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Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries

Law, Ethics, and Public Health

Daniel S. Goldberg
foreword by Christopher Nowinski

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A timely look at the ethical, legal, and policy issues surrounding brain injury and collision sports.

American tackle football is an industry like any other. And like many industries, it sells a product that is dangerous to those who use it—or, in this case, those who play it. In Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries, Daniel S. Goldberg explores the connections among traumatic brain injury, collision sports, and the industry's continuing efforts to manufacture doubt. Focusing especially on youths and adolescents—the most vulnerable population that comprises over 99% of tackle football...

A timely look at the ethical, legal, and policy issues surrounding brain injury and collision sports.

American tackle football is an industry like any other. And like many industries, it sells a product that is dangerous to those who use it—or, in this case, those who play it. In Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries, Daniel S. Goldberg explores the connections among traumatic brain injury, collision sports, and the industry's continuing efforts to manufacture doubt. Focusing especially on youths and adolescents—the most vulnerable population that comprises over 99% of tackle football players in the US—Goldberg addresses the ethical and social implications of their participation in tackle football.

Goldberg discusses the true scope of the danger and the costs to society and individuals of caring for injured participants. If these risks were to become widespread public knowledge, the profitability and perhaps even the viability of American football would be at risk. As the tackle football industry has consistently worked to mask the health hazards involved in playing football, it has used a particular tool that has proved highly effective in achieving this subterfuge: the manufacture of doubt. Goldberg advocates for using public health laws as a tool for countering these efforts at obfuscation, and he outlines specific policy proposals intended to address the population health and ethical problems presented by tackle football.

The book draws on public health ethics, public health law, and the histories of occupational and public health to assess the limits of parental choice to expose their children to risks of injury. Should kids play tackle football at all—and who decides if they should? Goldberg offers practical answers to these critical legal, ethical, and social questions. Chris Nowinski, former Harvard football player and WWE wrestler, provides a timely and insider's perspective on these critical issues in the foreword.

Reviews

Reviews

Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries exposes the cynical campaign by the tackle football industry, the NFL, and the NFL's mercenary scientists to manufacture doubt and conceal from players and the public the truth about the harmful and sometimes tragic impact of playing tackle football on players' brains.

Daniel Goldberg's analysis of tackle football and traumatic brain injuries is more relevant than ever. It is a strong indictment of not only the harms caused by the American tackle football industry but also the strategies used to evade regulation. He explains with exceptional clarity why structural violence is an essential lens for understanding and addressing these important public health issues.

This searing indictment shows how the NFL as well as college and youth football have borrowed from the playbook of tobacco companies and other industries to manufacture doubt about the risks associated with football. A must-read for anyone with a child who wants to play football, anyone who enjoys the game, and all who want to understand how industries resist regulations and how ethical societies should balance the risks and rewards of products and pastimes.

Despite its harms, tackle football has a winning playbook for deferring regulation: the Manufacture of Doubt. Goldberg insightfully explores how football uses the same insidious tools as Big Tobacco and nineteenth-century railroads, recommending policy solutions to address the sport's most unacceptable risks. A must-read for anyone who cares about safety in football—or any industry.

This excellent book applies historical, medical, ethical and legal lenses to unpick why and how we think what we do about collision-related sports injury and its frequent catastrophic effects. Professor Goldberg combines a long-overdue forensic examination of the manufacture of doubt around this issue with a nuanced perspective on what meaningful action might entail.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
256
ISBN
9781421450117
Illustration Description
1 b&w illus
Table of Contents

Foreword
Christopher Nowinski
Introduction
Chapter 1. Public Health History and the Manufacture of Doubt
Chapter 2. The Manufacture of Doubt and Its Proponents
Chapter 3. The American Tackle Football

Foreword
Christopher Nowinski
Introduction
Chapter 1. Public Health History and the Manufacture of Doubt
Chapter 2. The Manufacture of Doubt and Its Proponents
Chapter 3. The American Tackle Football Industry's Manufacture of Doubt
Chapter 4. Conflicts of Interest and the Tackle Football Industry
Chapter 5. Unreasonable Demands for Proof of Causation and the Precautionary Principle
Chapter 6. Policy Recommendations
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Author Bios
Daniel S. Goldberg
Featured Contributor

Daniel S. Goldberg

Daniel S. Goldberg (DENVER, CO) is an associate professor in the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.