Keith Olbermann opened his sports program Friday night discussing anecdotes and other stories suggesting that Lou Gehrig’s passing may not have been solely due to the disease – ALS – that also bears his name. Recent developments around the impact of concussions in sports (primarily, but not exclusively, American football) likely prompted Olbermann’s reassessment of interviews he’s conducted over the course of his career and additional anecdotes of baseball in the 1930s. Best to let the video tell the story.
The segment has attracted some attention, but it is only adding to a tale, not starting one. Olbermann did not – at least from my perspective – claim that he did not actually suffer from ALS. This was a debate a few years ago prompted by a study that found a different neurodegenerative disease in athletes who had accumulated head trauma and demonstrated symptoms close to those of ALS. The researchers could only distinguish between the neurodegenerative diseases via autopsy, and never did claim that Gehrig did not suffer from ALS. The problem was that popular accounts of the study used Gehrig as a known athlete with a similar disease and failed to make the distinction between conditions.
Pasco Phronesis 