Using special post-mortem techniques, Boston University scientists have determined that former Tampa Bay Buccaneer player Tom McHale had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, an exceptionally rare progressive condition caused by repetitive concussive and sub-concussive head trauma.

Rare except in former NFL players, that is.

Stunningly, physicians have now identified CTE in every NFL veteran that died between the ages of 36 and 50 and who was tested for the condition, which normally precipitates full-blown dementia before age 50.

McHale was 45 when he died.

In fact the only NFL player who was found to be free of the condition at the time of death was running back Damien Nash, who died suddenly in 2007 at 24. Then again, the progressive condition is simply not seen in someone that young.

 “It’s scary — it’s horribly frightening,” Randy Grimes told the New York Times. For years, Grimes played alongside McHale on the Bucs’ offensive line.

“I’ve had my share of concussions, too. More than my share. My wife says I have short-term memory loss. It’s really scary to think of what might be going on up there.”

“This is a medically significant finding,” Daniel Perl, Mount Sinai’s director of neuropathology told the Times.

“I think with a sixth case identified, out of six, for a condition that is incredibly rare in the general population, there is more than enough evidence that football is clearly strongly related to the presence of this pathology.”

Ira Casson, co-chairman of an NFL concussion study group, didn’t see it that way. “I think there are many questions still out there as to whether there is a kind of traumatic encephalopathy associated with football. I think we don’t know. I think there is not enough evidence to say there is.”

Say what? Meanwhile, an NFL player brochure emphasizes that concussions are serious while adding that “current research with professional athletes” does not prove that multiple concussions have negative consequences so long as “each injury is managed properly.”

The brochure does not mention CTE. (more…)

Normally, getting Europeans to agree on anything is dicey but right now just about everybody over there is delighted the Big O made it all the way.

His strip-whitened smile blankets TV screens, celebrity magazines and newspapers all over Europe, and large majorities of people in the 5 largest EU countries, ranging from 77% in the UK to an otherworldly 92% in France believe he will have a favorable global impact.

Funny though, the Big O didn’t even mention the word “Europe” in his inaugural address.

And sacre-bleu! It took 3 days before he so much as pinged a European leader, placing every one of them behind those of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan, to name a few.

And then of all things he called Gordon Brown first.

Uh-oh! Did Obama catch Anglophilia from Bush when they shook hands at the swearing-in?

Come to think of it, the Big O dodged a chance to meet the top 5 EU leaders when they rolled in last November for the G20.

And we can only guess how many times he’s turned down requests to visit Germany’s beleaguered Angela Merckel, who is up for re-election and would love to catch some stardust from the man who drew 200K in Berlin last summer.

 “Everybody wants the first visit of the Messiah,” a French official wryly remarked to the Economist.

Alas the Big O probably already knows the Europeans will get jiggy when he starts asking for help.

They’re not exactly lining up to take Guantanamo Bay detainees off his hands, are they?  They’re not exactly rushing to outfit troops for a summer tour in Afghanistan, are they?

And as for cooperation on the economic crisis, Josef Braml, an officer in Germany’s Council on Foreign Relations managed to splutter that the matter will trigger a “heavy burden-sharing debate” between America and its European allies.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement there, either.

A study published in BMC Cancer suggests that cigarette smoking is the cause of over 70% of all cancer deaths in men.

Previous estimates had put the number at 34%, according to UC Davis associate adjunct professor Bruce Leistikow, the lead author on the paper.

The difference needs to be evaluated in the context of a friendly dispute among epidemiologists about the best way to estimate the burden of disease associated with smoking.

Leistikow and his team used a new methodology that’s gaining traction in academe. In a nutshell, they assumed age-adjusted lung cancer death rates were a good proxy for tobacco exposure, and assessed how closely the rates of other cancers tracked with lung cancer rates.

Non-lung cancers whose rates track extremely closely with lung cancer are presumed using this method to be caused by cigarette smoking. 

 “This study provides support for the growing understanding among researchers that smoking is a cause of many more cancer deaths besides lung cancer,” Leistikow told BurrilReports.

“The full impacts of tobacco smoke, including secondhand smoke, have been overlooked in the rush to examine such potential cancer factors as diet and environmental contaminants. As it turns out, much of the answer was probably smoking all along,” he continued.

 “It also suggests that increased attention should be paid to smoking prevention in health care reforms and health promotion campaigns,” Leistikow concluded.

And that’s not all. Four years ago, Massachusetts banned smoking in restaurants, bars and many workplaces. Last fall, the state Department of Public Health and the Harvard School of Public Health reported that 600 fewer Bay State residents died from heart attacks as a result of the ban.