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Dr. Bennet Omalu told the more than 300 physicians, nurses and other health care providers gathered at the conference about the day in 2002 when he examined the body of football player Mike Webster, who suffered from amnesia, depression and dementia.
“Everybody was talking about him so negatively. I was offended. I knew he played football,” said the Nigerian-born physician who was working at the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office in Pittsburgh. “I wondered, ‘Could he have suffered from some type of brain damage?’”
Dr. Omalu recalled how he spoke quietly to Webster’s body: “I said to him, ‘Mike, I see myself in you. I too have suffered from depression.’ I saw myself in that man and wanted to get to the bottom of what happened to him.”
Omalu was the keynote speaker of of the Drexel Neuroscience Institute’s Inaugural Conference May 11-May 13 in Atlantic City. He kicked off two days of presentations from medical experts who described the latest advances in stroke, aneurysm, epilepsy, brain tumors, concussion and other critical issues in the neurosciences.
“Dr. Omalu followed the science regardless of the criticism against him,” said Dr. Erol Veznedaroglu, MD, FACS, FAANS, FAHA, Director of the Drexel Institute for Neurosciences.
As keynote speaker, Dr. Omalu described his childhood in Nigeria during Civil War, his malnourishment as a child, and the depression that took hold of him while he attended medical school. “In my depression I learned life lessons. Those life lessons prepared me for what was to come in my life,” he said. His findings were initially attacked, though today CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, is generally accepted as a condition that results from repeated blows to the head.
“Science is truth. There are not two sides to truth,” Dr. Omalu said.
His talk was followed by three days of presentations and breakout sessions.
Press Release from PR Web
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