Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital recently established a medical research specialist division to investigate chronic traumatic encephalopathy – or brain damage caused by repeated blows received by AFL players during their playing careers. The new research division has been named the “Brain Bank” and is to be headed by the eminent neurosurgeon and Alzheimer specialist; Professor Vincent Cattogio.
“Unfortunately the condition can only be adequately researched after the death of the player.” explained Prof Cattogio. “Accordingly we are looking to enlist donors of suitable calibre, to donate their brains to the Brain Bank, for testing after their death.”
Prof Cattogio says that the response from past players has been overwhelming. “Many of the games past greats have been in touch with our clinic and in the vast majority of cases, we can’t get them signed up quick enough. However because this is such a new area of research we require a certain mass of material to be able to obtain any useful data. The human brain weighs on average 400grms and at this stage we require a minimum of 200gms of fully functional matter to play with. Accordingly when assessing suitable donors we have no choice but to conduct some basic preliminary screening tests.” Prof Cattogio told Boxer’s Blog.
The Prof went onto say; “Just this week we accepted former Essendon / Carlton great Justin Madden as a most suitable donor. We also accepted Timmy Watson. Whilst we have our doubts about the overall functional quality of Mr Watson’s grey matter, he’s got a bloody enormous boof head on him so we should be able to scrape together enough. Dermot Brereton however is one applicant we have had to reject. We have watched his media career with interest and particularly his form on Fox Sports this year. The empirical evidence we have gained from those observations leads us to form the overwhelming view that he was, and is a complete imbecile before, during, and after his playing career so there would be no point us bothering .”
Prof Cattogio would neither confirm nor deny that he acceded to Brereton’s request, after hearing of his rejection, to be referred to the Sperm Bank for assessment.