UPMC’s Dr. Maroon — ‘The White Coat Who Put the “Inc.” in “Concussion Inc.”‘

[T]hings only got better — or worse, depending on your perspective — in the person of Dr. Joseph Maroon, a neurosurgeon whose patient list spanned all the way from the Saudi royal family to wrestling legend Bruno Sammartino. Maroon was an aging anti-aging huckster whose University of Pittsburgh Medical Center colleagues, at minimum, were linked to the steroid and human growth hormone use of the six-time Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers — a team paid by its doctors for the right to advertise themselves as its official sports-medicine practitioners.

Maroon lied about the back story of Steeler Terry Long’s suicide. Maroon lied about his and WWE’s access to Omalu’s Chris Benoit brain study. Maroon and his co-physician entrepreneurs in the Steel City (where health care was the main post-industrial employment growth center) played fast and loose with facts on the efficacy and standards of their ImPACT “concussion management system,” which one state’s laws after another’s gradually foisted on public high school football programs in order to appear to be doing something . . . anything . . . to counteract the systematic braining of young American males. Maroon fudged his relationship with a helmet manufacturers’ borderline-fraudulent study — the latest in the serial scientific book-cooking in which he engaged for more than a decade as a member of the National Football League’s head-injury advisory committee.

Joe Maroon was the white coat who put the Inc. in Concussion Inc.

— p. ix, CONCUSSION INC.: The End of Football As We Know It

Today UPMC has a YouTube video (youtube.com/watch?v=nBVdA867WOE), “UPMC Study: CTE needs more, balanced research.” Look at the doc with the white coat in the middle and tell me if you correctly guessed that’s Dr. Joseph Maroon. (Then be sure to compare your answer with that in your baseline test.)

Paul D. Anderson, editor of the Concussion Litigation Reporter, comments, “Is this is a spoof on the upcoming ‘Concussion’ movie?”

Patrick Hruby of Vice Sports observes, “White coats and plastic brains, this is science, man.”

Orthopedic spine surgeon and author Dr. Johnny Benjamin says, “UPMC ‘research’ on limitations of small sample size belongs in ‘Intro to Stats’ class…. If UPMC wants to sincerely advance mTBI discussion maybe they should critically evaluate the relevance of their highly touted Impact program.”

*****

CONCUSSION INC.: The End of Football As We Know It is available, in either book or Kindle ebook form, at http://amzn.to/1yQNPXY. For the $19.95 list price, you also can order an autographed copy with free shipping in the U.S., by sending a check or money order to Irvin Muchnick, P.O. Box 9629, Berkeley, CA 94709, or remitting that amount via PayPal to [email protected]. (Canadian orders, add $12.00 US for shipping. All other foreign orders, add $20.00 US for shipping.)