Committee’s NFL concussion report gives wrong impression

As leaders of the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee, we work with the National Football League in a voluntary capacity, as scientific and medical advisers. First and foremost, however, we are clinicians and scientists who are on the front lines in the care of patients with traumatic brain injuries. Last month, the minority staff from the Energy and Commerce Committee issued a report suggesting we engaged in an effort to inappropriately influence a National Institutes of Health grant selection process (“Congress throws flag on NFL concussion research,” June 7, The Hill’s Contributors blog). If the staff authors of this report had demonstrated the basic fairness of contacting us, they would have learned that these conclusions are utterly false.

In fact, there is a critical need for research on the prevalence of all long-term neurological consequences resulting from repetitive head trauma, from CTE , or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, to depression. Given our collective familiarity with the robust peer review in the NIH process, we affirmatively recommended to NFL leadership that it invest $30 million with the NIH for the purpose of studying a wide range of scientific issues related to the diagnosis, management and long-term effects of concussion.

{mosads}We had no role or interest in influencing the NIH’s decisionmaking process; however, we believe we had an ethical obligation to voice our concerns when there appeared to be an irregularity in the review process, as well as a failure to address a longitudinal study recommended in a publicly funded consensus conference. We did precisely that and nothing more.

The staff report, which apparently reflects only the view of the minority staff on the committee, was widely perceived to represent the views of all members of the Energy and Commerce Committee. As a result, the report has dramatically and negatively influenced the public’s perception of our efforts to answer the questions concerning the long-term consequences of concussion. We believe these actions have been detrimental to the cause of public safety and health, which we represent. We respectfully request the attention of Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and other committee leaders to thoroughly review the findings in the report and correct and document the many misrepresentations by the staff authors.

From Drs. Hunt Batjer, Mitchell Berger, Richard Ellenbogen and Russell Lonser, of the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee, Dallas; San Francisco; Seattle; Bethesda, Md.