CTE found in at least 1 in 4 NFL players — could be 9 in 10
by Dianne Marie Normand Hartley for US Healthcare Journals
If a school board paid employees to numb boys’ brains so they could feel no pain, put helmets on them to keep their skulls from breaking, then yelled at them to collide at explosive speed, again and again for months—would we allow it?
Yes, I know that is a bit science fiction because schools today don’t have to numb the boys’ brains—humans don’t have pain receptors in their brains.2 (Most people do not know that.)
The schools do offer helmets because the game is violent enough to fracture a skull. Helmets protect the skull, but they cannot fully protect the brain.3 The brain is so fragile and important that it is encased in bone and cushioned in fluid. Yet football repeatedly subjects it to sudden acceleration, rotation, shearing forces, and impact. Bad things happen when that happens.
In the U.S., we call it child abuse when an adult shakes a kid or violently drives him to the ground, especially repeatedly. But today we let adults tell kids to do it to themselves while we cheer. The kids may see stars. They may get dizzy. Many hits cause no obvious symptoms at all.3
And now that we have recently learned that among deceased players who continued the game through college and played at least one NFL game, at least 24.5% had CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy)—literally, long-lasting brain disease caused by trauma—with the possible prevalence ranging as high as 97.7%, should we continue to allow schools to do this?1
CTE is not confined to the NFL. We know former college players die with it.4 It has even been reported in an athlete as young as 15.5 Yet we still do not know its prevalence among the far larger population of men who stopped playing after high school or college. What we have right now are former players going dark decades after playing—suffering silently while their replacements are getting the glory and accumulating brain damage they can’t feel.
If brain injuries were as visible as knee injuries, this game would be over.
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Endnotes
1. Daneshvar DH, et al. “Prevalence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy at Death in Former National Football League Players.” BMJ. 2026;394. https://www.bmj.com/content/394/bmj-2026-100418
2. Society for Neuroscience. “Why Doesn’t the Brain Have Nociceptors?” BrainFacts.org. https://www.brainfacts.org/thinking-sensing-and-behaving/pain/2021/why-d...
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “About Repeated Head Impacts” and “Safety Guidelines: Helmets.” https://www.cdc.gov/traumatic-brain-injury/about/repeated-head-impacts.h... https://www.cdc.gov/heads-up/safety/
4. Hartley DMN. “CTE: Football’s Aftermath Once Thought an NFL Problem is Now Destroying Brains of Former College Players.” Healthcare Journal of Baton Rouge. May/June 2023. https://www.healthcarejournalbr.com/journal/may-june-2023
5. “New ‘National Sports Brain Bank’ Will Boost Head Injury Research.” Medical Xpress. May 18, 2023. Julia Kofler, MD, reported early CTE findings in the brain of a 15-year-old.