>> That's a great question Professor Carfania.
And it is unknown, but I would speculate,
this is probably definitely happening.
It is the idea that the players were given pain killers.
Even some without prescription while they were playing.
Painkillers mask the pain they suffer.
Sometimes the only way you know you are concussed is
because you have a headache or some sort of symptom related to pain like that.
And if the drugs took that away, you wouldn't recognize whom you
working cost and what we believe is, if you continue to play through a concussion,
you make the damage much worse,
you may make it more likely that you have longer term problems.
So probably what happened there is they they medicated people through concussions
and that caused more severe brain damage, and so there is some
relationship there although it's basically impossible to perfectly tease out.
But the reality is, we shouldn't be doping up these football players because they
need to know when they're injured so they can get off the field.
>> Chris, how do you react to a defense that's often times raised,
you waived your rights, you assumed the risk.
You allowed the team doc, to put you back in the game when maybe you were woozy.
You lived it.
You said yourself as a WWE, put me in coach, I'm okay.
So many of these athletes say, I don't want to admit I've been injured, or
it might be the end of my career.
What's your gut on that, go, no go,
about the defense of you assumed the risk and thereby, waived your rights?
>> Yeah, I don't buy the you assume your risk.
There's nothing really empirical about concussion and
that's why we need experts treating it.
So it's basically the doctors job to know that when you suffer a brain injury,
don't keep getting hit in the head.
And if they were allowing you to go back in against what were known protocols.
I mean you can go back into the literature and find in 1905 the Harvard football team
kept their captain out of the game for a concussion.
In 1945, not to be all Harvard here.
But the Harvard team doctor retired every player that got three concussions and
they were never allowed to go back into the game.
So, people knew this, and if you were treating patients,
you should have known to keep them out, and I look back and
think when I was injured I was 24, I had a Harvard degree,
I had no concept of what was going on.
That really was the medical staff's job.
So not only did they have, were need that to happen, but
also athletes never knew what they were getting into.
People say that, it's not true.
Everyone started playing football when they were a minor, when they were a child,
I was 13.
I certainly didn't know what I was getting into and
at no point along the way when I shifted from being a child to being an adult,
did anyone sit down and inform me of that risk, that never happened.
