A top medical journal has urged surgeons to cut all ties with football – from NFL to high school level – due to the growing swell of research showing the sport causes devastating brain injuries.
The senior editors of Springer, an orthopedics journal, said doctors should not perform physicals for college players and institutions should not sponsor professional teams.
The call comes in the wake of Boston University’s landmark study on deceased players’ brains, showing 110 of the 111 they examined had signs of CTE, a neurodegenerative disease which causes dementia.
‘Football is not consonant with the best values of our profession,’ lead author of the report Seth S. Leopold, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, concluded.
‘Is it right for us to support a game—through our presence on the sidelines or in the form of marketing and advertising dollars that splash orthopedic logos on practice jerseys and football stadiums—that causes grave harm to at least 9 percent of those who play it professionally?’
