Bennet Ifeakandu Omalu (born September 1968) is a Nigerian-American physician, forensic pathologist, and neuropathologist who first discovered and published the findings of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) on American football players while working at Allegheny County Coroner's office in Pittsburgh. He later became the chief medical examiner for San Joaquin County, California, and a professor at the University of California, Davis, Department of Medical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.
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Omalu was born in Nnokwa, Idemili South, Anambra in southeastern Nigeria on September 30, 1968, the sixth of seven children. He was born during the Nigerian Civil War, which caused his family to flee their homes in the Igbo-dominated village of Enugu-Ukwu in southeastern Nigeria. They returned two years after Omalu's birth. Omalu's mother is a tailor and her father is a civil mining engineer and community leader in Enugu-Ukwu. The family name, Omalu, is a shortened form of the family name, Onyemalukwube, which translates to "he who knows, speaks."
Maps Bennet Omalu
Education and career
Omalu started primary school at the age of three and was accepted into Enugu Federal Government College for high school. He studied at medical school from the age of 16 at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. After graduating with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in June 1990, he completed a clinical internship, followed by three years of service work in the highland city of Jos. He became disappointed with Nigeria after presidential candidate Moshood Abiola failed. to win the Nigerian presidency during an unconvincing election in 1993 and start looking for scholarship opportunities in the United States. Omalu first came to Seattle, Washington in 1994 to complete an epidemiological fellowship at the University of Washington. In 1995, he left Seattle for New York City, where he joined the Harlem Hospital Center at Columbia University for a residency training program in anatomical and clinical pathology.
After the residency, he was trained as a forensic pathologist under a renowned forensic consultant, Cyril Wecht at Allegheny County Coroner's Office in Pittsburgh. Omalu becomes very interested in neuropathology.
Omalu holds eight advanced degrees and board certifications, then received a scholarship in pathology and neuropathology through the University of Pittsburgh in 2000 and 2002 respectively, the Master of Public Health (MPH) in epidemiology in 2004 from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008.
Omalu served as chief medical examiner of San Joaquin County, California from 2007 until he resigned in 2017 after accusing the district's Sheriff, who was also a Coroner, repeatedly interrupting the death inquiry to protect law enforcement officials who killed people. An assistant forensic pathologist who joined the office for an opportunity to work with Omalu resigned several days earlier by citing similar allegations.
Omalu is a professor in the Department of Medical Pathology and Medical Laboratory of UC Davis.
Research on CTE
Omalu's autopsy of Pittsburgh Steelers former Mike Webster in 2002 led to a re-awakening of the neurological conditions associated with chronic head trauma called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, previously described in boxers and other professional athletes. Webster has died suddenly and unexpectedly after years of struggling with cognitive and intellectual disabilities, poverty, mood disorders, depression, drug abuse, and suicide attempts. Although Webster's brain appears normal at autopsy, Omalu performs independent and self-contained network analyzes. He suspects that Webster suffers from dementia pugilistica, which is a form of dementia caused by repeated blows to the head, a condition found earlier in boxers. By using special staining, Omalu discovers a large accumulation of tau proteins in Webster's brain, which affects moods, emotions, and executive functions similar to how beta-amyloid protein clumps contribute to Alzheimer's disease.
Together with colleagues at the Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh, Omalu published his findings in the journal Neurosurgery in 2005 in a paper entitled "Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in National Football League Player." In it, Omalu called for further study of the disease: "We are here to report the first documented case of long-term neurodegenerative changes in retired professional NFL players consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).This case draws attention to the remaining illnesses. in a cohort of professional football players, with an unknown level of prevalence true. "Omalu believes the National Football League doctor (NFL) will be" happy "to read it and that his research can be used to" fix the problem. " The paper received little attention initially, but members of the NFL Committee for Brain Traumatic Brain (MTBI) subsequently requested repeal in May 2006. Their letter requested a retraction characterized by Omalu's description of CTE as "entirely false" and called the paper "a failure."
Omalu then partnered with Julian Bailes, a neurosurgeon, concussion researcher, and then chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at West Virginia University School of Medicine, and West Virginia lawyer Robert P. Fitzsimmons to find the Brain Injury Research Institute that formed the brain and bank network.
In November 2006, Omalu published a second Neurosurgery paper based on his findings in the brain of former NFL player Terry Long, who suffered from depression and suicide in 2005. Although Long died at the age of 45, Omalu discovered the more consistent protein concentration with a "90-year-old brain with advanced Alzheimer's." Like Mike Webster, Omalu insists that Long's football career has caused brain damage and depression. Omalu also found evidence of CTE in the retired brain of NFL player Justin Strzelczyk (2004 at the age of 36), Andre Waters (2006 at 44), and Tom McHale (2008 on 45).
In the summer of 2007, Bailes presented his findings and Omalu to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell at a concussion conference at the league level. Bailes later said the research was "dismissed". Chairman of the MTBI NFL Committee, Dr. Ira Casson, told the press: "In my opinion, the only legitimate scientific evidence of chronic encephalopathy in athletes is in boxers and in some Steeplechase jockeys."
The NFL did not publicly acknowledge the relationship between concussion suffered in football and its long-term neurological effects until December 2009, seven years after Omalu's discovery. However, until 2013, the annual meeting of the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology (AACN) includes a debate between two concussed experts on the validity (or existence) of CTE. Finally, in March 2016, the NFL senior vice president for health and safety policy, Jeff Miller, testified before the congress that the NFL now believes that there is a relationship between football and CTE.
Omalu also found CTE in the brains of military veterans, published the first case documented in an article in November 2011. Omalu found evidence of CTE in a 27-year-old Iraq War veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and subsequently committed suicide. Omalu Paper connects PTSD to the CTE spectrum of disease and calls for further study.
Omalu was the lead author in a study published in November 2017 which for the first time confirmed CTE in living people. The chemical tracer, FDDNP, binds to tau proteins, is detected by positron emission tomography, and is related to typical CTT topographic distribution characteristics. Tested at least a dozen former NFL players, it confirmed postmortem on the former linebacker Fred McNeill.
Stephon Clark's Report
In March 2018 Omalu conducted an independent autopsy Stephon Clark, who was shot by a Sacramento Police officer. On March 30, he released his findings, stating that Clark had been shot eight times from behind or side, adding, "You can conclude that he received seven gunshot wounds from his back."
In popular media
Omalu's efforts to study and publish CTE in the face of the NFL opposition were reported in the 2009 GQ magazine article by journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas. The article was later expanded by Laskas into a book, Concussion (Penguin Random House, 2015), and adapted into a film of the same name in which Omalu, played by Will Smith, was a central figure. The film has been criticized for being dishonest with real events. Nevertheless, film production leads to the creation of a foundation named after Omalu to advance CTE and concussion research.
In September 2016, Omalu attracted media attention when he suggested on Twitter that Hillary Clinton might be poisoned and advised members of his presidential campaign to "do a toxicological analysis of Mrs. Clinton's blood." He further tweeted, "I do not trust Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump, and with them both, everything is possible."
Omalu Book Truth Has No Side: My Discovery Concerned About The Danger of Communication Contact was published in August 2017 by HarperCollins. She previously wrote Play Hard, Die Young: Football Dementia, Depression, and Death , which was published in 2008.
Personal life
Omalu married to Prema Mutiso, originally from Kenya. They live in Lodi, California and have two children, Ashly and Mark. He was a practicing Catholic and became a naturalized US citizen in February 2015.
See also
- Whistleblower list
References
External links
- Official site
- Bennet Omalu on IMDb
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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