The news of Junior Seau‘s suicide not only shocked NFL fans and triggered a national discussion about violence and football — it also sparked a race for the former San Diego Chargers linebacker’s brain.
Two research groups — the Brain Injury Research Institute and Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy — made bids to persuade Seau’s family to donate his brain to them within 24 hours after the Pro Bowl linebacker’s death.
It sounds ghoulish for scientists to vie for a beloved athlete’s brain so soon after his death, but the researchers needed to let the Seau family know of their interest before it makes arrangements for his remains. “You can’t do this kind of test on a living person,” said Dr. Julian Bailes, the director of the Brain Injury Research Institute.
The stakes are high: By studying Seau’s gray matter, the researchers could determine if he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain-destroying disease that has been linked to the deaths of Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Famer Mike Webster, Philadelphia Eagles safety Andre Waters and numerous other athletes.
“Either they get it or we get it,” Bailes said Thursday before the Seau family told BIRI it would donate Junior’s brain to the Boston researchers. Bailes said it could help researchers determine if genetics play a role in CTE, or whether concussions — as opposed to repeated, but less serious, blows to the head — are necessary to bring on CTE.
“This specimen needs to be examined,” Bailes said. “It doesn’t matter who does it. There are only two groups doing this kind of work.”
Football players are especially at risk for CTE because of the repeated hits they suffer during their careers. Blows to the head damage nerve fibers, which release proteins that pool in the brain and kill cells in regions that regulate emotions and critical thinking.
“He had very big exposure,” Bailes said of Seau. “Twenty years in the NFL. Three years at USC. Four years of high school, plus youth football.”
The BU group appeared to have the inside track on Thursday morning.
“Dedicated researchers in Boston studying deceased players’ brains for evidence of trauma attempting to obtain Junior Seau’s,” Sports Illustrated’s Peter King reported at 8:55 on Twitter. “Hope they do.”
But Boston University Medical Center spokeswoman Gina DiGravio declined to confirm or deny King’s report.
“It is not our policy to discuss any completed, ongoing or potential research cases unless as the specific request of family members,” BU said in a statement.
Sources in the NFL retiree community, however, said the BU researchers aren’t reluctant to blitz former players and their families when it comes to brains.
“BU has a history of being extremely aggressive with the families of dead players,” said one source. “They are also aggressive in courting players who are still living. I wouldn’t be surprised if they approached Seau while he was still living.”
Bennet Omalu, one of BIRI’s founders and the medical examiner for central California’s San Joaquin County, assisted the San Diego County authorities who conducted Seau’s autopsy on Thursday and ruled his death a suicide. Perhaps even more significant, he is the neuropathologist who first determined that repeated head trauma can lead to mood swings, dementia and other problems. And unlike the BU group, Omalu and his colleagues do not accept financial assistance from the NFL, which not long ago insisted that there is no evidence that concussions lead to dementia and other brain problems.
NFL doctors even demanded that “Neurosurgery,” the peer-reviewed journal that first published Omalu’s research, retract his paper. During a 2009 congressional hearing on concussions, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) said the NFL reminded her of tobacco companies trying to deny links between cigarettes and cancer.