[posted 2/11/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
[originally published February 7 at Beyond Chron, http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Helmet_to_Helmet_FTC_s_Investigation_Could_Be_the_Super_Bowl_for_Corrupt_NFL_Doctors_and_the_National_Concussion_Crisis_8877.html]
by Irvin Muchnick
With the Super Bowl out of the way, the National Football League is fraught with the unfinished business of a new collective bargaining agreement between owners and players. Far less attention has been given to a threat that may be even bigger: the Federal Trade Commission’s announced probe of the exaggerated safety claims of football helmet manufacturers.
All too often, government investigations of industry culminate in bland consent decrees whereby the corporations alleged to have offended standards promise to abandon particular claims without admitting they did anything wrong. If that becomes the end result of the FTC examination of Riddell, the official helmet supplier for the NFL, and of Riddell’s chief competitor Schutt Sports, then an important opportunity will have been missed to shine light on what is now the 17-year-old story of the NFL’s controversial management of the concussion issue.
There’s plenty to suggest that the FTC, at the urging of Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, intends to go beyond the advertising and YouTube promo videos of Riddell and Schutt, and follow the story to its source: the process and substance of the clinical research over the last two decades that has slowed and misled the public in understanding the causes and magnitude of systematic brain trauma in football. If the feds pursue that trail, they will unravel the enmeshment of corrupt NFL doctors with a prominent medical institution and a prominent journal that have skewed studies and publications in ways favorable to a league facing potentially cataclysmic legal exposure.
Udall’s January 4 letter to the FTC opened a can of worms that can’t be resealed where it noted that Riddell cites research showing that its Revolution helmet – heavily marketed all the way down to youth leagues through the company’s NFL connection – is based on a 2006 article in the journal Neurosurgery.
The article had five co-authors. One was Thad Ide, Riddell’s chief engineer. Three others were University of Pittsburgh Medical Center colleagues Mark Lovell, Micky Collins, and Joseph Maroon. Lovell is the chairman and Collins the chief clinical officer for the for-profit Pittsburgh company imPACT Applications, Inc., which markets concussion-management software to the NFL and many other leagues and teams in all sports.
Dr. Maroon is the third imPACT owner associated with the Riddell study, as well as numerous other studies touted in Neurosurgery, the journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. He is listed as imPACT’s chief medical officer. Maroon also is the long-time neurosurgeon for the Steelers and a member, since its creation in 1994 by former commissioner Paul Tagliabue, of the NFL’s policy committee on traumatic brain injuries.
According to the The New York Times, Maroon now discredits Riddell’s advertising claim with a claim of his own – that company promos stretched the Neurosurgery research data for lay consumers. But Maroon’s semantic nuance is not supported by a plain reading of the article, whose own abstract states: “Wearing the Revolution helmet was associated with approximately a 31% decreased relative risk and 2.3% decreased absolute risk for sustaining a concussion in this cohort study.”
Nor does Maroon’s insistence that Riddell distorted his work address why neither he nor the NFL raised a peep during at least two years of promotion of the Revolution helmet using the 31 percent figure.
So there is strong justification for a sophisticated government examination of the role of the league and its doctors in the “evolution of the Revolution.” Above all, the national public health crisis of sports concussions – estimated to total four million annually, not including the possibility that tens of millions more “sub-concussive” head blows contribute to youth mental deterioration – demands a new round of Congressional hearings on how the NFL has framed, manipulated, and stalled. Such an initiative will not resume at the House Judiciary Committee, which held hearings in 2009, since the Democrats no longer hold a majority there. But Udall could take up at the cause at the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
Another possibility is Connecticut’s new senator, Richard Blumenthal, who has been appointed to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Blumenthal won a hard-fought election last November against Republican nominee Linda McMahon, who “self-funded” her campaign with $50 million of wealth generated by the billion-dollar publicly traded corporation World Wrestling Entertainment, which she had co-founded with her husband Vince.
Maroon himself counts a cushy consultancy for the McMahons among his many entrepreneurial hats: WWE named Maroon its “medical director” and installed his imPACT system there following the 2007 double murder/suicide of star wrestler Chris Benoit. Buttressed by his NFL experience, Maroon dutifully enabled or directly uttered dubious WWE representations on everything from its tolerance for “chair shots” to the head as part of its choreographed entertainment, to its access to the Benoit brain study by Dr. Bennet Omalu, the pioneer of “chronic traumatic encephalopathy” research, to whether WWE performers use steroids.
Federal investigators who look into the full range of work of the doctor who conveniently cried foul at Riddell’s exploitation of his research will find that he is also an endorser of unregulated supplements and a huckster for the demographically ripe field of anti-aging “wellness.”
The NFL offseason began with Aaron Rodgers’ final kneeldown at Cowboys Stadium. Our elected leaders shouldn’t waste a day following the FTC’s Riddell investigation wherever it leads.
For continuing developments, follow my blog at http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com.
Irvin Muchnick is author of CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Football Helmet Group Head ‘Has Talked With’ Senator Udall And ‘Is Encouraging’ FTC Investigation -- Thanks For Nothing
[posted 2/10/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Earlier this week Mike Oliver, executive director of the National Operating Committee on Sports Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE), explained to me that the organization’s pre-Super Bowl public alert to athletes and parents made no reference to a new Federal Trade Commission investigation of Riddell football helmet promotional claims because “we certainly don’t feel as though we are in a position to speak on behalf of the FTC.”
Yet last week MIT’s Technology Review reported that “Oliver says he has talked with [Senator Tom] Udall and is encouraging the [FTC] investigation.” See “What’s Next for Concussions in Football?”, http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/26350/?p1=A5.
So if NOCSAE is encouraging the investigation, why isn’t it telling athletes and parents that the investigation exists?
Oliver says test data show that all the helmets on the market are nearly identical in performance. By “performance,” he seems to mean preventing concussions.
Meanwhile, Dr. Joseph Maroon, whose National Football League-funded study and Neurosurgery article are used by Riddell to hype its Revolution helmet as showing a 31 percent reduced concussion risk – the central claim under scrutiny by the FTC – told Technology Review, “There is a lot about concussions and head injury that researchers don’t fully understand.”
Yeah, sure. But aren’t articles in clinical journals supposed to be about what researchers believe they do understand? Where’s the accountability here?
Maroon serves the information-gap market by peddling to the NFL and others “imPACT,” a software system that measures neurological function. Similarly, the punch line of NOCSAE’s message to Technology Review is that the league plans to start using Riddell’s patented “HIT sensor” inside helmets to measure location, magnitude, and direction of blows during games.
Oliver, according to TR: Any claim “not based in fact or science is potentially very damaging.” Concussions in football are “a complex issue” and “it won’t be until we can really understand the injury that we can build better helmet technology.” But he’s “confident that will happen, soon.”
While the careerist experts busy themselves handing out and receiving grants, and delivering self-serving lectures on the complexity of it all, it’s time for Congress to step in with public hearings. Oliver may be “confident” about the march of commercial technology. The rest of us, however, have unanswered questions about the interaction of that process with the dissemination of basic public health information.
And a good place to start is with Joseph Maroon, doctor and public special teams player for both the National Football League and World Wrestling Entertainment.
Irv Muchnick
Earlier this week Mike Oliver, executive director of the National Operating Committee on Sports Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE), explained to me that the organization’s pre-Super Bowl public alert to athletes and parents made no reference to a new Federal Trade Commission investigation of Riddell football helmet promotional claims because “we certainly don’t feel as though we are in a position to speak on behalf of the FTC.”
Yet last week MIT’s Technology Review reported that “Oliver says he has talked with [Senator Tom] Udall and is encouraging the [FTC] investigation.” See “What’s Next for Concussions in Football?”, http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/26350/?p1=A5.
So if NOCSAE is encouraging the investigation, why isn’t it telling athletes and parents that the investigation exists?
Oliver says test data show that all the helmets on the market are nearly identical in performance. By “performance,” he seems to mean preventing concussions.
Meanwhile, Dr. Joseph Maroon, whose National Football League-funded study and Neurosurgery article are used by Riddell to hype its Revolution helmet as showing a 31 percent reduced concussion risk – the central claim under scrutiny by the FTC – told Technology Review, “There is a lot about concussions and head injury that researchers don’t fully understand.”
Yeah, sure. But aren’t articles in clinical journals supposed to be about what researchers believe they do understand? Where’s the accountability here?
Maroon serves the information-gap market by peddling to the NFL and others “imPACT,” a software system that measures neurological function. Similarly, the punch line of NOCSAE’s message to Technology Review is that the league plans to start using Riddell’s patented “HIT sensor” inside helmets to measure location, magnitude, and direction of blows during games.
Oliver, according to TR: Any claim “not based in fact or science is potentially very damaging.” Concussions in football are “a complex issue” and “it won’t be until we can really understand the injury that we can build better helmet technology.” But he’s “confident that will happen, soon.”
While the careerist experts busy themselves handing out and receiving grants, and delivering self-serving lectures on the complexity of it all, it’s time for Congress to step in with public hearings. Oliver may be “confident” about the march of commercial technology. The rest of us, however, have unanswered questions about the interaction of that process with the dissemination of basic public health information.
And a good place to start is with Joseph Maroon, doctor and public special teams player for both the National Football League and World Wrestling Entertainment.
Irv Muchnick
Sunday, February 13, 2011
EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Bennet Omalu, Barred From Publishing Chris Benoit Brain Findings in Neurosurgery, Has Article Scheduled for Journal’s March 2011 Issue
[posted 2/8/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
(2/16/11 CLARIFICATION: According to Duncan MacRae, managing editor of Neurosurgery, Dr. Bennet Omalu’s article “Emerging Histomorphologic Phenotypes of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy [CTE] in American Athletes” is scheduled to be published in the journal’s July 2011 issue. — Irv Muchnick)
In his latest letter to me last year threatening to sue me for my reporting, World Wrestling Entertainment lawyer Jerry McDevitt pointed out that Dr. Bennet Omalu’s study of dead wrestler Chris Benoit’s brain was not published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal until 2010, and then only in “an obscure nursing journal.” See “New Threats From WWE Lawyer Jerry McDevitt,” December 17, 2010, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/new-threats-from-wwe-lawyer-jerry-mcdevitt/.
It turns out that there is a long and involved story behind why Omalu’s article in the Journal of Forensic Nursing, “Chronic traumatic encephalopathy in a professional American wrestler,” was not published in Neurosurgery. (The piece itself, an exhibit of McDevitt’s letter to me, is viewable at http://muchnick.net/omalu_journal_article.pdf.)
And this is not a story that I expect WWE – let alone the National Football League – to enjoy.
Before proceeding, let me clarify that the source for the following information is not Dr. Nelson Oyesiku, the current editor-in-chief of Neurosurgery. Neither Oyesiku nor Dr. Christopher Getch, the current president of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (publisher of Neurosurgery), has responded to my email queries.
However, I understand that Oyesiku was named to replace Dr. Michael Apuzzo as editor of Neurosurgery with a mandate that included reversing the journal’s perception as a de facto NFL house organ for academic articles answering loaded questions, which in turn served the commercial interests of the league and its contract doctors and business partners. Apuzzo, a consultant for the New York Giants, had overseen the publication of a decade’s worth of controversial studies on aspects of brain trauma in sports – including the 2006 article on the Riddell helmet manufacturer’s new design, which was co-authored by the company’s chief engineer and by Pittsburgh Steelers team neurologist and imPACT software entrepreneur Dr. Joseph Maroon, and is now the focus of a Federal Trade Commission probe of Riddell’s allegedly misleading promotional claims.
But equally important is what Neurosurgery did not publish under editor Apuzzo. Some of it was seminal research authored by Dr. Omalu. In light of everything we all now know about the NFL’s snail-paced and grudging acceptance of CTE as a real and discrete pathology – a chronology exposed most famously in 2009 hearings of the House Judiciary Committee – it is not hard to imagine that Omalu’s roadblocks to publication were more political than scientific.
Omalu’s first round of CTE studies involved six brains of death athletes. Benoit’s was number six – and the fifth positive finding.
The case studies of two Pittsburgh Steelers, Mike Webster and Terry Long, written up by Omalu and co-authors, were published in Neurosurgery. But Omalu met resistance in getting publication approval for a third article, on Andre Waters. Omalu came to believe that the reason was that the pattern was becoming all too clear both for his medical colleagues and for the general public. One case is “interesting.” Two can still be written off as anomalous. By the time you get to a third, you have what is known within the profession as a “case series” – something controlled and replicated enough times to take very seriously for redoubled study (as well as, of course, more readily available funding and attention).
It was during this period of, essentially, exile from Neurosurgery that Omalu published the Benoit study in the Journal of Forensic Nursing. By the way, just because the nursing journal is not as well known as Neurosurgery has nothing to do with the rigor of the former’s own peer-review process and editorial standards, or with the soundness of Omalu’s work. Whether the Journal of Forensic Nursing has the resources to issue accompanying press releases for its articles – another piece of McDevitt mudslinging – is similarly irrelevant.
I am happy to report that the new regime of Neurosurgery lists Omalu on its masthead as an associate editor, Sports & Rehabilitation. The section editor is Dr. Julian Bailes, Omalu’s co-director of the West Virginia Brain Injury Research Institute.
In addition, I am told that Omalu has a piece upcoming in the March issue of Neurosurgery. The article will review the whole history, scientific and political, of his groundbreaking CTE work. Doctors and lay observers alike eagerly await it.
Irv Muchnick
(2/16/11 CLARIFICATION: According to Duncan MacRae, managing editor of Neurosurgery, Dr. Bennet Omalu’s article “Emerging Histomorphologic Phenotypes of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy [CTE] in American Athletes” is scheduled to be published in the journal’s July 2011 issue. — Irv Muchnick)
In his latest letter to me last year threatening to sue me for my reporting, World Wrestling Entertainment lawyer Jerry McDevitt pointed out that Dr. Bennet Omalu’s study of dead wrestler Chris Benoit’s brain was not published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal until 2010, and then only in “an obscure nursing journal.” See “New Threats From WWE Lawyer Jerry McDevitt,” December 17, 2010, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/new-threats-from-wwe-lawyer-jerry-mcdevitt/.
It turns out that there is a long and involved story behind why Omalu’s article in the Journal of Forensic Nursing, “Chronic traumatic encephalopathy in a professional American wrestler,” was not published in Neurosurgery. (The piece itself, an exhibit of McDevitt’s letter to me, is viewable at http://muchnick.net/omalu_journal_article.pdf.)
And this is not a story that I expect WWE – let alone the National Football League – to enjoy.
Before proceeding, let me clarify that the source for the following information is not Dr. Nelson Oyesiku, the current editor-in-chief of Neurosurgery. Neither Oyesiku nor Dr. Christopher Getch, the current president of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (publisher of Neurosurgery), has responded to my email queries.
However, I understand that Oyesiku was named to replace Dr. Michael Apuzzo as editor of Neurosurgery with a mandate that included reversing the journal’s perception as a de facto NFL house organ for academic articles answering loaded questions, which in turn served the commercial interests of the league and its contract doctors and business partners. Apuzzo, a consultant for the New York Giants, had overseen the publication of a decade’s worth of controversial studies on aspects of brain trauma in sports – including the 2006 article on the Riddell helmet manufacturer’s new design, which was co-authored by the company’s chief engineer and by Pittsburgh Steelers team neurologist and imPACT software entrepreneur Dr. Joseph Maroon, and is now the focus of a Federal Trade Commission probe of Riddell’s allegedly misleading promotional claims.
But equally important is what Neurosurgery did not publish under editor Apuzzo. Some of it was seminal research authored by Dr. Omalu. In light of everything we all now know about the NFL’s snail-paced and grudging acceptance of CTE as a real and discrete pathology – a chronology exposed most famously in 2009 hearings of the House Judiciary Committee – it is not hard to imagine that Omalu’s roadblocks to publication were more political than scientific.
Omalu’s first round of CTE studies involved six brains of death athletes. Benoit’s was number six – and the fifth positive finding.
The case studies of two Pittsburgh Steelers, Mike Webster and Terry Long, written up by Omalu and co-authors, were published in Neurosurgery. But Omalu met resistance in getting publication approval for a third article, on Andre Waters. Omalu came to believe that the reason was that the pattern was becoming all too clear both for his medical colleagues and for the general public. One case is “interesting.” Two can still be written off as anomalous. By the time you get to a third, you have what is known within the profession as a “case series” – something controlled and replicated enough times to take very seriously for redoubled study (as well as, of course, more readily available funding and attention).
It was during this period of, essentially, exile from Neurosurgery that Omalu published the Benoit study in the Journal of Forensic Nursing. By the way, just because the nursing journal is not as well known as Neurosurgery has nothing to do with the rigor of the former’s own peer-review process and editorial standards, or with the soundness of Omalu’s work. Whether the Journal of Forensic Nursing has the resources to issue accompanying press releases for its articles – another piece of McDevitt mudslinging – is similarly irrelevant.
I am happy to report that the new regime of Neurosurgery lists Omalu on its masthead as an associate editor, Sports & Rehabilitation. The section editor is Dr. Julian Bailes, Omalu’s co-director of the West Virginia Brain Injury Research Institute.
In addition, I am told that Omalu has a piece upcoming in the March issue of Neurosurgery. The article will review the whole history, scientific and political, of his groundbreaking CTE work. Doctors and lay observers alike eagerly await it.
Irv Muchnick
American Lawyer Magazine on Irvin ‘The Muckraker’ Muchnick vs. Jerry ‘The Litigator’ McDevitt
[posted 2/7/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
The February issue of American Lawyer magazine has an amusing piece in its front-of-the-book section, Bar Talk, about my most recent correspondence (in December) with World Wrestling Entertainment attorney Jerry McDevitt.
The elaborately produced box, written by magazine staffer Victor Li, does not seem to be available online even to subscribers. I have a request in for permission to post the story here. In the absence of such permission, let me describe and quote from it.
The article is headlined “And in This Corner ... A lawyer and his nemesis jump back in the ring,” and is built around tale-of-the-tape type graphics. My decapitated mug is photoshopped onto a cartoon muscleman obviously modeled after the Ultimate Warrior; I’m even given his face paint and bicep bands. McDevitt’s own gray pompadour contrasts with my high hairline, and his fantasy hunk is stuffed into a wrestling singlet with a WWE championship belt.
After a preamble, the piece is built around dueling quotes from McDevitt and me: “... ON STEROIDS,” “... ON WRESTLER HEALTH,” “... ON EMPLOYMENT LAW,” “... ON CHRIS BENOIT,” and finally “... ON EACH OTHER,” which I quote in full:
“He’s a great lawyer,” Muchnick tells Bar Talk. “If he wants to sue me, I look forward to it. After all, the truth is always a defense.”
“He’s a vicious man,” McDevitt tells Bar Talk. He declined to say whether he has any plans to sue Muchnick.
Irv Muchnick
The February issue of American Lawyer magazine has an amusing piece in its front-of-the-book section, Bar Talk, about my most recent correspondence (in December) with World Wrestling Entertainment attorney Jerry McDevitt.
The elaborately produced box, written by magazine staffer Victor Li, does not seem to be available online even to subscribers. I have a request in for permission to post the story here. In the absence of such permission, let me describe and quote from it.
The article is headlined “And in This Corner ... A lawyer and his nemesis jump back in the ring,” and is built around tale-of-the-tape type graphics. My decapitated mug is photoshopped onto a cartoon muscleman obviously modeled after the Ultimate Warrior; I’m even given his face paint and bicep bands. McDevitt’s own gray pompadour contrasts with my high hairline, and his fantasy hunk is stuffed into a wrestling singlet with a WWE championship belt.
After a preamble, the piece is built around dueling quotes from McDevitt and me: “... ON STEROIDS,” “... ON WRESTLER HEALTH,” “... ON EMPLOYMENT LAW,” “... ON CHRIS BENOIT,” and finally “... ON EACH OTHER,” which I quote in full:
“He’s a great lawyer,” Muchnick tells Bar Talk. “If he wants to sue me, I look forward to it. After all, the truth is always a defense.”
“He’s a vicious man,” McDevitt tells Bar Talk. He declined to say whether he has any plans to sue Muchnick.
Irv Muchnick
NOCSAE Head: ‘Not in Position to Speak on Behalf of the FTC’ on Helmet Safety Investigation
[posted 2/7/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Michael Oliver, executive director and general counsel of the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) responded to my previous post criticizing the organization for failing to publicize the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation of the safety claims of football helmet manufacturers.
Oliver was gracious but not persuasive. “In this situation, we certainly don’t feel as though we are in position to speak on behalf of the FTC,” he emailed. “Our focus in this outreach directed to athletes and parents was to encourage them to seek information that goes beyond marketing and promotional materials. We want to make sure they are aware of practical resources they can access to get necessary information. That is a part of our role to enhance the safety of athletes.”
I wrote back, in part, “I am not urging you to speak ‘on behalf of the FTC.’ Rather, I am exhorting you to speak ABOUT what the FTC is doing, since that is a news development central to NOCSAE’s mission.”
Irv Muchnick
Michael Oliver, executive director and general counsel of the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) responded to my previous post criticizing the organization for failing to publicize the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation of the safety claims of football helmet manufacturers.
Oliver was gracious but not persuasive. “In this situation, we certainly don’t feel as though we are in position to speak on behalf of the FTC,” he emailed. “Our focus in this outreach directed to athletes and parents was to encourage them to seek information that goes beyond marketing and promotional materials. We want to make sure they are aware of practical resources they can access to get necessary information. That is a part of our role to enhance the safety of athletes.”
I wrote back, in part, “I am not urging you to speak ‘on behalf of the FTC.’ Rather, I am exhorting you to speak ABOUT what the FTC is doing, since that is a news development central to NOCSAE’s mission.”
Irv Muchnick
Why Is Athletic Equipment Standards Group Talking in Code About FTC Investigation of NFL’s Riddell Helmets?
[posted 2/7/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
The National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) issued a press release on the eve of the Super Bowl, urging “athletes and parents to get the facts about helmets and concussion protection.”
See http://www.nocsae.org/MediaKit/NOCSAE%20Consumer%20Warning%20News%20Release%20FINAL%2002%2004%2011.pdf.
But there’s something big missing in NOCSAE’s alert: it doesn’t mention the Federal Trade Commission investigation of official National Football League supplier Riddell that was launched last month at the behest of Senator Tom Udall.
In this respect, NOCSAE mirrors The New York Times and mainstream media in talking in code about the national concussion crisis. The Times broke the story of the FTC probe last month but I do not believe has made a single reference to it since then.
No outlet, except for this blog, has begun to explore the deeper meaning of a federal investigation based on claims stemming from clinical research funded by industry and the NFL, which also served the for-profit motives of NFL doctors and consultants.
Communicators for news organizations and public-interest groups need to do some more communicatin’.
Irv Muchnick
FURTHER READING
“FTC Investigation Could Be the Super Bowl for Corrupt NFL Doctors and the National Concussion Crisis … today at Beyond Chron,” http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/investigation-could-be-the-super-bowl-for-corrupt-nfl-doctors-and-the-national-concussion-crisis-today-at-beyond-chron/.
“Super Bowl Concussion Hype Week, Part 2: What’s the Deal With the NFL and the Journal Neurosurgery?”, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/super-bowl-concussion-hype-week-part-2-what%E2%80%99s-the-deal-with-the-nfl-and-the-journal-neurosurgery/.
“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/.
The National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) issued a press release on the eve of the Super Bowl, urging “athletes and parents to get the facts about helmets and concussion protection.”
See http://www.nocsae.org/MediaKit/NOCSAE%20Consumer%20Warning%20News%20Release%20FINAL%2002%2004%2011.pdf.
But there’s something big missing in NOCSAE’s alert: it doesn’t mention the Federal Trade Commission investigation of official National Football League supplier Riddell that was launched last month at the behest of Senator Tom Udall.
In this respect, NOCSAE mirrors The New York Times and mainstream media in talking in code about the national concussion crisis. The Times broke the story of the FTC probe last month but I do not believe has made a single reference to it since then.
No outlet, except for this blog, has begun to explore the deeper meaning of a federal investigation based on claims stemming from clinical research funded by industry and the NFL, which also served the for-profit motives of NFL doctors and consultants.
Communicators for news organizations and public-interest groups need to do some more communicatin’.
Irv Muchnick
FURTHER READING
“FTC Investigation Could Be the Super Bowl for Corrupt NFL Doctors and the National Concussion Crisis … today at Beyond Chron,” http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/investigation-could-be-the-super-bowl-for-corrupt-nfl-doctors-and-the-national-concussion-crisis-today-at-beyond-chron/.
“Super Bowl Concussion Hype Week, Part 2: What’s the Deal With the NFL and the Journal Neurosurgery?”, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/super-bowl-concussion-hype-week-part-2-what%E2%80%99s-the-deal-with-the-nfl-and-the-journal-neurosurgery/.
“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/.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
‘FTC Investigation Could Be the Super Bowl for Corrupt NFL Doctors and the National Concussion Crisis’ ... today at Beyond Chron
[posted 2/7/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
With the Super Bowl out of the way, the National Football League is fraught with the unfinished business of a new collective bargaining agreement between owners and players. Far less attention has been given to a threat that may be even bigger: the Federal Trade Commission’s announced probe of the exaggerated safety claims of football helmet manufacturers.
All too often, government investigations of industry culminate in bland consent decrees whereby the corporations alleged to have offended standards promise to abandon particular claims without admitting they did anything wrong. If that becomes the end result of the FTC examination of Riddell, the official helmet supplier for the NFL, and of Riddell’s chief competitor Schutt Sports, then an important opportunity will have been missed to shine light on what is now the 17-year-old story of the NFL’s controversial management of the concussion issue.
There’s plenty to suggest that the FTC, at the urging of Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, intends to go beyond the advertising and YouTube promo videos of Riddell and Schutt, and follow the story to its source: the process and substance of the clinical research over the last two decades that has slowed and misled the public in understanding the causes and magnitude of systematic brain trauma in football. If the feds pursue that trail, they will unravel the enmeshment of corrupt NFL doctors with a prominent medical institution and a prominent journal that have skewed studies and publications in ways favorable to a league facing potentially cataclysmic legal exposure.
CONTINUED TODAY AT BEYOND CHRON, THE SAN FRANCISCO ONLINE NEWSPAPER:
http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Helmet_to_Helmet_FTC_s_Investigation_Could_Be_the_Super_Bowl_for_Corrupt_NFL_Doctors_and_the_National_Concussion_Crisis_8877.html
With the Super Bowl out of the way, the National Football League is fraught with the unfinished business of a new collective bargaining agreement between owners and players. Far less attention has been given to a threat that may be even bigger: the Federal Trade Commission’s announced probe of the exaggerated safety claims of football helmet manufacturers.
All too often, government investigations of industry culminate in bland consent decrees whereby the corporations alleged to have offended standards promise to abandon particular claims without admitting they did anything wrong. If that becomes the end result of the FTC examination of Riddell, the official helmet supplier for the NFL, and of Riddell’s chief competitor Schutt Sports, then an important opportunity will have been missed to shine light on what is now the 17-year-old story of the NFL’s controversial management of the concussion issue.
There’s plenty to suggest that the FTC, at the urging of Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, intends to go beyond the advertising and YouTube promo videos of Riddell and Schutt, and follow the story to its source: the process and substance of the clinical research over the last two decades that has slowed and misled the public in understanding the causes and magnitude of systematic brain trauma in football. If the feds pursue that trail, they will unravel the enmeshment of corrupt NFL doctors with a prominent medical institution and a prominent journal that have skewed studies and publications in ways favorable to a league facing potentially cataclysmic legal exposure.
CONTINUED TODAY AT BEYOND CHRON, THE SAN FRANCISCO ONLINE NEWSPAPER:
http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Helmet_to_Helmet_FTC_s_Investigation_Could_Be_the_Super_Bowl_for_Corrupt_NFL_Doctors_and_the_National_Concussion_Crisis_8877.html
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