Weekly Reading Report #1

Directions: After reading and annotating, complete the following table and collect it with other weekly reports
to help you develop your findings and prepare for the assessments.
Title: Why helmets don't protect concussions and what might.
Author: David Camarillo

Pages read: TED Talk

Guiding Question(s): Why helmets dont protect concussions? Can something be developed to protect the
brain against concussions?
Summary statements of the authors main ideas
Even with all of the so called safety rules that leagues put in place to keep the players safe do they
really help? The gear they wear and the rules may help to minimize the amount of physical injuries that
the player will receive but what about the mental ones? Helmets prevent athletes from receiving cuts or
fractures that they could receive on their skull but the brain still moves around from the contact.
Something may be developed eventually to help but there isn't enough light on the subject.
Embedded quotation (page #)

How does it answer/relate to the Guiding Question?

The other problem with this video is

that the brain is shown as a kind of
rigid whole as it moves around,and
that's not true either. Your brain is
one of the softest substances in your
body, and you can think of it kind of
like jello. So as your head is moving
back and forth, your brain is twisting
and turning and contorting, and the
tissue is getting stretched. And so
most experts, I think, would agree
that concussion is not likely to be
something that's happening on this
outer surface of the brain, but rather
it's something that's much deeper
towards the center of the brain.
(3:55)

It shows that the information that is supposed to inform

you about how that part of the body works is wrong. You
think that the gear you buy will protect either you or your
kid but it really just prevents physical injuries not in
internal injuries. The video he was referring to showed
that the brain was more solid but the brain is softer than
it was showed in the video.

Now, there is some good news here,

and I hope to give you a sense of
hope by the end of this talk. One of
the things that we've noticed,
specifically about this mechanism of
injury, is although there's a rapid
transmission of the forces down this
fissure, it still takes a defined
amount of time. And what we think is
that if we can slow the head down
just enough so that the brain does
not lag behind the skull but instead it
moves in synchrony with the skull,
then we might be able to prevent this
mechanism of concussion. (10:52)

After he broke the news that many helmets and other

head gear dont really protect your brain rather it
prevents you from receiving physical injuries that you
can see thus hiding the non physical injuries. He tries to
give people hope that even after all this bad news that
they are working and may find a solution to help prevent
concussions soon.

Unfamiliar words
Gyroscopes

Definitions
(from Greek gros, "circle" and skop,
"to look") is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of
rotation is free to assume any orientation by itself.
Weekly Reading Report #2

Directions: After reading and annotating, complete the following table and collect it with other weekly reports
to help you develop your findings and prepare for the assessments.
Title: Concussion
Author: Jeanne Marie Laskas

Pages read: 1-33

Guiding Question(s): How can multiple concussions affect your future health? What can be done to help
minimize concussions in youth athletic programs?
Summary statements of the authors main ideas
Dr. Bennet Omalu, a type of scientist that is called a forensic scientist but he was mainly interested in the
brain. Throughout his career with his mentor Wecht, he came across the body of Mike Webster. MIke
Webster was a NFL player for the Pittsburgh steelers, Omalu found tremendous research about his brain
that he couldnt ignore. The NFL had tried to silence the issue but he persevered. What he found out
about Websters injuries and others like him would put the NFL in a new light and bring forth and new and
dangerous injury. Concussions.

Embedded quotation (page #)

How does it answer/relate to the Guiding Question?

Becoming an expert in death would

seem to be a counter-intuitive in
death, why and how death occurs.
(7)

It foreshadows that someone that he studied died from

concussions. It also begins to show that because he
specialized and took a liking to death and examining
corpses he might not have had many friends. And in the
earlier part of the text he was in court against his only
friend.

I realized that most deaths are

actually caused by trauma to your
brain, and I wanted to study the
brain. (13)

This quotes also foreshadows that in one of his forensic

studies he is going to find some football player that
played in the NFL who died under suspicious terms or
the things he did leading up to his death were odd.

...Mike Webster, the NFL player who

died? We suspected he may have
an underlying brain disease. We
saved his brain. (14)

This is the beginning of the story on what led Dr. Omalu

find the effect concussions have on players and many
others. Because they suspected he may have underlying
brain issues they began to look into it.

Unfamiliar words

Definitions

Pathology

Science of cause and effect of diseases

Neuropathology

Study of the brain

Anatomic

Examination

Weekly Reading Report #3

Directions: After reading and annotating, complete the following table and collect it with other weekly reports
to help you develop your findings and prepare for the assessments.
Title: Concussion
Author: Jeanne Marie Laskas

Pages read: 34-6

Guiding Question(s): How can multiple concussions affect your future health? What can be done to help
minimize concussions in youth athletic programs?
Summary statements of the authors main ideas
Dr. Bennet Omalu, a type of scientist that is called a forensic scientist but he was mainly interested in the
brain. Throughout his career with his mentor Wecht, he came across the body of Mike Webster. MIke
Webster was a NFL player for the Pittsburgh steelers, Omalu found tremendous research about his brain
that he couldnt ignore. The NFL had tried to silence the issue but he persevered. What he found out
about Websters injuries and others like him would put the NFL in a new light and bring forth and new and
dangerous injury. Concussions.

Embedded quotation (page #)

How does it answer/relate to the Guiding Question?

The smartest boy in a family studies

medicine, his father saidYou will
become a doctor. (38)

If his father had not pushed him into the medical field we
might not have found out about the effects concussions
had on people. Eventually someone may have found out
but they might have been too afraid to stand up to the
NFL.

Depression is like a virus festering

in your mind, and the discovery of it
can cripple before it cures. (45)

The irony of this is strong. He is studying in the medical

field of brains and the underlying issues that it can hold
and he gets one himself. Depression is not something
that is physical it is an underlying issue in your brain.

A corpse held a story, told in tissue,

patterns of trauma, and secrets in
cells. (64)

This begins to show that he begins to show that one of

the corpses he will study is going to help him crucially in
his study of the brain. Throughout his study his is going
to reveal the secrets that the NFL has so desperately
been trying to hide.

Unfamiliar words

Definitions

Weekly Reading Report #4

Directions: After reading and annotating, complete the following table and collect it with other weekly reports
to help you develop your findings and prepare for the assessments.
Title: Concussion
Author: Jeanne Marie Laskas

Pages read: 68-101

Guiding Question(s): How can multiple concussions affect your future health? What can be done to help
minimize concussions in youth athletic programs?
Summary statements of the authors main ideas
Dr. Bennet Omalu, a type of scientist that is called a forensic scientist but he was mainly interested in the
brain. Throughout his career with his mentor Wecht, he came across the body of Mike Webster. MIke
Webster was a NFL player for the Pittsburgh steelers, Omalu found tremendous research about his brain
that he couldnt ignore. The NFL had tried to silence the issue but he persevered. What he found out
about Websters injuries and others like him would put the NFL in a new light and bring forth and new and
dangerous injury. Concussions.

Embedded quotation (page #)

How does it answer/relate to the Guiding Question?

He had discovered a new passiondead brains!- and Welch encouraged

him to indulge his every curiosity.
(71)

Without the support of Welch, Dr. Omalu may have

never decided to pursue his studies and may have never
discovered the effects that multiple concussions have on
people and the downfall that the effects can lead you to.

What did I get? Bennet

askedMike webster, (89)

This begins the story and that he is now going to begin

his research on Mike Websters brain and to try and find
out how a major athlete in the NFL fell so hard after he
left the NFL and eventually led to his miserable death.

Mike Webster. Everyone was talking

about this guy, how well he played
on the field, but how badly he lived
after football when he retired (90)

This caught Bennets attention, how did this major player

on the field retire and just crash. He was an amazing
player but after he retired from football he lived a
miserable life.

Unfamiliar words

Definitions

Weekly Reading Report #5

Directions: After reading and annotating, complete the following table and collect it with other weekly reports
to help you develop your findings and prepare for the assessments.
Title: Concussion
Author: Jeanne Marie Laskas

Pages read: 102-135

Guiding Question(s): How can multiple concussions affect your future health? What can be done to help
minimize concussions in youth athletic programs?
Summary statements of the authors main ideas
Dr. Bennet Omalu, a type of scientist that is called a forensic scientist but he was mainly interested in the
brain. Throughout his career with his mentor Wecht, he came across the body of Mike Webster. MIke
Webster was a NFL player for the Pittsburgh steelers, Omalu found tremendous research about his brain
that he couldnt ignore. The NFL had tried to silence the issue but he persevered. What he found out
about Websters injuries and others like him would put the NFL in a new light and bring forth and new and
dangerous injury. Concussions.
Embedded quotation (page #)

How does it answer/relate to the Guiding Question?

Football might cause bad knees,

shoulders, or backs, but football did
not cause brain damage. That was a
given. There was no proof that
football did anything to anybodys
mind. (104)

This was the belief back then. Football and other sports
only caused physical injuries. They had a helmet so they
must be fine. We now know that the helmets are there to
prevent fractures in the skull and other physical injuries.
It does nothing to prevent the brain from shaking around
in the persons skull.

...still the NFL fought...They said

Mike Webster...who was
occasionally catatonic...wasnt crazy
long enough to qualify for what the
courts had said he was owed. (105)

This quote shows that the NFL acknowledged that the

injury might have been football related due to no safety
restrictions but they still fought because they kept trying
to deny it.

He had Wechts attention, and soon

he would have Americas (129)

He finds out the problem that Webster had and is

now pushing to bring it out to the public eye. He
connected the brain injuries that a boxer would
receive in fights to what Mike had gotten. They
were similar, it was hard to detect because it
could look like many different brain diseases but
there were small differences that they were able
to discover. Alzheimer's boxers brain football
This was the train of thought. Same pathology, different
presentation. (127)

Unfamiliar words
Dementia pugilistica

Pathology

Definitions
Is a type of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a
neurodegenerative disease with features of dementia.
DP may affect amateur or professional boxers, wrestlers
as well as athletes in other sports who suffer
concussions.
medical specialty that is concerned with the diagnosis of
disease based on the laboratory analysis of bodily fluids
such as blood and urine, as well as tissues
Weekly Reading Report #6

Directions: After reading and annotating, complete the following table and collect it with other weekly reports
to help you develop your findings and prepare for the assessments.
Title: Concussion
Author: Jeanne Marie Laskas

Pages read: 136-169

Guiding Question(s): How can multiple concussions affect your future health? What can be done to help
minimize concussions in youth athletic programs?
Summary statements of the authors main ideas
Dr. Bennet Omalu, a type of scientist that is called a forensic scientist but he was mainly interested in the
brain. Throughout his career with his mentor Wecht, he came across the body of Mike Webster. MIke
Webster was a NFL player for the Pittsburgh steelers, Omalu found tremendous research about his brain
that he couldnt ignore. The NFL had tried to silence the issue but he persevered. What he found out
about Websters injuries and others like him would put the NFL in a new light and bring forth and new and
dangerous injury. Concussions.

Embedded quotation (page #)

How does it answer/relate to the Guiding Question?

It was as though the established

scientists were in there saying one
thing and the NLF was talking over
them, ignoring them, saying another
thing. (138-139)

Groups like the NFL acknowledged that there was

something wrong and that the players were getting hurt
not only physically but mentally and were trying to shove
it under the carpet. Physical injuries were expected of in
the NFl, football is a contact sport but what many players
and others did not realize was that football was affecting
not only their physical health but their mental health as
well.

...They wanted his paper retracted.

They wanted to nullify the work of an
independent scientist who had
stumbled onto undeniable proof.
They wanted to silence him. (155)

The NFL has many people on their payroll, they

controlled the MTBI committee and the Neurosurgery
journal so that they could manage what information got
out. The paper that Bennet wrote was pretty much a
direct attack on the NFL with proof to back it up so they
took it down and silenced him.

Unfamiliar words

Definitions

Weekly Reading Report #7

Directions: After reading and annotating, complete the following table and collect it with other weekly reports

to help you develop your findings and prepare for the assessments.
Title: Concussion
Author: Jeanne Marie Laskas

Pages read: 170-205

Guiding Question(s): How can multiple concussions affect your future health? What can be done to help
minimize concussions in youth athletic programs?
Summary statements of the authors main ideas
Dr. Bennet Omalu, a type of scientist that is called a forensic scientist but he was mainly interested in the
brain. Throughout his career with his mentor Wecht, he came across the body of Mike Webster. MIke
Webster was a NFL player for the Pittsburgh steelers, Omalu found tremendous research about his brain
that he couldnt ignore. The NFL had tried to silence the issue but he persevered. What he found out
about Websters injuries and others like him would put the NFL in a new light and bring forth and new and
dangerous injury. Concussions.

Embedded quotation (page #)

How does it answer/relate to the Guiding Question?

Andre Walters...He got fifteen

diagnosed concussions, then
stopped counting...After he retired
he bought a .32-caliber Smith &
Wesson and he sat on his back deck
in his Tampa home and he put it in
his mouth and pulled the trigger.
(174)

Multiple concussions affect your health negatively. There

are many cases of people, mainly boxers and football
players, going crazy, excruciating pains everywhere,
and many other devastating things. Many kill themselves
after being tired of living in great pain and losing
everything.

Vision loss , ferocious migraines,

loss of balance, memory problems;
he was twenty-four years old and
feeling like a feeble old man.He went
to eight doctors before anyone really
listened to him and took the time to
tell him what was going on. Those
were concussions. (175-176)

Many people feared the NFL at that time and other huge
organizations like it, they controlled everything and
everyone. They controlled what would get out to the
public and what wouldnt and who would challenge them
they are multi-billion dollar industries. Concussions
werent viewed as anything important then so they were
brushed off.

Unfamiliar words

Definitions

Weekly Reading Report #8

Directions: After reading and annotating, complete the following table and collect it with other weekly reports
to help you develop your findings and prepare for the assessments.

Title: Concussion
Author: Jeanne Marie Laskas

Pages read: 206-239

Guiding Question(s): How can multiple concussions affect your future health? What can be done to help
minimize concussions in youth athletic programs?
Summary statements of the authors main ideas
Dr. Bennet Omalu, a type of scientist that is called a forensic scientist but he was mainly interested in the
brain. Throughout his career with his mentor Wecht, he came across the body of Mike Webster. MIke
Webster was a NFL player for the Pittsburgh steelers, Omalu found tremendous research about his brain
that he couldnt ignore. The NFL had tried to silence the issue but he persevered. What he found out
about Websters injuries and others like him would put the NFL in a new light and bring forth and new and
dangerous injury. Concussions.

Embedded quotation (page #)

How does it answer/relate to the Guiding Question?

CTE is not about the big hit, or not

only. A player doesn't have to be
knocked out cold and taken off the
field on a stretcher to be in danger of
getting CTE. The subconcussive
collisions may, in fact, be the real
culprit. (231)

It is not only the big hits that will give you a concussions
but the little hits will also give you a concussion. The hits
that people see as not a big deal could have the most
impact on your brain.

Players Summit & Conference in

the South Point hotel just off the
Vegas Strip is a full-on immersion
into the world of football and
dementiaFootball? This was
because of football? (239)

Conferences that raise awareness about what is

happening to their family member about what is
happening to them. CTE can cause a 180 flip of
personality, memory loss, or even other mental illnesses.

Unfamiliar words

Definitions

Weekly Reading Report #9

Directions: After reading and annotating, complete the following table and collect it with other weekly reports
to help you develop your findings and prepare for the assessments.
Title: Concussion

Author: Jeanne Marie Laskas

Pages read: 240-end

Guiding Question(s): How can multiple concussions affect your future health? What can be done to help
minimize concussions in youth athletic programs?
Summary statements of the authors main ideas
Dr. Bennet Omalu, a type of scientist that is called a forensic scientist but he was mainly interested in the
brain. Throughout his career with his mentor Wecht, he came across the body of Mike Webster. MIke
Webster was a NFL player for the Pittsburgh steelers, Omalu found tremendous research about his brain
that he couldnt ignore. The NFL had tried to silence the issue but he persevered. What he found out
about Websters injuries and others like him would put the NFL in a new light and bring forth and new and
dangerous injury. Concussions.

Embedded quotation (page #)

How does it answer/relate to the Guiding Question?

A growing number of former NFL

players...say that had they known
what football could do to their brains,
they would not have played. (243)

We can help the youth athletic programs by raising

awareness to players because had some of the players
had known they would not have played.

...nearly half of all college trainers

say they feel pressured from
coachers to return cussed players to
the field before theyre medically
ready. (243)

The pressure on both the players and trainers to try and

get them back in the game before they are medically
ready. The pressure they face to get back on the field
makes them go out and get hurt worse.

Unfamiliar words

Definitions