Bennet Omalu Quotes

Omalu first found the tau 'threads' in the brain of former Steeler Mike Webster in 2002 and published his findings in 2005, in the journal 'Neurosurgery.'

When people say that you kind of just get - you know, just feel like a little buzzed or dazed or had your bell rung - they consider that a concussion. I wouldn't. But if that is considered a concussion, I would say any football player at least records 50 to 100 in the course of a year.

It's just a matter of sometimes the CTE in your brain affects what happens in your life... and sometimes... it does not.

My father was an NFL running back, so I feel like I might be more susceptible, genetically, to CTE.

The overwhelming evidence is that trauma is a major factor in CTE.

In boxing, you've got CTE from head trauma constantly.

We're hoping that there is large-scale recognition that CTE is a risk when playing football.

I have a lot of college football players in my Brain Bank with CTE.

On a foggy, steel gray Saturday in September 2002, Bennet Omalu arrived at the Allegheny County coroner's office and got his assignment for the day: Perform an autopsy on the body of Mike Webster, a professional football player.

Dementia pugilistica was discovered in 1928... And we still have boxing. Football will continue.

Dave Duerson had classic pathology of CTE and no evidence of any other disease.

Dementia is, after all, a symptom of organic brain damage. It is a condition, a disorder of the central nervous system, brought about in my case by a viral assault on brain tissue. When the assault wiped out certain intellectual processes, it also affected emotional processes.

I have times when I'm off-balance. I have times when I slur my words. I have times when I walk into walls. I have times when I can't remember somebody's name.

[Referring to Jack Kemp:] … a football player who has played too much without his helmet.

We, as a league, we have not in any way changed our desire to do everything we can to make it safe, make it safe as to head injury. We hope and will support any data that would give us more insight into any short- and long-term consequences. We would support that.

The relationship between concussions and the asserted clinical symptoms of C.T.E. remains unknown.

We've now found CTE in former NFL players who played every position except kicker.

All the NFL players I have examined pathologically, I have not seen one that did not have changes in their brain system with brain damage.

The beginnings of CTE can start quite early.

A child who plays a game of football for one season without any documented concussion - several months after that season, if you subject his brain to sophisticated psychological testing and radiological testing, functional MRIs, there is evidence of brain damage.

The type of Alzheimer's Dad has is rare - posterior cortical atrophy or PCA - and it affects his spatial awareness and the way he judges distance. His first symptoms were erratic typing and spelling, but to talk to him, you'd never know there was a problem.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

When the doctors showed me an X-ray of my brain, they pointed to a black hole on the upper left side and told me that all memory from that spot was dead. I thought to myself that I hoped that's where I kept 'The Orange Blossom Special.'

As the National Football League and other pro sports increasingly reckon with the early dementia, mental health issues, suicides and even criminal behavior of former players, the risk of what's known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is becoming clear.

Concussions happen. If not on every play, then they happen like every other, every third play, you know.