sports concussions is the ecosystem of clinical research, an interdependent web of doctors, research journals and funding, and for-profit output. All roads in that probe go through Dr. Joseph Maroon. His involvement in the Riddell helmet matter is just one of many coming government investigative offshoots. He belongs at the center of the public conversation of concussions during Super Bowl week.

WWE’s No. 2, Donna Goldsmith, Departs

[posted 1/29/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]


Donna Goldsmith, the chief operating officer of World Wrestling Entertainment, has resigned. According to Wrestling Observer‘s Dave Meltzer, no one saw this coming: “The speculation was that it is tied to the disappointing fourth quarter [earnings results].”

Most Popular January Posts at This Blog

1. “WWE Investigation Should Be on Track With New Connecticut Labor Commissioner,” January 25, 2011, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/wwe-investigation-should-be-on-track-with-new-connecticut-labor-commissioner/

2. “Muchnick Book Bonus: In Bed With the WWF – Sex and Scandal in Pro Wrestling,” May 15, 2010, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/muchnick-book-bonus-%E2%80%98in-bed-with-the-wwf-%E2%80%93-sex-and-scandal-in-pro-wrestling%E2%80%99/

3. “NFL Bans Coaches From Relationships With Supplement Companies. But NFL and WWE Doctor Joseph Maroon? Ka-Ching!”, January 20, 2011, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/nfl-bans-coaches-from-relationships-with-supplement-companies-but-nfl-and-wwe-doctor-joseph-maroon-ka-ching/

4. “New Threats From WWE Lawyer Jerry McDevitt,” December 17, 2010, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/new-threats-from-wwe-lawyer-jerry-mcdevitt/

5. “Linda McMahon’s Role in the WWE Pedophile Scandal Still Hangs, Unpublished, in the Politicos’ Air,” July 14, 2010, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/linda-mcmahon%E2%80%99s-role-in-the-wwe-pedophile-scandal-still-hangs-unpublished-in-the-politicos%E2%80%99-air/

6.
“Pitt Med Center Doctors’ Supplement Company and WWE Ties Skirt Ethics Policy,” January 4, 2011, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/pitt-med-center-doctors-supplement-company-and-wwe-ties-skirt-ethics-policy/

7. “Steelers’ Wheel: Pittsburgh Media Are Mum on the Connections of Pitt Med Center, Pittsburgh Steelers, and WWE Scandals,” January 7, 2011, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/steelers%E2%80%99-wheel-pittsburgh-media-are-mum-on-the-connections-of-pitt-med-center-pittsburgh-steelers-and-wwe-scandals/

8. “In Case We Didn’t Already Know: Congressman Waxman’s 2009 Call to the White House Drug Policy Office to Investigate WWE Was a Charade,” Januay 18, 2011, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/in-case-we-didn%E2%80%99t-already-know-congressman-waxman%E2%80%99s-2009-call-to-the-white-house-drug-policy-office-to-investigate-wwe-was-a-charade/

9. “Linda McMahon 2012? Bring It On!”, January 19, 2011, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/linda-mcmahon-2012-bring-it-on/

10. “Sports Concussion Scandal Ground Zero: NFL and WWE Doc Joseph Maroon’s Hype Article in ‘Neurosurgery’ on Riddell Football Helmets,” January 23, 2011, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/sports-concussion-scandal-ground-zero-nfl-and-wwe-doc-joseph-maroon%E2%80%99s-hype-article-in-%E2%80%98neurosurgery%E2%80%99-on-riddell-football-helmets/

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Wrestling and Mainstream Media on Pittsburgh Steelers / WWE Doc Joseph Maroon ...

... are both Missing In Action.

Once again, the people who care so much about pro wrestling that they protect it, and the people who care so little about it that they dismiss it, are tag-team partners.


Irv Muchnick

Senator Blumenthal, on Judiciary Committee, Has Another Perspective on Linda McMahon

[posted 1/27/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]


One of the committee assignments Senator Richard Blumenthal has landed is Judiciary. It’s a reminder that the campaign for the Senate seat last year reopened questions about obstruction of justice from 1989 to 1994 by Linda McMahon and her company, the forerunner of World Wrestling Entertainment.

In April, reporter Ted Mann of New London’s The Day dug out of court archives McMahon’s December 1, 1989, memo instructing wrestling executive Pat Patterson to tip off Pennsylvania ring doctor George Zahorian that he was under federal criminal investigation for steroid distribution. The document is viewable at http://www.theday.com/assets/pdf/NL7163449.PDF.

I remain interested in Mann’s original coverage of the source of the leak to McMahon. She said it was James West, at the time the George H.W. Bush administration’s U.S. attorney for the middle district of Pennsylvania. West said “no” to Mann and “no comment” to me; the second answer is different than the first and lends itself to follow-up and specifics.

The passing along of such information by a federal prosecutor would be a very serious matter warranting exposure and airing, no matter how many years later. In addition, that history bears on efforts to reform and regulate the pro wrestling industry moving forward.

But let’s face it: If Linda McMahon is intent on running for office again in 2012 — as all reports and as her visibility on the “rubber chicken circuit” suggest — then her opponents will have their own reasons to be pressuring new Senate Judiciary Committee member Blumenthal to look more closely at the dangling mysteries of that 1989 memo.


FURTHER READING

“How the McMahons’ WWE Beat the Rap in the 1990s (Part 2, the Steroid Charges),” November 30, 2010, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/how-the-mcmahons%E2%80%99-wwe-beat-the-rap-in-the-1990s-part-2-the-steroid-charges/

“How Vince and Linda McMahon’s WWE Beat the 1990s Steroid Charges: A Resource Guide,” November 30, 2010, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/how-vince-and-linda-mcmahon%E2%80%99s-wwe-beat-the-1990s-steroid-charges-a-resource-guide/


Irv Muchnick