readings

I want to share with you (who are you? i don't think anyone reads this!) a number of important articles that have recently been published. All deal with traumatic brain injury and the after effects years later.

The first, a piece by Malcolm Gladwell (an excellent story teller- I would recommend all of his work) really affected me both because it took a very interesting approach to looking at football head injuries (comparing football to dog fighting) and it included interviews with both the doctor that performed Shank's brain autopsy and Chris Nowinski, someone that I really admire and that I worked with in trying to establish the BAA charity program (we are still working on it! fingers crossed for 2011).

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_gladwell
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ask/2009/10/questions-for-gladwell.html

The second piece was similar, but probably as important because it was in the widely read NY Times and finally moved the dialogue away from just NFL players. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/sports/ncaafootball/22concussions.html?_r=1&hpw
Shank didn't play in the NFL but were the injuries he suffered any less because of that? Of course not. We need to stop worrying about only NFL players because they are the famous ones and start figuring out what to do about kids playing football and suffering repeated concussions.