CTE is a frightening thing. But banning risky sports isn’t the answer

July 4, 2026 — 7:30am

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There’s a particular species of person who seems to have decided that the chief problem with human existence is that some of us insist on enjoying it.

This week, the focus of some turned toward AFL football when the ABC’s Four Corners program looked at the life and death of Nick Lowden, who died aged 23 in 2023 and was the youngest footballer diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Dr Ann McKee, of the CTE Centre of Boston University, opined that in effect, body-contact Australian rules football should be prohibited for everyone under 18 years, such is the magnitude of brain injury risks associated with repeated player-on-player collisions, including those that don’t manifest in concussion.

Prohibited. Abolished. Switch off the lights and herd thousands of minors towards something safer.

I understand the impulse. CTE, is a dreadful thing, and the science linking it to repeated head knocks isn’t fiction. Watching Four Corners last Monday night made for grim viewing. One must accept – as have the AFL and NRL – the nexus between sport-related head trauma, and the onset of CTE.

But be careful with that science. Reported figures concerning the prevalence of detection of CTE in brains dissected in research institutions carry an obvious selection bias. Unless a much wider cross-section of society donate their brains for the same research post-mortem, how can it be known as to the prevalence of people suffering from CTE who have never played contact sport?

Plus, the impact of genetic predisposition and other societal factors is not properly understood.

Anyone who has watched a once-luminous sportsperson dim into confusion at the age of 60 has felt........

© WA Today