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World Rugby chief slams doc who wants to ban children's rugby
By Ian Cameron
World Rugby supremo Brett Gosper has hit out at a well known pathologist who is advocating that underage rugby should be banned globally.
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Neuropathologist Dr Bennet Omalu has stated this week that he wants rugby, among other contact sports, to effectively become adult only pastimes and that those under the age of 18 should not be allowed partake.
Dr Omalu was played by Will Smith in the movie ‘Concussion’, a film which chronicled his role in identifying concussion in the NFL as a key factor in predicting the onset of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
However, World Rugby CEO Brett Gosper has hit out at the doctors findings, stating: “Hear a Dr Omalu advocates a ban on children’s rugby! Isolated versus sensible mainstream medical view and absent of statistical evidence.”
https://twitter.com/brettgosper/status/872550971179708417
Dr Omalu gave a talk at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin this week, in which he called for a global ban on contact sport for children where blows to the head were likely.
The Irish Times report that Dr Omalu said in the lead up to the talk that: “When we play rugby, is our head exposed to repeated blows? The answer is yes. So if it does, there is a risk of permanent brain damage, so should children play it? No. The truth is inconvenient.”
Dr Omalu has been branded by some as the ‘man who went to war with the NFL’, but this week it seems rugby was firmly in his cross hairs.
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"I am not for the banning of any sport..but we must protect the most vulnerable in society.. our children" – dr Omalu pic.twitter.com/iqY3hb6kVP
— RCSI (@RCSI_Irl) June 6, 2017
In November 2006, Omalu famously published a neurosurgery paper based on his findings in the brain of former NFL player Terry Long, who suffered from depression and committed suicide in 2005.
Though Long died at 45, Omalu found tau protein concentrations more consistent with “a 90-year-old brain with advanced Alzheimer’s.”
The condition – CTE – is controversial in and of itself, due to a lack of consensus among medical professionals as to the validity of the medical condition.
