A Wise Father: “One Brain is Bigger Than Both Your Hands.”

Posted on | November 9, 2014 | 1 Comment

Credit:Jabin Botsford/The New York Times

Mike Magee

So it’s Sunday – and for many Americans (130 million when it comes to “Super-Bowl Sunday”) that means football. But as one post-election commentator opined today, “Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth”.

Discussions around the future of NFL football are just about as fractionated and passionate as our deeply entrenched two party system. But at the end of the day, in the arena of science and diagnostic health care (at least as doctors, nurses and health professionals of all stripes espouse), truth = power.

When there is an impasse between reality and denial, lawyers eventually surface. That is one of the stop gates in the management of our civil society. There is an ample supply in this country of 300 million – about a million and a quarter lawyers from which to choose. In the NFL case, one spoke up.

Back in 2002, a physician in Allegeny County, PA, shared a beer with his friend, a young “working class” lawyer with a family passion for football. Dr. Bennet Omalu was a forensic pathologist at the county’s medical-examiner’s office. The friend was Jason Luckasevic, recent graduate from law school in 2000, then gainfully employed by a firm in Pittsburgh whose motto was “Working Lawyers for Working People”. For Luckasevic, whose godfather was president of the United Steelworkers local, that felt about right.

Dr. Omalu was anxious that day to share some findings from earlier in the week. He had done an autopsy on a 50 year old man who had for the past few years exhibited eratic behavior that had complicated his family life, and for a brief period, led to his seeking shelter in his pick-up truck. To Omalu’s surprise, the brain biopsy was filled with the tangled neurons and Tau protein deposits emblematic of Alzheimer’s disease.

That first patient was Pittsbugh Steeler Hall of Fame linesman Mike Webster. Omalu drew a straight line of cause and effect that day. And Luckasevic looked for further confirmation. Over the next two years, by word of mouth and inside referral, Omalu examined the brains of five other NFL players who had suffered early deaths and had some history of behavioral changes. All five showed the same characteristic neuropathologic findings.

Seven years later, in 2011, Luckasevic filed a law suit against the N.F.L., on behalf of 75 players. That number would grow. As for Dr. Omalu, in 2005, he published his findings in the journal, Neurosurgery. The N.F.L. was not amused, sensing an existential threat. They came at the accomplished Nigerian born pathologist with all guns blazing. In their attack, they mirrored tactics reminiscent of tobacco, chemical and pharmaceutical, agribusiness, and energy companies before them who had battled regulation and liability. They led with “medical experts” on their payroll. These “physician-experts” (a collection of team doctors) lied with straight faces on camera and in depositions, and enjoyed the opportunity to publish, in equal balance, “counter-claims” in reputable medical journals and in print and broadcast media.

The human and professional toll on Omalu is painfully documented in the remarkable PBS Frontline documentary, “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis.”

Besides utilizing familiar New York based, crisis intervention PR firms, the NFL went after media. As occurred a half century earlier when Monsanto and other chemical companies attempted to shut down the New Yorker serial publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”, NFL pressured Frontline and Disney to not broadcast. And to the broadcast industry’s credit, they followed the New Yorker’s early lead and held tough.

The NFL has now admitted in legal documents that they believe up to 28% of their players have or will incur significant brain injury. They have tentatively agreed to a settlement that will provide around $1 billion in damages. But their future, and the futures of their players and fans, remain at great risk.

Watching Dr. Omalu on camera, I was filled with conflicting emotions – great sadness for the pain and suffering he has endured, and great pride for his courage and fortitude in the pursuit of his patient’s welfare, even at a tremendous financial and emotional cost. He is, after all, the doctor, the scientist, we intended to be when we each began this journey.

Which brings me back to the election. This morning, I saw a photo of my good friend and fellow physician, orthopedist and Pennsylvania native, John Barrasso, walking side by side, next to incoming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He was providing council, as they walked toward the White House yesterday. Of late, he has stepped back from the camera, where for a brief time he had been positioned by his party as a expert voice, a physician legislator, opposing the Affordable Care Act.

Watching him, I continue to see the potential for legislative greatness. His father, and his father’s father, ran a cement and masonry business in rural Pennsylvania. He learned at his father’s knee, how to build, how to constuct lasting foundations. But his Dad had larger dreams for John and his two younger brothers. Twenty years ago, John told me his father had told him, “God gave you one brain and it’s bigger than both your hands.” I thought of that quite literally when I listened to Dr. Omalu on Frontline. What is clear to the viewer is that this Nigerian born physician honored his profession and honored the truth. And in return he confronted power, and, for that, he deserves our eternal gratitude.

For Health Commentary, I’m Mike Magee.

Comments

One Response to “A Wise Father: “One Brain is Bigger Than Both Your Hands.””

Art Ulene
November 10th, 2014 @ 11:22 am

If only John would use his brain before engaging his mouth. At this point, it looks like a waste of two good hands.