Repeated blows of sufficient severity may have been what caused Lou Gehrig's ALS.
At least a few NFL players have died from ALS in the past few decades. I wonder how long such sports as American football and rugby will survive as more and more players suffer devastating neurological and brain diseases in their 40s and 50s.
Quote:More than 70 years after his speech, a new, small study in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology may have unlocked a tantalizing clue about Gehrig's illness -- one that could be connected to his history of concussions.
"He did have three or four major concussions that landed him in the hospital," said Dr. Ann McKee, associate professor of Neurology and Pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine. "It is interesting to speculate that they may have contributed to his ALS."
At least a few NFL players have died from ALS in the past few decades. I wonder how long such sports as American football and rugby will survive as more and more players suffer devastating neurological and brain diseases in their 40s and 50s.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
