Letting kids play football is child abuse: ‘Concussion’ doctor

Forensic Pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu, whose research and discovery of CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, was chronicled in the 2015 Will Smith movie ‘Concussion,’ is speaking out against children participating in contact sports, telling the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Mornings with Maria, “The fundamental issue is, knowing what we know today, there is no justifiable reason why a child under the age of 18 should engage in the high-impact, high-contact collision sports, the big six are football, ice hockey, mixed martial arts, rugby, boxing and wrestling.

The statistics are startling, according to Omalu.

“If your child plays any of these contact sports, there is a 100% risk exposure to brain damage and this brain damage could manifest sometimes one, two, three, four, five, ten years later, up to 40 years later.”

Omalu says that letting children participate in contact sports is a form of child abuse, telling Bartiromo, “We are intentionally sending children out to suffer brain damage, if that is not child abuse, what is it?”

The Brewer Group Executive Chairman Jack Brewer, who played in the NFL, asked Omalu, “If you’re a player like myself or you’re a person that’s played football and you’ve had numerous concussions, is there anything that you can do to help yourself or slow down the CTE progress?”

According to Omalu, once you have suffered a concussion you should seek professional help because there are things you can do to improve your brain health, but, “Unfortunately the truth is inconvenient, there is no cure.”