UP FRONT player Mike Webster and his conclusion that concussions among players are making them sick, is a turning point in his career and set him on a collision path with a giant – the National Foot-ball League. Omalu’s recently released book, Truth Doesn’t Have a Side , is more than just a retelling of his life story. It’s about his personal history and his struggles as a child growing up in a war-torn corner of Africa; but it’s also about his faith and strong conviction on the sacredness of human life. Canadian Chiropractor sat down with Omalu in San Francisco while attending The Wave conference, where Omalu was a keynote speaker. He has been making the international rounds to promote his new book and hone in on his message: high-impact, high-contact sports cause irreversible brain injuries that children must be protected from. On top of international speaking en-gagements, Omalu still runs his own company – Bennet Omalu Pathology – providing medical legal expert consul-tation. Next year, he plans to go back to teaching forensic pathology at Univer-sity of California Davis Medical Center’s Department of Medical Pa-thology and Laboratory Medicine in Sacramento, Calif. Following is an excerpt from our conversation with Omalu. Canadian Chiropractor: Since the movie, Concussion, was released you have been speaking to a variety of au-diences around the world. How has your life changed since the Mike Webster au-topsy? Bennet Omalu: There are many as-pects of my story, sociologically speak-ing. ‘How come a foreigner came to America, doing autopsy in America, discovered something in America’s fa-vourite sport? When he published what he discovered, everybody came after him.’ Everybody denied me. I talk about this in what I call “con-formational intelligence” – group think-ing. How I was able to face the NFL, a multibillion dollar corporation with nothing in my pocket and I was able to prevail. I don’t really see that as David and Goliath, because what happened was I did my homework and I discov-ered the truth. I sought the truth. I found it. The www.canadianchiropractor.ca PROFILE Truth on his side Q&A with Dr. Bennet Omalu BY MARI-LEN DE GUZMAN W hen Ed Cun-ningham re-signed his lu-crative post as a college foot-ball analyst for ESPN last August, he made clear the reason for his departure: he no longer wished to be at the forefront of a sport that endangers its players. “I take full ownership of my alignment with the sport,” Cunningham tells the New York Times’ John Branch. “I can just no longer be in that cheerleader’s spot.” His former NFL teammate Dave Duerson killed himself in 2011. He was later found to have suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) after an examination of his deceased brain. A recent study of 202 deceased Amer-ican football players found 87 per cent had CTE in their brains. The study was published on July 25 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. As Cunningham now refuses to take part in this brain-injury-causing sport, the man who was first to discover the link between CTE and head trauma in athletes is taking things a step further. Dr. Bennet Omalu, a Nigerian-born American pathologist, wants to educate the world about the brain-damaging risks of high-impact, high-contact sports and wants to put a stop to it. His discovery of CTE on the brain of NFL MARI-LEN DE GUZMAN is the editor of Canadian Chiropractor magazine. You can email her at [email protected]. 26 Canadian Chiropractor December 2017
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor December 2017: Page 26
