“He probably just broke his leg.
He’ll be fine.” He just broke his
leg? My friend had persuaded me to attend a high school football game with her,
and one of the players was writhing on the field in excruciating pain. As I
gasped in horror, she assured me that his injury was minor, nothing compared to
what some of the other teammates had endured earlier in the season. I had never
particularly enjoyed watching football, and this incident reminded me why. As
other screaming fans passionately cheered on their teams, I winced every time
the players’ helmets and bodies crashed against each other. That was the last
football game I attended.
My growing interest in neuroscience
gave me even more reasons to cringe. After watching multiple family members
suffer from brain diseases and volunteering in a hospital with dementia
patients, I could not separate the present game from the future consequences of
the head injuries the players incurred. That one player’s broken leg had stood
out in my mind because it was such an obvious injury, but I later realized that
it paled in comparison to the effects of concussions and constant hits to the
head.
When Malcolm Gladwell spoke at Penn
on February 14, 2013, he addressed the topic of football brain injuries.
Malcolm Gladwell is a writer for The New
Yorker and the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including Blink, The Tipping Point, and Outliers. He started his lecture by
telling a story about coal miners in the United States. In the early 20th
century, many of the coal miners had begun to suffer from lung diseases and
coughed up black mucus, calling attention to the potential negative health
effects of mining. Autopsies revealed greater discrepancies between average
citizens and coal miners. While healthy lungs floated, coal miner’s lungs sunk.
While healthy lungs maintained a pink, fleshy color, coal miner’s lungs were
black. Some people proposed that there be added regulations or that people stop
coal mining, but their ideas were dismissed because there was not enough
“proof.” It was not until more than 50 years later when observational studies
were conducted that people finally took the necessary measured and acknowledged
that coal mining was detrimental to miners’ health.
Gladwell challenged the audience,
asking if they would have done the same. No? They would not have waited for the
concrete, scientific “proof?” After implicitly convincing the 800 people in
attendance that they would have acted differently in such a harmful situation,
he told them that there was a similar scenario taking place at Penn: football.
Gladwell then explained the
prevalence and negative effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a
degenerative disease that shows up in individuals with a history of concussions
or other forms of head injury. Some of the symptoms included memory loss,
aggression, confusion, and depression in otherwise healthy individuals. In the
rest of his talk, Gladwell argued that Penn should not wait for concrete proof,
but should ban football for the sake of its student’s safety and well being,
regardless of the other benefits football does provide.
Gladwell was not arguing for a
nationwide football ban, but he did believe that a private, academic institution
of Penn’s prestige should not support a game that could lead to the eventual
suffering and tragic deaths of its students. I briefly spoke with Gladwell and
told him that his speech truly fleshed out my own view of football. Later, I
was extremely surprised that so many of the people on my hall vehemently
opposed his idea. While they brought up valid arguments about the opportunities
football provides and the fact that the players know that they are at risk, it
all seemed insignificant compared to the story Gladwell had shared of the
previously healthy, intelligent Penn student who had suffered from CTE and
committed suicide after playing football for many years.
With the growing ability to learn
and know more about the causes and effects of neurodegenerative diseases,
organizations around the world are forced to question their values and
traditions. In the face of new knowledge, do private institutions like Penn
have a moral obligation to ban a tradition that has been going on for decades?
Is Penn’s mission to ensure the health and safety of its students, or is it to
afford football players the opportunity to receive a great education, even with
the risk of endangering their brains? How does one go about challenging the
customs and rituals that are, and would otherwise continue to be, key tenets of
college campus culture?
Malcolm Gladwell is not going to
lead a revolution on Penn’s campus. These problems are now in the hands of the
Penn community. While I unfortunately do not foresee school wide football
boycotts or a revolution on campus, Gladwell’s speech provoked thoughtful
discussions that will hopefully inspire Penn and its students to be more
conscientious and proactive concerning the health of football players and other
athletes. It also highlighted that a growing knowledge of neuroscience forces
people to question their own ethics and challenge accepted social norms.
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