MORGANTOWN -- Dr. Julian Bailes, chair of the West Virginia University Department of Neurosurgery, hopes the NFL will soon implement changes to protect football players from head trauma, and he talks about it in the October issue of GQ magazine.

In a story headlined "This Is Your Brain on Football," Bailes says the multibillion-dollar industry should have some responsibility.

"Say you're a kid and you sign up to play football. You realize you can blow out your knee, you can even break your neck and become paralyzed. Those are all known risks," he says, according to a press release from WVU. "But you don't sign up to become a brain-damaged young adult. The NFL should be leading the world in figuring this out, acknowledging the risk."

Bailes is featured in GQ along with neuropathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu and Wheeling-based attorney Bob Fitzsimmons. Together, the three have established the Brain Injury Group, a brain bank and laboratory to study brain injuries, the press release said. It is housed at the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute at WVU.

Bailes and Omalu have studied the brains of almost 20 athletes whose lives took disastrous turns, all ending in violent deaths at a very young age. Their brains were found to have serious damage that Bailes believes was most likely caused by repeated concussions. Bailes is also studying other possible factors.

The release says GQ writer Jeanne Marie Laskas describes Morgantown as "surrounded by blue firs and green hardwoods, a town tucked in the folds of the Appalachian Basin, where coal still moves sleepily in and out on barges along the slim Monongahela River. The university - and its world-class health care complex - is by far the biggest thing going."

The October issue of GQ is on newsstands.

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Dr. Julian Bailes

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