‘Iron Mike’ Webster
This December, Sony will be giving us the festive gift of another chance to see Will Smith being Will Smith. Playing the role of Dr. Bennet Omalu, the Fresh Prince allows the glassy puddles back into his eyes and welcomes back his quivering lip that he should have realised by now, is not enough to win him that elusive Oscar.
‘Concussion’ is the title of the movie that will provide all those movie critics AKA unlimited card holders to preach how crazy it is that Smith has never won an Oscar just because he gives a great motivational speech and can make his audience cry because he’s good at crying. The film however depicts an interesting true story.
Bennet Omalu
Dr. Bennet Omalu opened the eyes of the world to the potential damage contact sport is having on the brain, and in doing so made a very powerful enemy in the NFL. Concussion itself, also starring Luke Wilson and Alec Baldwin certainly won’t please the National Football League by spreading Omalu’s studies all around the world like next years annual pandemic.
In September 2002, Dr Bennet Omalu reported to work, clueless to what the day had in store for him. He arrived at Allegheny County coroner’s office and picked up his project for the day. He was to perform the autopsy on the body of a 50-year-old man. Little did he know, it was former Pittsburgh Steelers centre, Mike Webster… Omalu also knew very little of football, other than it is a “game where people dressed up like extra terrestrials and slam into each other”.
The fact that he was about to slice open and tear out the insides of a nine-time Pro Bowler and Hall of Famer was irrelevant until he realised it was the body of the man plastered on every newspaper and news channel across the USA. The nation wanted to know what had happened to the man with a Super Bowl ring on each finger of one hand.
Webster’s post football life had been somewhat acrimonious and bizarre. He’d gone from being a national hero one minute, to pissing in his own oven and fixing his rotten teeth with superglue the next. ‘Iron Mike’ even purchased a taser gun, to zap himself to sleep, something evading the man due to the chronic back pain and sleeping in his windowless pick-up truck.
Dr. Omalu, a forensic pathologist set to work on the 244 pound body, opening up the chest and cracking open the rib cage. Everything he assumed from a suspected heart attack victim was there. It was when he was removing the brain that he began to wonder how this huge athlete became so crazy.
‘Dementia Pugilistica’ or ‘Punch Drunk Syndrome’ has always been known and common in boxers. It is a condition offering similar symptoms to those of dementia, being caused by repetitive trauma on the brain. Omalu rapidly wondered whether this could be the cause of Webster’s craziness, even with the helmets.
Omalu instantly set about turning the brain inside out, scanning every piece of it, he took MRI scans, CT scans. There was nothing, nothing explained Webster’s craziness. But Omalu knew, people do not just go crazy.
The intrigue had completely engulfed him, he needed to know the cause, and he knew it wasn’t as simple as a heart attack. After gaining permission from his boss, Cyril Wecht, the pathologist who worked on JFK and Elvis’ bodies, he could now study the brain of Mike Webster further.
He undertook microscopic analysis of the brain tissue, months of slicing and scanning went by, and nothing. He needed to learn more so he took the brain home, he read countless books on trauma, on football, on helmets, on Alzheimer’s disease, on concussions, on impact, on g-force, on protein accumulation, on dementia pugilistica and then one day, a knew set of brain scan slides arrived…
It showed Tau Protein swamping the cells in a region of his brain. This was it; this was what had caused Webster to go crazy. Tau clogged up the brain killing cells in regions responsible for emotions and the moods of a person, it lowered the ability to function.
After showing his findings to his peers and his boss, a unanimous decision was made, this was something that had never been seen before in brain trauma and it was a disease. After long deliberation, he named it Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE for those of you like me that can’t even say it.
A paper was written on findings, contributions were made from high profile names in the neuroscience field for the purpose of adding weight to the discovery and the journal was sent to the NFL and the NFL endorsed journal ‘Neurosurgery’. Omalu believed this would be well received by the NFL; he thought it would help in eradicating the valuable superstars from damage to the brain after the final curtain of their careers… He was wrong.
Instantly, the NFL refuted CTE. Before a paper can be published in ‘Neurosurgery’, it has to be reviewed by two reviewers, in the event of a disagreement between the two, a third is called in. Omalu’s paper needed 19 reviewers.
The NFL claimed the findings were fraud, he was told he was attacking the American way of life. They questioned Omalu, saying “How dare you, a foreigner from Nigeria, the eighth most corrupt country in the world, who are you? Who do you think you are to come to tell us how to live our lives?” NFL doctors went to the press and claimed Dr. Omalu was not practising medicine, he was practising voodoo.
In the open letter to get Omalu’s paper retracted from Neurosurgery, one of the three leading doctors wrote “We own this field. We are not going to bow to some no-name Nigerian with some bullshit theory.”
After reading the opening paragraph of the letter sent to him by the NFL, Omalu laughed, “I knew more than the three leading doctors of the NFL”. One of the ‘leading doctors’ was a rheumatologist, a scientist of joints. This left Omalu baffled, “A rheumatologist? You picked a joint guy to lead your brain study?”
Omalu could not remain calm, he took a few shots of Johnnie Walker Red and tore the letter up.
Little did the NFL know, that before the paper removal had been discussed, he had been sent the brain of another former NFL player, 45 year old Terry Long. The former Pittsburgh Steelers guard took his own life by drinking antifreeze after suffering from depression and memory loss, similar symptoms to those of Mike Webster.
It did not stop there, from then on Bennet Omalu had been used to study the brains of a number of former and current NFL superstars, in fact 16 players that suffered with symptoms were successfully diagnosed with CTE.
On December 13, 2006 the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the ruling that Webster had been totally and permanently disabled as a result of brain injuries from playing professional football. The ruling resulted in an award of more than $1.5 million to Webster’s four children and former wife.
More provisions and care are now being taken concerning brain trauma and more specifically CTE, not only in the NFL, but many contact sports around the world.
In 2009 the NFL introduced a ‘Concussion Management Guidline’ including neuropsychological testing on all NFL players to help determine when a player could return to play after a head injury.
The ‘World Rugby’ organisation introduced the ‘World Rugby Concussion Management’ which monitors and advisors players and teams on dealing with head injures and trauma. Even real football, where the word foot serves its actual purpose introduced a rule in which team doctors can enforce the substitution of players after head injuries.
It may not impress the NFL, having the story of Dr. Bennet Omalu and the discovery of CTE publisised in true Hollywood fashion, but it’ll certainly do less harm than Jose Mourinho demoting Eva Carneiro, Chelsea club doctor for literally doing her job. Would he have demoted her if Eden Hazard rolled on the floor with a head injury?
playing for the draw 
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