Bradford William Davis has an excellent interview with Dr. Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian-born neuropathologist who is sounding the alarm on chronic traumatic encephalopathy:
If you ask Omalu today, he’ll tell you that you should never, ever play football again. In his latest book, Brain Damage in Contact Sports: What Parents Should Know Before Letting Their Children Play , Omalu argues that no child under the age of 18 should play high-contact sports. He believes the public has an incentive to restrict football the same way the U.S. restricts cigarettes from minors.
When Omalu discusses football, he moves effortlessly between sterile scientific conclusions and moral claims. “We shouldn’t let children play because we are damaging their brains and robbing them of their humanity. That is a fact.”