RUSH: “Junior Seau’s Family Sues NFL Over Brain Injuries — The wrongful death lawsuit, filed Wednesday in California Superior Court in San Diego, blames the NFL for its ‘acts or omissions’ that hid the dangers of repetitive blows to the head.” By the way, every social issue needs an optic. If you are going to advance a social cause, you need pictures. That’s how you hit the low-information segment of the country. You gotta show ’em pictures, primarily to get ’em on TMZ, E! Entertainment Network, whatever.
You have to get ’em there, and you’re home free. Guess what? They now have brain scan photos that supposedly show the brain damage of concussions, in color, color brain scan photos. Not PET scans. This is new stuff. And apparently a learned medical professional can point to that part of the brain and say, “See that right there? See where the yellow is? See where that bright red is?” or whatever color they’re pointing to. “That’s where the concussion happened! Remember when Junior Seau got hit by Rodney Harrison? Right there, that’s when it happened,” and that’s all this issue needs is an optic, and now that they got pictures of the brain, ostensibly after concussion damage, that launches them.
Picture equals proof, you see, to low-information juries, low-information individuals. So they now have pictures. The Seau lawsuit maintains the NFL knew and that the helmet manufacturers, they knew! They knew, and they’ve been hiding it, and they’ve been lying to the players, and they’ve been covering this up. They have been making it clear here. The lawsuit “says Seau developed chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) from those hits, and accuses the NFL of deliberately ignoring and concealing evidence of the risks associated with traumatic brain injuries.”
I hope you remember way back last year when I told you that this game was never going to be the same again. Once the forces of social change have gotten hold of it, all bets are off. “Helmet manufacturer Riddell Inc., also is being sued by the Seaus, who say Riddell was ‘negligent in their design, testing, assembly, manufacture, marketing, and engineering of the helmets’ used by NFL players. The suit says the helmets were unreasonably dangerous and unsafe.” That’s why there’s a warning label on NFL helmets. It’s been on the helmets for a number of years.
I remember when I first saw it, I laughed. “Are you kidding me?” I remember saying. “Warning labels on a professional football helmet, as if the people don’t know what they’re doing?” But that’s exactly what’s being maintained, that Junior Seau had no idea what he was doing. He had no idea what he was getting into. Everybody had lied to him, and every other NFL player, too. That they have been repeatedly lied to and evidence has been covered up. Nobody knew how dangerous this game really was and how ineffective the helmets really are.
But Riddell and the other helmet manufacturers, too, have warning labels. I don’t know if shoulder pads have warning labels on there or not, but I know the helmet does. Here’s what the warning label says on the helmet: “No helmet can prevent serious head or neck injuries a player might receive while participating in football.” Okay, so that’s the warning label that, when you put it on, you’re acknowledging, just like the warning label on cigarettes. But the Seau family — and I don’t mean to harp on them. There are gonna be a whole bunch of people joining suits like this. They are saying that that doesn’t matter.
The warning label further says, “Do not use this helmet to butt, ram, or spear an opposing player.” They still do it. The warning label says not to do it and yet the manufacturer is still being sued here. The label says, “Spearing, ramming, butting is a violation of the football rules, and such use can result in severe head or neck injuries, paralysis, or death to you and possible injury to your opponent. Contact in football may result in concussion brain injury, which no helmet can prevent.” All this is on the warning label. Did you know this? You didn’t know this.
What I read to you is on the warning label of every NFL helmet, and not just NFL, but at every level, and it’s been on there for years, folks. For years! “UCLA researchers led a team of scientists that used a chemical marker called FDDNP to measure the degree of brain damage in five retired football players. That marker latches onto the tau proteins that build up in the brain when someone suffers from Alzheimer’s or other cognitive impairments like chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Doctors can then perform a routine positron emission tomography (PET) scan to see those chemical markers, highlighting how many tau proteins there are and where they end up.”
So they’ve got their optic now. They can point to the picture and say, “See? There’s the concussion! There’s the first one, there’s the second one, and there’s the cumulative effect.” I remember… I forget when the warning labels went on helmets, but the first warning label just said, “This helmet should not be used for head protection.” I remember asking, “Well, what’s it for, then?” Of course, it was just for indemnification purposes. So, anyway, that’s the latest. The point is, they’ve got their optic now. The forces for social change in football have their brain pictures. They can now show low-information juries and others the damage. Right there it is. And every damage, every tau protein equals a certain number of dollars, is the way this is gonna work.
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