Football, Boxing, Boston and Three Unsolved Murders on 9/11/11

A couple of weeks ago the NFL moved to dismiss over 200 cases brought by thousands of football players suing the NFL for brain damage caused by concussions they received while playing football. In many cases players who had just suffered severe brain trauma were immediately sent back out on the field.

Repeated concussions, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, can cause dementia and Parkinson's Syndrome. There have been numerous documented cases where individuals suffering from CTE committed assaults, murder and suicide. The problem is that CTE is almost impossible to diagnose until an autopsy is conducted.

So when Time Magazine ran an article that asked whether brain damage that Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev suffered as an amateur boxer contributed to his rage against the United States, imagine the outrage among conservatives, as reported by Fox News:

“TIME should be ashamed and embarrassed by this article. It is just beyond absurd, and is another silly and infantile attempt to deny the obvious,” AmericanThinker.com columnist C. Edmund Wright told FOX411. “Boxing, and football, have been related to brain damage in the past, but none of the boxers or NFL players who committed suicide did so by killing innocent eight-year-olds in a crowded public square. The analogy doesn’t pass elementary school logic.”

No, football players haven't killed eight-year-olds in public. But victims of CTE have killed girl friends, spouses and their own children. 

Media critic John Ziegler concurred. “It is hilarious to watch the media do mental gymnastics to try to avoid concluding that radical Islam was what motivated the bombings,” he said. “If the fake Onion paper tried to parody this, they simply could not.”

John Conway, CEO of Astonish Media Group, found the article “sensationalized and grasping at straws,” while Dan Gainor, Vice President of Business and Culture and the Media Research Institute, noted: “Every time there is another act of terror linked to radical Islam, journalists go out of their way to excuse it or rationalize it. There was a time when news magazines had gravitas, now they only way they get attention is by acting like your crazy uncle.”

Of course, none of these media pundits knows anything at all about CTE. Nor do they seem to have read the Time article, which includes the following paragraph:

That points to the difficulty of establishing any link between the condition of a brain and actions that may or may not result from it. Cantu points to the case of the late pro wrestler Chris Benoit, who killed his wife and son and then himself in 2007. When his brain was studied after he died, it showed signs of CTE—but here too it might have had little to do with his murderous behavior. “In Benoit’s case the behavior was again premeditated. It took place slowly, over the course of a weekend. He even sedated his son first so he wouldn’t suffer,” Cantu says. Criminally pathological? Certainly. But triggered by CTE? Probably not.

Time asked an obvious question, consulted experts and printed their conclusions. The experts thought that the bombing was a premeditated act that lacked the impulsiveness usually associated with behaviors caused by CTE.

Conservatives and FOX News were confused because they thought Time was using their tried and true trick of "just asking a question" and guilt by association to link boxing and the bombers. They had to attack because they didn't want their simplistic narrative of radical Islam being the sole cause of the Boston bombing to be confused by inconvenient facts or mitigating circumstances.

In their rush to condemn all of Islam for the actions of two disturbed individuals (or "losers" as their own uncle describes them), conservatives are doing exactly the same thing they accuse liberals of when they demand restrictions on all gun owners because a few (well, it's actually dozens at this point) crazed individuals like Adam Lanza and James Holmes committed mass murder.

The NRA insists that mental illness is the cause of mass murder, not access to guns or explosives. We know that repeated brain injury is a cause of mental illness. So it's only logical to ask whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev suffered brain trauma that would cause murderous behavior.

Which brings us to those murders on 9/11/11. Authorities are now wondering whether Tamerlan murdered his best friend and two other men on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. If those murders were the kind of impulsive act of enraged violence typical of CTE, brain damage may well have sent Tamerlan on a downward spiral of guilt, anger, depression and despair that ultimately resulted in the senseless bombing in Boston and suicidal behavior afterwards.

We should also ask the following questions: did brain damage play a role in Tamerlan's arrest in 2009 for assaulting his girl friend? Could brain damage have made Tamerlan more receptive to a violent and radical interpretation of Islam in the first place? Did brain damage make it harder for Tamerlan to concentrate and therefore study, ultimately forcing him to drop out of college?

The authorities should look closely at Tamerlan's brain. If it has the lesions indicative of CTE he's no less guilty. But if brain damage was partially responsible for the tragedy in Boston, it raises questions about the potential risk from sports where concussions are routine.

Just because you're a boxer or a Muslim doesn't mean you're going to blow people up. Muhammad Ali was both. But all that brain damage did leave Ali trembling with Parkinson's at the age of 42.

So you might think long and hard before signing your kid up for football, boxing or martial arts.