More handpicked essays just for you.
Effects concussions have on nfl athletes
What are the effects of brain injury and concussions in sport
Sports concussion and devastating long term effects
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The failure of the NFL to disclose credible research linking concussions to permanent, hidden long-term brain injury to the players can be interpreted as both ethical and unethical. Ethical theories and traps influenced the NFL’s decision. Not disclosing the research is considered moral by the ethical theory of utilitarianism. Utilitarian ethics considers the best decision is one which maximizes overall happiness and minimizes overall pain is more ethical. Utilitarianism’s goal is to produce the best outcome for the largest number of people. The NFL’s failure to reveal the research connecting concussion to permanent brain injury’s is in line with utilitarian ethics. A larger population benefits from football compared to the small number of …show more content…
players that are affected by chronic traumatic encephalopathy, therefore, making the NFL’s actions ethical. When Dr. Maroon was speaking with Dr. Omalu, he stated that the NFL employees 100,000s of people sends 1,000s of underprivileged children to school and donates millions to charities. The positive impact the NFL has on society outweighs the detriments of the 28% of professional football players that will suffer from a cogitative impairment. Opposing utilitarianism is deontological ethics, which believes that the outcome of the decision is not important as the reasoning behind it.
Deontological ethics values the right decision regardless of the consequences. The right thing for the NFL to do was to disclose the credible research about the long-term effects of concussion on football players. The failure to reveal lead to suicides by players unknowing suffering from CTE. Mike Webster’s wife said if she would have known her husband was sick she would have done more for him. If they NFL would have discussed this information, Mike Webster would have received the necessary care and not been driven to commit suicide. Even though the NFL would potentially lose profits from informing the players, they could have saved multiple lives. Under deontological ethics, disclosing the information would be the right thing and an ethical organization would not care about the consequences. NFL’s lack of ethics endangers their own players by not informing them on the possible repercussions of concussions that affect 28% of …show more content…
them. Money is an ethical trap that influenced the NFL’s failure to discuss the information to players. The connect between money and happiness can easily make unethical discussion seem okay. The impact of the research being released could lead to the downfall of the entire NFL. According to Dr. Maroon, if 10% of mother’s ban their sons from playing football the whole symptom will collapse. Children will stop playing leading to less playing in high school, even less in college and soon there won’t be enough players in the NFL. If the NFL wanted to be ethical, they would have cared more about the health and wellbeing of its players instead of being solely profit driven. Disclosing the information would have led to a backlash from players and fans, which would lead to a decrease in monetary gains. The unethical behavior derives from the NFL’s greed and deserve of money. The amount of money the NFL would lose from the release of the research would be drastically impacted and result in them falling into the ethical trap of money. Similar to money, conflicts of interest results in an unclear unconscious reasoning behind unethical decisions. The biases created by a conflict of interest tend to unintentional self-severing. To be truly ethical one limit all conflicts of interests and since the NFL would be negatively impacted by the information they withheld. The research they possessed was not released because of the conflict of interest. The release of the findings would negatively impact the organization, while concealing the research would allow the organized to continue without problems. The fact that the people who had access to the information were also trying to run a business induced the bias discussion to hold back the research. If the evidence was inconclusive as to whether the concussion caused permanent brain injury, the NFL’s actions would be considered more ethical.
Per utilitarian ethics, no matter the link between football and CTE, the research the NFL’s actions would be considered ethical. Lack of certainty in the research makes deontological ethics more difficult to implement. Since the research did not directly related football to the brain injuries, there is not the same obligation to disclose research that is not definite. Parallel to if the information was conclusive the NFL fell into the ethical traps of money and conflict of interest. The NFL still had to wrestle with ethical traps even if the it was considered ethical to not disclose the research. Since the research could not exclusively blame football concussion to permanent brain injuries, the ethical decision was not as black and white as
before.
The NFL position in this article makes them look very greedy and indifferent about the overall health of their football players. One of the ethical perspectives that can be used to analyze the NFL's position in this article is deontology. Deontology is the perspective where rules is the defining factor for ethical decisions. From the deontology perspective it makes it seem that the NFL has decided not to follow the rules and even blurred the lines as to what potential injuries their players can get. They wanted their injured players to play without having to follow through the with proper procedure in verifying that the players are in conditions healthy enough to play. It looks as if the NFL cares only about bringing in money and not care about
Throughout history in the NFL, head injuries and fixing those problems have always been hidden from the athletes because of the NFL striving to make a large profit instead of caring for the players. With this being an ongoing problem between NFL players and the NFL itself, many past and current players are digging deeper to find the truth and statistics continue to show how serious this problem actually is. When the lawsuits first began to come known to the public, the NFL agreed to pay over seven hundred million dollars to compensate former players suffering neurological injuries. Many believe the NFL offered this so quickly, hoping to avoid a potential public relations nightmare. The NFL, a ten billion dollar annual business, couldn’t take any type of guilt, or legal discovery, which some inside and out of the industry expected could have caused a fatal blow to the game’s future (Thiel). The settlement may have prevented the public from learning much about the past, but the issue of head injuries is a danger to football and won’t just go away because NFL wants it to (Waldron).
When you think of football you think of excitement or rooting for your favorite team. Unfortunately, we forget to realize the side effect of the helmet crashing hits. Football players endure a total of 1,500 hits to the head in one season which can cause one major problem: a concussion. We can imply that liberals stand for the rights of the people over the rights of the corporations. Four formal NFL players have sued the league and its helmet maker claiming they hid information about the dangers of brain injury. With that said from a libertarians perspective, NFL players should be informed about the dangers of brain injury from helmet making companies and should receive medical care for past, current and future NFL players.
What does Jovan Belcher, Ray Esterling and O.J. Murdock Have in common? They all were famous football players who commented suicide. Each player had something called chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. This is a condition where sufferers have had repeated hits to the head that leads to concussions and ultimately head trauma. In this research paper, we will go over the data about the NFL to see could they have prevented CTE in these players if they had placed the player’s safety first.
American football can be joyful and entertaining to watch but what people do not know is that players are suffering a disease that has never been discovering before. In 2009, Jeanne Marie Laskas novel “Concussion,” brought one question to American. Can football kill people? She concludes that playing football can cause permanent brain damage, cause a person to go crazy, and to the point of death. She uses diction and anecdotes to bring a threat to football players in America to light.
“Football’s Endgame: What would happen if America’s Pastime just...died” is the title that had heads turning when it made its way onto Sports Illustrated. Football is the United State’s favorite sport so an article like this one was sure to shock fans. The article was written to be set ten years from now when the game of football met its death. Giving the ongoing issues surrounding the game in 2016, the author Austin Murphy dated the article September 7,2036. In this article Murphy talks about the factors that led to the end of one of the U.S’s beloved sports. Factors like the AIG not protecting athletes against head injuries in the NFL, Pop Warner settling a death with the family of a former football player who committed suicide at the age of 25 from CTE caused by hits to the head, and the 10% rise in football concussions. A woman whose son had passed away from a motorcycle accident noticed changes in her boy. Playing football for almost a decade he was bound to get hurt, but it was after his death that doctors found he had CTE. CTE is a topic of discussion in this article. Sports Illustrated works to inform everyone about CTE and its effects on the mind. This disease targets the way a person thinks and changes their moods, “He had all these [football-related] problems with his knees and back, but his brain was
Many memories are made in football, but sadly some of the greatest players cannot recall them. The National Football League has been associated with concussions and brain traumas throughout the years, but lately it has been exposed by media and NFL veterans. The league recently “reached a $765 million preliminary settlement with thousands of former players who were suing the league over its treatment of concussions…” (Waldron). Many former players are experiencing the effects of taking hard hits over and over again; they were not properly treated, which makes the injury worse and long term. The concussion issue in the NFL is more prevalent today, because it affects not only the players, but the league as a whole.
When NFL linebacker Junior Seau retired in 2010, he seemed set for life, yet two years later, he was dead. Eight months after Seau’s death, the scientists who looked further into the cause of his death declared that they had found evidence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a nerve disease linked to concussions, which has been a reason in the deaths of many NFL players. Despite this fact, during Seau’s retirement he withdrew from his family and friends, made bad business decisions, gambled large with large amounts, as well abused pills and alcohol. As NFL player Warren Moon stated, “One thing I read that was peculiar to me—he had never been diagnosed with a concussion. That tells me he wasn't reporting what was wrong with him. For a guy that played linebacker for twenty years, somewhere in there he would've had a concussion.” Seau’s family and the media are wanting to blame the NFL for Seau’s death yet how you can blame a game for Seau’s actions? The NFL is not to blame for him not reporting his game injuries and keeping them a secret. They NFL did not make him drink, gamble, pop pills nor make terrible decisions that untimely led to his death.
The NFL is a multi-billion dollar company that has neglected to compensate its past and current employees that have acquired long-term brain damage while performing their jobs. Their incompetence has caused severe brain damage and even death to former employees because of their irresponsible ways over the past forty years. The science and study of this problem has produced a great amount of information that both sides could benefit from but the NFL needs to take action and responsibility.
In particular, in 1966 the National Football Associated founded the NFL Physicians Society to provide care for athletes and support athletic trainers (“The NFL Physician’s Society,” 2012). The physicians, therefore, are dedicated to promoting the health of their patients and protecting them from injury. The physicians promise to follow the code of ethics, including autonomy, informed consent, beneficence, non-maleficence, confidentiality, and justice. Sports, however, are heavily supported by the nation and highly competitive, resulting in conflicts in interest in health care from team physicians. Team physicians are influenced by coaches, parents, teammates, the nation, the need for success, and the players themselves to play athletes without full recovery, allow controversial procedures, decide whether to report violations in drug enhancing tests, and make decisions on disclosing personal information. Players elect to play for reasons that do not reflect an understanding of consequences and physicians struggle with controversial decisions to break confidentiality and report a player’s inability to play in order to prevent injury or harm. Physicians are required to follow the Health Insurance Portability and
In recent stories local retired NFL player Junior Seau suffered many head injuries while playing in the NFL. Well known and loved in all surrounding San Diego communities had committed suicide in 2012. Coming upon the 2 year anniversary of his passing people still wonder what exactly did it to him. The problems of head injuries in the NFL is they are always occurring. In 2010 over 154 head injuries happened in practices and or games, but in 2007 the NFL had released a pamphlet to the players about head injuries. since then the NFL has taken many different safety precautions to fix the recurring problem. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy also known as CTE had been discovered in a deceased football player. Other ex-NFL players who played who had sustained head injuries from repetitive have issue still with them for the rest of their lives. Such as depression, dementia, Mental Illness, and possibly death or paralysis. there really isn’t ways eliminate head injuries unless their is a no contact rule in the NFL or the NFL gets abolished. even with the advances in technology and equipment getting better it still will happen. But some players don't only suffer the injuries from the NFL but from playing pop-warner, high school, college, the progressing to the NFL. Not only are the athletes involved but the families. Because the families are going to be the ones to deal with the injuries of the victim.
The story gives examples and studies of NFL (National Football League) players, and how their lives react to brain injuries and concussions. “Despite all the money invested in the sport… Publicity about the long-term symptoms suffered by brain-injured football players has lowered participation in the sport…” (Burleigh 612) Football, no matter what you do to it, will forever be dangerous and the hotspot of concussions and problems of the brain. The added padding or penalties cannot stop a such a thing as a concussion, the only way to get rid of them is to get rid of the sport all together. There has been millions of dollars put in for researching to limit severe head trauma, which has seemed to lower the casualty rate of NFL players, but still there is cases of concussion-related
The National Football League (NFL) has come under fire for the long-lasting medical consequences of players’ game-related head injuries. The question that arises is; is the NFL to blame for the deaths of former players such as Junior Seau, Jovan Belcher, Ray Easterling, and/or O.J. Murdock? The medical and scientific factors in addition to legal liabilities in regards to brain injuries will be outlined in this paper.
In “Ethics and Sport: Whose Ethics, Which Ethos,” Milan Hosta provides an article that has insight on how ethics and ethos effect sport. Throughout reading this article, it seems that the author only creates more questions rather then answers. Costa does not give clear definitions and comprehendible insight to fulfill his argument. Although Milan Hosta’s article has a lot of detailed information; it has bad organization and it is comprehensively hard to understand his view.
“Is it ok to watch football?” by Ian Crouch states that even though so many people love to watch it on a daily basis, they do not open their eyes fully to see the ultimate consequences for the players and their health (Crouch 1). As football players are playing a contact sport they are hurting many areas of the body including the most important part, the brain. In the article Jackson, a former football player continues on about injuries that he had throughout his career and how he continued to play through it because he loved the sport so much. Everyone has their own view on football, but the most important opinions are those from families of the players in the NFL ...