Monday, November 20, 2017

CTE Turned Ex-NFL Star McNeill from Top Lawyer to ‘Other Person’

Fred McNeill was no big, dumb football player.

After completing an NFL career that included two Super Bowls, he got an advanced law degree and practiced law. But within just a few years, he began to fall apart, losing his temper, losing his memory and losing job after job.

When he died in 2015, he was bankrupt, unable to eat or care for himself.

Now he’s become a medical first. A positron emission tomography (PET) brain scan done in 2012 showed he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE — the degenerative brain disease being linked increasingly to professional football and to head injuries sustained in combat.

A thorough autopsy done after his death confirms the diagnosis, pathologists confirmed this week. It's the first time CTE has been diagnosed in a living person with a post mortem confirmation. 

Click here for the full article. 

Source: NBC News 

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