The original purpose of The Concussion Blog was – and still is – to inform those that choose to look about concussions. Part of this goal has been looking deeper into issues and “lip service” given to the brain injury we know as concussions. In 2010, when the blog began, this was a novel idea and much of what was written here was “breaking news”. Along with that, opinions that I shared on the issue were meant to be coming from someone with vast and dynamic experience in concussions. The initial thought was this was to be a “clearinghouse” for concussion information – and it succeeded. As years have passed and the media here in the United States has slowly caught on and passed along, mostly, the correct messages TCB has been slower. However, that does not preclude us from posting information/opinion that we feel needs noticed. Examples of this have been our white paper on NFL Concussions, the mouth gear controversy and general editorials on published research.
In the past year TCB has been lucky enough to have a journalist spend his own time investigating a part of the global concussion story, in Canada. Terry Ott, as you may have noticed many of his articles here on the blog. To be clear, this was all his work and I have become his one and only outlet for his sleuthing and writing. As he can attest to I don’t always agree with his tact or his tone, but his information is important, especially because in Canada there seems to be a void in the information that would be important to most. We here at TCB are glad to file his reports as long as he and others understand this is a conduit for discussion and discovery. I have zero intention of “killing a sport” or “getting someone in trouble”, rather shedding light on some of the problems and issues we face when dealing with concussions.
All of that being said I present to you Ott’s latest (hopefully last here because someone in Canada needs to pick him up) on the concussion issue as it relates to the Great White North.
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WHEN IT COMES TO FOOTBALL CONCUSSIONS, CANADIAN MEDIA BADLY OFFSIDE
Recent New York Times Article Throws Flag
Hamilton, Ontario
October 22, 2014
For the past year readers of The Concussion Blog have learned about the nascent football concussion awareness movement going on in the Great White North, mostly pertaining to how the Canadian Football League, and the mainstream media, have handled-for lack of a better word-the issue.
Years behind the National Football League on the matter, the CFL nonetheless saw the first concussion-related lawsuit come its way last July, accompanied by media attention, much of which was a critical and sometimes downright hostile questioning and smack-down of former 2013 CFL’er Bruce’s groundbreaking statement of claim against the nine member teams of the CFL, neurosurgeon Dr. Charles Tator, Tator associate Leo Ezerins, and several other parties.
The lawsuit, among other things, alleges that the CFL member teams, and specifically some of Dr. Tator’s published research on TBI and CTE-partly funded by the CFL-mislead Mr. Bruce into believing he was not vulnerable to serious and long-term consequences from concussions he received while playing for the BC Lions. None of the allegations have been proven in court and Tator has filed a defense-covered here previously-that asks for the suit against him to be dismissed, with costs.
Yet other than one small article on former 80s era CFL player Phil Colwell, whose brief story and concussion-related problems appeared in his hometown KW Record paper in Ontario, last spring, your correspondent has been unable to place a single word in any other publication in Canada.
And a week ago, after reading in the Winnipeg Free Press a flattering tome on Dr. Tator from last July that appeared just before he was named as a defendant in the Bruce lawsuit, your correspondent reached out to the paper inquiring whether they would entertain a slightly different take on Tator’s research and related concussion issues via an Op-Ed.
Likewise a kiss-off from my hometown CBC News website, whose editor, after some initial back and forth, just stopped responding to my e-mails and never published a piece I wrote on concussions in July even though it partly concerned the former Hamilton Tiger Cat, Phil Colwell.
TVO, the Canadian version of PBS, runs a show called The Agenda-and hell, the guy that hosts it has Hamilton roots!-that never met a contentious or important issue it did not glom on to and yet after receiving one return e-mail from a producer back in July commenting on my “unique” insights, I never heard another word.
Even the nice gal who runs TVO’s documentary film division, after initially offering to ask around if any of the filmmakers she had association with would be interested in the concussion story, none of my further e-mails were answered.
So obviously, the question is, why?
A veteran of the sports medicine community in Canada speaking on condition of anonymity said that many in the medical community were “afraid” of upsetting Dr. Tator, who carries much weight in medical academia and research grants around these parts.
The source said that many in the closed community are “buzzing” about Tator being named in the Bruce lawsuit but do not want to be featured in any story seeming to critique the doctor the TSN story described as “renown.”
However, the New York Times apparently does not have a problem featuring a different Canadian medical professional who, unlike Dr. Tator, does not believe CTE from football concussions is still open for (serious) debate.
The October 4 Times’ story featured the Burlington, Ontario Sports Concussion Library headed by Dr. Paul Echlin, who in 2011 was lauded on this site by webmaster Dustin Fink as actually being ahead of the American researchers on some matters of TBI.
After some initial reluctance, Dr. Echlin, via e-mail, became the first Canadian health care pro investigating traumatic brain injury to not only answer me, but also offer this when asked if “extreme caution” should be exercised in a diagnosis of pathologies like CTE as prescribed by Dr. Tator in one of his recent research papers, also written about by your correspondent on this site.
“The issue should not be that significant pathology exists after repetitive brain trauma, or that it has short and long-term effects on the individual. Published peer-reviewed evidence for this already exists. As stated in the Neurosurgeon publication the current evidence concerning concussions far exceeds that of SARS and Tainted Blood epidemics,” said Dr. Echlin, who also supplied his own study: (http://www.sportconcussionlibrary.com/content/hcep-peer-reviewed-publications-2010-14)
Whoaa!!! What did the well-respected Doc Echlin just say?
He said that, as far as (sports) concussions go, the (concussion) issue “far exceeds that of SARS and Tainted Blood epidemics.”
In Canada, those are strong words indeed as much was written and sweated and investigated up here on the above public health menace issues. Both were of world-wide concern to the media as is the concussion issue.
Under the current circumstances, I won’t, and you shouldn’t, hold your breath.
The Concussion Blog 
I can understand why TSN deliberately downplays head injuries and attacks truthseekers as unpatriotic. They have spent a fortune to be the sole broadcaster of the CFL. The shameful behavior of the rest of Canada’s media, including publicly owned public interest flag waving CBC, is harder to explain, except that I would note that power is concentrated in Canada and exerts proportionately more influence over our media and other institutions. Therefore, Terry, anyone earning a paycheck in Canada is afraid to go on the record, unless it’s to say nice, Canadian-polite platitudes supporting the status quo.