Why Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Autopsy Should Include A Check For CTE
Could the amateur boxing career of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased suspect in last week’s Boston Marathon bombings, have had a role in the massacre? That’s a question leading brain researchers at Boston University’s School of Medicine hope medical examiners look into when they perform an autopsy of the 26-year-old who was killed during a firefight with law enforcement officials early Friday morning.
Tsarnaev was a champion boxer who qualified for the national Golden Gloves compe ion and had once had dreams of qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team. That abbreviated career has led Drs. Robert Cantu and Robert Stern to urge examiners to study his brain for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease found in boxers since the 1920s that has received renewed attention because it was found in the brains of former football players. Though both doctors doubt that CTE caused the behavior that led to the bombings, researchers shouldn’t overlook the chance to study Tsarnaev’s brain, they told the Boston Globe:
“Is it possible that some changes might have gone on in his overall functioning due to his boxing and potentially related brain disease? Yes,’’ said Stern, a BU professor of neurology and neurosurgery. “Anything is possible. But to then jump to the disease leading to well-planned behavior like this, I couldn’t go there.’’ [...]
“We can’t think of their brains as being normal,’’ he said. “But there are too many people who do such bizarre and terrible acts that it’s unlikely it’s all due to one terrorist gene or disease.’’
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2013...check-for-cte/