All the NFL players I have examined pathologically, I have not seen one that did not have changes in their brain system with brain damage.
Yes, the concept that blunt-force trauma of the head causes brain damage is a generally accepted principle of medicine. That is why I was so appalled by the NFL doctors who were denying my work.
A child who plays a game of football for one season without any documented concussion - several months after that season, if you subject his brain to sophisticated psychological testing and radiological testing, functional MRIs, there is evidence of brain damage.
As a physician, I'm somewhat an advocate of patients. How come, before Mike Webster, no NFL player was told or knew that there was an intrinsic risk of brain damage from playing football?
I think I'm connected to this issue in some capacity, football and brain damage. So carving out a way to address it tactfully is important to me no matter what I go on to do.
Football is an elective. It's a game. It's make-believe. And to think that people have brain damage from some made-up game.
I am not stupid. I am a very bright guy. I know that in the fighting game, you get people who get brain damage and do themselves long-term harm.
We've learned that musical ability is actually not one ability but a set of abilities, a dozen or more. Through brain damage, you can lose one component and not necessarily lose the others. You can lose rhythm and retain pitch, for example, that kind of thing.
It was difficult to step away. I've always been an athlete. And to give that up was extremely daunting. The looming factor of brain damage, to me, was too strong.
Dementia is, after all, a symptom of organic brain damage. It is a condition, a disorder of the central nervous system, brought about in my case by a viral assault on brain tissue. When the assault wiped out certain intellectual processes, it also affected emotional processes.
