By Alan Schwarz/International Herald Tribune
National Football League players are lionized for figuratively giving their bodies to the sport. Now, some retired players are planning to give their brains to a new center at Boston University’s School of Medicine devoted to studying the long-term effects of concussions.
A dozen athletes, including six NFL players and a former U.S. women’s soccer player, have agreed to donate their brains after their deaths to the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy.
On Thursday, the center will announce that a fifth deceased NFL player, former Houston Oilers linebacker John Grimsley, was found to have brain damage commonly associated with boxers.
The former New England linebacker Ted Johnson, one of the players who has agreed to donate his brain, said he hoped the center would help clarify the issue of concussions’ long-term effects. The NFL says that, in regard to its players, the long-term effects of concussions are uncertain. READ MORE
