Brain Trauma and Deficit Panic

Two outstanding reads in today’s Times that, on very disparate topics, equally reveal the desolation in our culture’s information-processing system. We are all connected, wired, plugged-in; but few communicate, and even fewer understand.

First is Deborah Blum, a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin, on the 80-year gap between medical findings of post-concussion syndrome and the NFL’s quasi-response three months ago. Textbook-quality journalism of the highest order here on a very topical, and for me, personal matter.*

Next up is a more familiar voice of the Times’ op-ed stable, Paul Krugman, on the vast disconnect (even at his own paper) between economic reality and media-spin on the deficit.
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*I suppose there is no harm in a personal disclosure here. In my younger years, I experienced multiple, mostly mild, concussions during grand-mal epileptic seizures (as they sometimes do in later life for epileptics, the seizures ceased for me about 18 years ago, and I’m not even on anti-convulsive medication anymore). At this point, there is no evidence of cognitive decline (I think) as a result; but for many years I’ve had obvious motor and coordination deficits that are, virtually without certainty, the result of these concussions. If you’ve ever met me, you have no doubt noticed these deficits. Now you know their probable cause.

Now I’ve never played football, and some might argue that my unprotected head-on collisions with concrete, gravel, marble, wood, and metal might qualify as somewhat more traumatic than the helmet-to-helmet blows of the NFL. (OTOH, my head’s acceleration would have been roughly the usual 9.8m/s² of gravitational fall, while an NFL linebacker would be moving at a considerably higher rate of impact acceleration. Also, of course, I didn’t always fall on my head — though it was often worse when I didn’t. One witness, a college buddy, described how I once came down between two metal milk crates stuffed with LP records and banged my head back and forth between them, “like a pebble in a gourd”). So I’m not here to debate the details of the matter; I am neither a scientist nor a doctor. All I can tell you — from personal experience and with near-absolute certainty — is that repeated and violent head trauma has inevitable consequences, and no talking head from the NFL is going to convince me otherwise.