Omal, Bennet

Omalu was born in the town of Nnokva in the South Idemili district in the state of Anambra in the south-east of Nigeria, in September 1968, the sixth of seven brothers and sisters. He was born during the Nigerian Civil War, which caused his family to flee from his hometown to Enugu Ukvu village in southeastern Nigeria. They returned to their village two years after the birth of Omal. Bennett Omalu’s mother was a seamstress, and his father’s mining engineer and community leader in Enugu Ukwa. The surname, Omala, is the abbreviated form of the surname, Onimulukwube (Onyemalukwube), which translates as "one who knows what to say"

Education and Careers

Bennett Omalu went to primary school at the age of three, and then enrolled at Enugu Federal High School College. He attended medical school from the age of 16 at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. After graduating with a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery in June 1990, he graduated from a clinical residency, then worked as a doctor in the mountain city of Jos for three years. He became disillusioned with Nigeria after the elections, in which the whole country rightly chose Moshud Abiola, were annulled. Then he began to look for opportunities to continue studying in the United States. Omala first came to Seattle, Washington in 1994 to study epidemiology at the University of Washington. In 1995, he left Seattle and moved to New York, where he studied anatomy and clinical pathology at Harlem Central Hospital, Columbia University.

After residency, he learned from a forensic pathologist under the guidance of legal counsel Cyril Vecht in the Corigener office in Alligeni County in Pittsburgh. Omalu became particularly interested in neuropathology.

Bennett Omalu has eight degrees and certificates, and later received a degree in pathology and neuropathology at the University of Pittsburgh in 2000 and 2002 respectively, a master’s degree in public health and epidemiology in 2004 from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, and a degree Masters in Business Administration at Teppert Business School at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008.

Omala is currently the chief medical examiner in San Joaquin, California, and a professor in the department of medical pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Davis. ^[2]

CTE Study

The main articles are American football concussion, sports concussions in sports and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (HTE). Bennett Omal’s autopsy of Mike Webster’s former Pittsburgh Steelers in 2002 led to Omal’s discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or HTE ^[3] . Webster suddenly and unexpectedly died, after many years of fighting cognitive and intellectual disorders, poverty, mood swings, depression, drug abuse and suicide attempts. Although Webster's brain looked normal at the autopsy, Omalu conducted an independent and self-funded tissue analysis. He suspected that Mike Webster suffered from boxing dementia, dementia that develops due to numerous head injuries caused by repeated blows to the head, a condition previously found in boxers. Using specialized staining, Omalu found large accumulations of tau protein in Webster's brain, affecting mood, emotions, and executive functions similar to the clots of beta-amyloid protein that contribute to Alzheimer's disease. ^[four]

Together with colleagues at the Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh, Bennett Omalu published his discovery in the journal Neurosurgery in 2005 in an article entitled “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in the National Football League”. In it, Omalu called for further study of the disease: “In this report we report on the first documented case of long-term neurodegenerative changes in a professional NFL player of the corresponding chronic traumatic encephalopathy (HTE). This case draws attention to the disease, which has not yet been fully studied in the community of professional footballers, and it is not known how widespread it is. ” Omalu believed that the doctors of the National Football League (NFL) would be “pleased” to learn this, and that his research would help them “fix the problem”. The article did not arouse much interest in the medical community, but members of the NFL Light Traumatic Brain Injury Committee (MTBI) in May 2006 demanded a refutation of the article. They wrote a letter demanding a refutation of the conclusions and descriptions of Omal HTE as “completely wrong” and called the article “a mistake” ^[3] .

Omala later collaborated with Julian Beils, a neurosurgeon who researched brain concussion and then head of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of West Virginia, and attorney Robert P. Fitzimmons of West Virginia to establish the Brain Injury Research Institute and create a brain tissue bank.

In November 2006, Omalu published a second article in the journal Neurosurgery based on his findings from an examination of the brain of a former NFL player Terry Long, who suffered from depression and committed suicide in 2005. Although Long died at the age of 45, Omalu found a concentration of tau protein that corresponded more to the "90-year-old Alzheimer's brain." As with Mike Webster, Omalu claimed that Long’s football career later caused brain damage and depression. Omalu also found evidence of HTE in the brains of retired NFL players such as Justin Strelszik (died 2004 at 36 years old), Andre Waters (died 2006 at 44 years old) and Tom McHale (died 2008 at 45 years old).

In the summer of 2007, Bales presented his and Omal the opening of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to hold a league-wide summit on the subject of brain concussion. Baile later said that the study was "rejected." Dr. Ira Casson, chairman of the NFL Light Traumatic Brain Injury Committee (MTBI), told the press: "In my opinion, there is only scientifically based evidence of chronic encephalopathy in boxers and in some stile-jockeys."

The NFL did not publicly acknowledge the link between concussions in football and HTE until December 2009, seven years after opening Omal.

Bennett Omalu also discovered HTE in the brains of war veterans, publishing the first reported case in November 2011. Omalu found evidence of HTE from a 27-year-old Iraq war veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and then committed suicide. The article links PTSD with CTE and calls for further study. ^[five]

Efforts to study and highlight the problem of HTE by Dr. Omala in the face of the NFL opposition were described in GQ magazine in 2009 by journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas. The article was later expanded by Laskas in the book “Concussion of the Brain” (Penguin Random House, 2015) and adapted into the film Concussion (in the Russian box office “Defender” ). In the film, Dr. Bennett Omalu is the central character played by Will Smith . The production of the film led to the creation of the Omalu Foundation for further study of CTE and the study of concussions.

Bennett Omalu is married to Prema Mutiso, originally from Kenya. They live in Loday, California, and they have two children, Ashley and Mark. Omala is professed by Catholicism . He received US citizenship in February 2015.

• The official site of Bennett Omalu
• Jeanne-Marie Laskas articles on Bennet Omalu in GQ magazine