Bennet Omalu, the ‘Concussion’ doctor, on the debate over football and CTE

When it comes to football, Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist played by Will Smith in the movie “Concussion,” has strong feelings about protecting children’s developing brains.

“Seven children at the high school level die from playing football every year,” he said in an interview. “If this was another industry, the federal government would have stepped in to regulate it. There is something wrong.”

Omalu knows plenty about the potential risks of playing football. In 2002, while working for the coroner’s office in Pittsburgh, he examined the brain of former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster.

Webster died at age 50 after suffering from mood swings, depression, disorientation, drug abuse and more. Although Webster’s brain initially appeared normal, Omalu conducted independent and self-financed tissue analysis. He found large accumulations of a specific protein in the brains of Webster and other deceased pro football players that would affect mood, emotions and basic functions.

The condition, which he named chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), provided the first evidence that playing football could cause permanent brain damage.

In 2005, he published his findings in the journal Neurosurgery, believing NFL officials would support them. Instead, league doctors attacked and demanded a retraction. The NFL did not publicly acknowledge the link between concussions sustained in football and CTE until December 2009. Omalu’s efforts have led to stricter safeguards in dealing with concussions.

It was too late for several former NFL players, however, including Dave Duerson and Junior Seau, who committed suicide by shooting themselves in the chest. Autopsies found CTE in both men.

Jeff Radel, research coordinator of the University of Kansas Hospital’s Center for Concussion Management, said while Omalu has done important work, he has gone too far in declaring that repeated blows to the head are the cause of CTE.

“Common sense likely will persuade most moviegoers that something certainly is going on in regard to repeated head trauma and the development of CTE,” Radel said. “But common sense does not establish medical proof. Science has a much higher bar to get over before cause and effect can be assigned.”

Michael Moncure, the center’s medical director, feels similarly.

“He has shown that there is something that occurs in the brain after brain trauma,” Moncure said. “But what does that mean? How does that person turn into Mike Webster? And why do some others (in the same situation) not?”

Omalu still thinks most pro football players probably have some form of the disease.

“There has not been any retired football player who died whose brain I examined who does not have CTE,” he said. “For living players they seem to be OK, but when you talk to them one on one, they are having one problem or another. And CTE is like every other disease. People are going to have a range of symptoms. And, of course, there will be outliers.”

An NFL-funded brain bank at Boston University has found CTE in 96 percent of all deceased NFL football players and 79 percent of all football players it has studied.

Doctors have known for nearly 100 years that repeated blows to the head have long-term consequences. They originally applied the term “dementia pugilistica” to boxers who were said to be punch drunk. It took Omalu to find the condition in football players.

Still, there is controversy. A recent Associated Press story said Omalu was not the first to discover or name the condition, which has appeared in medical literature for decades. Omalu bristled at the suggestion.

“There are people who are out to discredit me,” he said. “But it is absolutely false. There was dementia pugilistica. But when I saw the disease in Mike Webster we agreed this was a disease that had not been seen before. CTE is a distinctive disease. Always before it was used as a descriptive, non-specific terminology. It is now a real disease.”

Through the Bennet Omalu Foundation at the University of Pittsburgh, he is dedicated to finding a cure.

“It all begins with a dream,” he said. “And when you dream, dream the impossible.”

This story was originally published January 25, 2016 at 3:04 PM with the headline "Bennet Omalu, the ‘Concussion’ doctor, on the debate over football and CTE."