In the ongoing concussion lawsuit brought against the NHL by several former players, the NHL has sunk to a ridiculous new low.
The history of science has been filled with infamous examples of skeptics voicing their dissent to the grind of human progress. Whether it be doubt that flight would ever be achieved or insistence that the Earth is flat instead of a globe, posterity records the stances of individuals which are now viewed as laughable. The NHL seems to have put itself in that company on the subject of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
These actions taken by the league are part of its attempts to derail a lawsuit brought against it by what could turn into a class of thousands of former players.
The suit argues that the NHL failed to heed the available science on the subject of head trauma and neurological disease to protect its players. It alleges the NHL is liable for injuries and resulting costs to players because of what it calls a “cavalier attitude” about player safety and the existing information about brain injuries.
Currently, the NHL’s attempts to limit its liability in this lawsuit are two-fold. First, it is trying to prevent the certification of a much broader class of former players, limiting the lawsuit to merely the suit’s original plaintiffs. Secondly, the NHL is waging a bigger battle over the issue of a link between hockey and neurological disease exists. That’s where the league has fallen off the face of the planet.
Not only has the NHL sought to exclude the testimony of medical professionals who attest to such a link, but TSN’s Rick Westhead reports the NHL has gone a step further. The NHL has hired a professional of its own to argue that CTE is nothing more than a fabricated conspiracy, as opposed to a legitimate medical condition.
CTE research began in the early 1970s with diagnoses of multiple former boxers, and studies done since then on athletes and other individuals have been reviewed and verified by organizations like Boston University and the National Institutes of Health. Even the United States Department of Defense has spent resources on research regarding the condition.
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The NHL’s battle against class certification and arguments about whether playing hockey correlate to developing CTE are plausible, but to pretend that CTE is a myth is foolish and shows that the league will stoop to any level in order to protect its interests.