Neuropathology and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) with Dr Michael Buckland

And I talk about repetitive head impacts here in general for people listening because sadly it includes interpersonal violence and then when I was interviewing Dr. Stefan Kasper he brought to my attention of dwarf throwing back in the late 80s and early 90s and there's been CTE diagnosed in there which is ultimately then from repetitive head impacts so and very brief in the literature as well when people repeatedly hit their head against the wall and go through there so that's why I'm using repetitive head impacts to encapsulate everything not a specific event or instance as well and Then talking about that, how difficult is it with the research to actually look at like a dose-response relationship when it comes to repetitive head impacts and then something that causes chronic traumatic encephalopathy? Because that is what seems to the outsider looking in the biggest challenge at the moment that has kind of divided the not enough research and then clearly clinical evidence or we're going off a little bit too early? If you get what I'm here, I'm trying to step around politically correct in it and basically a left and a right and then they argue over that dose response relationship.

How difficult is that to assess and what does that actually look like moving forward?

as you know, Rhys, I think a lot of the, particularly the early literature was driven by the Boston University team in the USA.

I think they have very clearly and very convincingly demonstrated a dose response incidence of CTE.

I don't think that's really open to argument by any rational independent scientific mind and i think a lot of the controversy in cte is because it threatens a multi-billion dollar industry or industries and it's not I think it's not the first time that when medicine pushes up against large corporations and their profit margins that you might see this confusion suddenly arise because there's another side of the story funded by big tobacco, asbestos, climate change, lead in petrol was another one, even big sugar people talk about.

So it's not a controversy that's just related or restricted to CTE, but it does always seem to be related to the issue of threatening commercial interests.

Yeah, I think that's well put.

And I agree with that point of view.

And again, like you look at the sugar and Ancel Keys and the fat industry, and then you talk with the food pyramid being a triangle, and then all of a sudden it's turned to a circle.

And then the last couple of years it's come out with the grains.

So completely get that.