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Boxing often finds itself in the headlines, from the UK’s recent Olympic successes to the controversies over the risks to those involved. The advances of modern neuroscience mean we know more than ever about chronic brain damage in boxers since it was first described nearly a century ago. The head trauma associated with other contact sports such as American football is also receiving worldwide attention, and the numbers of sports-related concussions are growing.
But has this knowledge really changed anything and is long-term brain injury from contact sport a ticking time bomb? Should we simply consider banning boxing altogether, and is there any reason to single out one sport over another.
Professor John Hardy came to the SMC to talk about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, what causes it, its frequent association with other neurodegenerative disorders and the impact it has on sports men and women.
Prof John Hardy is Chair of Molecular Biology of Neurological Disease at the UCL Institute of Neurology. He is a geneticist and molecular biologist with over 23,000 citations, one of the most cited neurology researchers in the UK and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society.