NFL tried to frustrate concussion study

Democratic members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce yesterday (May 23) released a report charging that the National Football League (NFL) tried to frustrate rather than aid a study on concussions.

In 2012, the NFL donated tens of millions of dollars to concussion research that would be overseen by the National Institutes of Health. But the league tried to influence the report improperly, said the Democrats on the committee. The NFL denounced the accusations made in the study.

"It is the latest in a long history of instances in which the NFL has been found to mismanage concussion research," said the New York Times. Such unwarranted interference dates to the league's first exploration of the crisis "when it used deeply flawed data to produce a series of studies," the Times said.

The league funded four National Institutes of Health studies on the concussion problem, but it made an issue of the fifth, which was to be on aspects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head.

Junior Seau, the Chargers linebacker and Oceanside resident who killed himself in 2012, was determined to have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy.