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After years of quietly deflecting any relationship between football-related head injuries from concussions such as CTE, a senior league official has admitted that there is, in fact, a connection between the two.
Jeff Miller, the NFL’s senior vice president for health and safety, made the admission during a roundtable discussion on concussions at the House of Representatives on Energy and Commerce, becoming the first NFL official to formally make such a statement.
When asked if the link between football and neurodegenerative diseases like CTE has been established, Miller promptly replied, “The answer to that question is certainly yes.”
Miller’s admission comes based off of his assessment of Boston University’s neuropathologist Ann McKee, who has diagnosed CTE in the brains of 176 people, including 90 of 94 former NFL players—which can only be diagnosed after death, with those players or their families donating their brains for research.
Miller continued by trying to put his statement in context, per ESPN:
“I think the broader point, and the one that your question gets to, is what that necessarily means, and where do we go from here with that information,” Miller said, noting that little is known about the prevalence of the disease or the risk of incurring it.”
While the news is a breakthrough and serves as an important milestone for researchers and former, current and future players, there’s still plenty of progress that needs to be made for the NFL to work towards a solution on eliminating head injuries in any way possible, as well as to pump more money into head trauma research.
[H/T ESPN]