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Project #1 Prompt
Your task is to analyze a text, paying special attention to the
features that influence a piece of writing the most: the audience,
the writer’s orientation, the rhetorical situation, and the genre
(COLFV features). Use the sample rhetorical analysis on pages
42-47 as a flexible guide (not a rigid model). The content of
your project should differ from the sample because you are
analyzing a different text, but the format of your analysis
should contrast with the sample as well, due to the nature of
this assignment.
PART A : TEXT & SUMMARY
· Select one of the texts available on BlackBoard under Project
#1, labeled “Text Options.” Annotate a hard copy of the text.
· Write a SUMMARY: Use one of the texts made available for
this assignment on Blackboard. Apply what you have learned
about analyzing texts using the COLFV model and write a
summary of your findings. Your COLFV summary will
include:
· 1: rhetorical information about the text
· 2: a brief description of content
· 3: a brief description of organization
· 4: a brief description of language
· 5: a discussion of the values that might be held by the
discourse community of readers and writer.
Concussions and NFL: How the name
CTE came about
By Bennet Omalu
Updated 11:38 AM ET, Tue December 22, 2015
CNN Opinion - Political Op-Eds | Social Commentary
Editor’s Note: Dr. Bennet Omalu, chief medical examiner
of San Joaquin County, California, is an associate clinical
professor of pathology at the University of California, Davis.
His story is told in the new movie, "Concussion." The
opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
(CNN) — When I read Mike Webster's file before I began
his autopsy, I knew he was more than a 50-year-old heart
attack victim. His file and the television reports of the death
of the former Pittsburgh Steelers center described a long, steep
fall into bizarre behavior. I
suspected he suffered from some sort of brain disorder.
The potential diagnoses on my mind were post-traumatic
encephalopathy (encephalopathy
means brain disease, damage, or malfunction), Alzheimer's
disease, dementia pugilistica, aka
punch drunk syndrome, and/or schizophrenia.
At this time there was no disease that I was aware of that
was called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Dementia pugilistica was unlikely since he was not a
boxer. Schizophrenia was unlikely since he did not have
any diagnosis of that disease in the extensive pre-mortem
clinical workup that he had. Alzheimer's disease was less
likely given his age.
Post-traumatic encephalopathy was about the only
remaining diagnosis I had in mind while I performed the
autopsy and considered the case. Based on what I knew
about Webster's career and his post-football behavior, I
expected to see the residual damages of recurrent contusions
and necrosis (death of body
tissue), and even atrophy of a lobe in his brain, which would be
characteristic of post-traumatic
encephalopathy.
The story of the discovery of Webster's brain disorder is worth
telling, not only because of the
upcoming release of the film "Concussion," but also because
some detractors have raised
questions that I believe are unjustified.
_______________________________
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/opinions/omalu-discovery-of-
cte-football-concussions/
Dr. Bennet Omalu at a screening
of "Concussion."
No visible damage
I was flabbergasted when I opened his skull and saw a brain that
appeared completely
unremarkable without any visible damage. I saved his brain and
fixed it in formalin because I
was totally lost and confused by what I observed during the
autopsy.
When I examined his brain and requested a battery of tests --
histochemical and
immunohistochemical stains -- I honestly did not know what I
was looking for, and I did not have
any expectation of what I would see.
When I examined slides of Webster's brain under a microscope I
found abnormalities that I
could not explain. The unique and distinctive topographic
patterns of abnormal accumulations of
proteins called tau and amyloid did not match with any
neurodegenerative disease that I was
aware of.
Because I had already excluded Alzheimer's disease and
dementia pugilistica, I was very
surprised to see the abnormal accumulations of tau and amyloid
in his brain, both of which
occur in those diseases. Yet the topographic pattern, cellular
architecture and distribution of
these abnormal proteins were inconsistent with those diseases or
any other of which I knew. I
believed I had found something distinctive.
At this juncture, I wanted to show the slides to Dr. Ronald
Hamilton, my professor and mentor
who had taught me neurodegenerative diseases as a physician in
training.
Seeking Hamilton's opinion was consistent with the guidelines
and standards of practice of
pathology as has been established by the College of American
Pathologists, that when you see
something distinctive in a microscope, you may show it to a
second pathologist to confirm the
microscopic findings that you are observing. I took the slides to
Hamilton, and he confirmed that
I was not being delusional or hallucinatory: The microscopic
findings in Webster's brain were
distinctive and unique.
Hamilton suggested that we show the slides of Webster's brain
to Dr. Steven Dekosky, the
chairman of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Department of Neurology, and director
of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Hamilton arranged
the meeting. I went to
Dekosky's office and showed him the slides. He, too, confirmed
that this was not Alzheimer's
disease and it was not dementia pugilistica. He agreed that I had
observed a new syndrome
and advised me to publish the paper of my findings. At this
point we still had no clue what this
new syndrome was.
_______________________________
A new disease
I went home and began a very comprehensive and extensive
literature review to see if this
observation had been published before in an American football
player. I was utterly surprised
that it had not.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/opinions/omalu-discovery-of-
cte-football-concussions/
Not a single paper had been published describing what I had
observed in Webster's brain. None
whatsoever. I honestly could not, and did not believe it. It was
simply impossible. Yes, much had
been published on boxers, (the "punch drunk" condition known
as dementia pugilistica) but
nothing had been written on any American football player.
However, I did not want to report the paper simply as a case
report describing the distinct
pattern I had observed in Webster. I believed I had discovered a
new disease in an American
football player, a disease that had to be named. I did not know
what name to give it, but I
decided that whatever name I would give it would satisfy three
criteria:
1. The name must be erudite and intellectually sophisticated.
2. The name must have a good acronym to facilitate recall
should someone not be able to say
the scientific name.
3. The name must be sufficiently generic, so that if someone
down the road proved me wrong
that this was not a distinctive disease, the name would still
accurately describe the observed
symptoms.
I am a forensic pathologist, and in the medico-legal
consultations I had done, I had learned that
precedent is very important in case law. This same principle
applied to the acceptability of
medical concepts in the court of law, frequently referred to as
the Daubert rule or principle in the
American judicial system.
If I derived a name that had been used in the literature as a
descriptive terminology, took that
descriptive terminology and converted it into a proper noun as
the name of a disease, I was less
likely to be deemed a radical, making my proposition more
likely to be accepted by the medical
community.
I therefore went back to the medical literature looking for
descriptive terminologies that had
been used to describe conditions resulting from primary brain
injuries. In my research I identified
and selected 24 descriptive terminologies that referred to long-
term and delayed complications
and outcomes of traumatic brain injury, but were not proper
nouns of any specific disease with
established pathology, especially in an American football
player.
They are: cerebral neurasthenia, chronic traumatic brain injury,
chronic brain injury,
compensation hysteria, concussion neurosis, delayed traumatic
apoplexy, dementia traumatica,
encephalopathia traumatica, litigation neurosis, postconcussion
neurosis, postconcussion
syndrome, post-traumatic concussion state, post-traumatic head
syndrome, post-traumatic
psychoneurosis, terror neurosis, traumatic constitution,
traumatic encephalitis, traumatic
encephalopathy, traumatic encephalopathy of boxers, traumatic
hysterias, traumatic insanity,
traumatic neurosis, traumatic psychosis, and chronic traumatic
encephalopathy.
_______________________________
Choosing a name
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/opinions/omalu-discovery-of-
cte-football-concussions/
I spent days going through these names and analyzing them
within the context of the three
criteria I listed above. I finally settled upon two names:
1. Chronic traumatic brain injury
2. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy
Of the two, I preferred chronic traumatic encephalopathy. It
accurately described what I found in
Webster's brain. Chronic means long-term, traumatic is
associated with trauma, and
encephalopathy refers to brain damage, disease or malfunction.
The acronym, CTE, seemed
easy to grasp and remember. The name sounded intellectually
sophisticated. The name was
sufficiently generic that if I were proven wrong and this was not
a newly discovered brain
disease, it still referred to a bad brain associated with trauma .
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, thus became the
name of the disease I observed in
Webster's brain. Following DeKosky's advice, I documented my
findings in a paper entitled,
"Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in a National Football
League Player," which was published
in the journal Neurosurgery.
In the paper, which listed Hamilton and my boss, Dr. Cyril
Wecht, as co-authors, I differentiated
CTE as a distinctive disease, and presented the defining
microscopic features in a case report
defining Webster as a sentinel case. The paper indicated that
other football players also
suffered from the same disease. This is a very basic and
fundamental step in epidemiological
methods for the surveillance, identification and introduction of
new diseases.
Before the case report on Webster, there was not a disease
called chronic traumatic
encephalopathy or CTE, although chronic traumatic
encephalopathy had been used as a
descriptive terminology in the literature. And this is why the
National Institutes of Health recently
published a paper for the diagnostic criteria for the pathologic
diagnosis of CTE claiming that
this was the very first time in history the pathologic criteria for
the diagnosis of CTE were being
published. If it was not a new disease, why would the NIH be
publishing and presenting such
criteria today?
_______________________________
Discovering more cases
Having published the sentinel case, I began searching for more
cases in football players,
because I believed a great majority, if not all professional
football players, suffered from CTE.
Discovering new cases was not difficult. Going by
epidemiological methods, I published the
second case of CTE in Terry Long, a football player and
teammate of Webster, then a third in
Andre Waters, a football player who played for the Philadelphia
Eagles.
The third case qualified as a case series. I still searched for
more cases of CTE in football
players, and eventually published a cohort study. I identified
and linked CTE with a distinctive
constellation of presenting symptoms, which included suicidal
behavior and suicides, which I
also published.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/opinions/omalu-discovery-of-
cte-football-concussions/
I believed CTE existed in other high-impact contact sports
athletes, and when Chris Benoit, a
professional wrestler, committed suicide, I secured his brain
and identified the first case of CTE
in a wrestler. I again believed that some, if not all, the so called
PTSD in military war veterans
was a "blast variant" of CTE. Again I was the first to identify
CTE in military war veterans.
Moving forward, I believe CTE will become a disease that will
have sub-types and variants.
Today, chronic traumatic encephalopathy has become a
generally accepted disease and
principle, if not common knowledge, in the medical literature. It
has become a broadly
diagnosed disease by clinicians and pathologists. In fact, I am
very proud that some people
have described the Webster autopsy as one of the most
significant single events in the history
of sports because of the discovery and diagnosis of CTE.
_______________________________
Knowledge of the disease spreads
Knowledge of the disease has now spread through all levels of
football and society. Even my 8-
and 6-year-old daughter and son, Ashly and Mark, know what
CTE is. They may not be able to
say chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but they can say CTE.
The search for the real cause of Webster's death was, for me, a
faith journey that epitomizes
who we are as a common humanity. The search for this disease
was not about gaining any sort
of recognition for myself. Rather, I wanted to make a difference
both for Mike and for all of us.
Some detractors, just like NFL doctors in the past, continue to
deny that I discovered and
named CTE when I performed an autopsy on Webster. These
detractors continue to ridicule me
like the NFL doctors have done. These insinuations are
extremely hurtful and these are part of
the reason I have always said that I wish I never met Mike
Webster. I would never have
imagined that 13 years after the Webster autopsy that certain
people will still be making very
calculated efforts to dehumanize, belittle, discredit and
marginalize me and my work, just like it
was 2002 all over again.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, to discover something
means "to find (something or
someone) unexpectedly or in the course of a search." Therefore,
just like Will Smith has said in
the movie "Concussion," "If you continue to deny my work,
people will continue to die." Anyone
who continues to deny and misappropriate this work is
dehumanizing Webster and the other
athletes who guided me to the truth of the disease that
ultimately contributed to their deaths.
It is my conviction that we are one love, one hope, one spirit
and one body, bound together by
the bond of peace. I wish us all every joy and happiness this
Christmas, for that is actually what
the movie "Concussion" is all about.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/opinions/omalu-discovery-of-
cte-football-concussions/

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  • 1. Project #1 Prompt Your task is to analyze a text, paying special attention to the features that influence a piece of writing the most: the audience, the writer’s orientation, the rhetorical situation, and the genre (COLFV features). Use the sample rhetorical analysis on pages 42-47 as a flexible guide (not a rigid model). The content of your project should differ from the sample because you are analyzing a different text, but the format of your analysis should contrast with the sample as well, due to the nature of this assignment. PART A : TEXT & SUMMARY · Select one of the texts available on BlackBoard under Project #1, labeled “Text Options.” Annotate a hard copy of the text. · Write a SUMMARY: Use one of the texts made available for this assignment on Blackboard. Apply what you have learned about analyzing texts using the COLFV model and write a summary of your findings. Your COLFV summary will include: · 1: rhetorical information about the text · 2: a brief description of content · 3: a brief description of organization · 4: a brief description of language · 5: a discussion of the values that might be held by the discourse community of readers and writer. Concussions and NFL: How the name CTE came about By Bennet Omalu Updated 11:38 AM ET, Tue December 22, 2015
  • 2. CNN Opinion - Political Op-Eds | Social Commentary Editor’s Note: Dr. Bennet Omalu, chief medical examiner of San Joaquin County, California, is an associate clinical professor of pathology at the University of California, Davis. His story is told in the new movie, "Concussion." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. (CNN) — When I read Mike Webster's file before I began his autopsy, I knew he was more than a 50-year-old heart attack victim. His file and the television reports of the death of the former Pittsburgh Steelers center described a long, steep fall into bizarre behavior. I suspected he suffered from some sort of brain disorder. The potential diagnoses on my mind were post-traumatic encephalopathy (encephalopathy means brain disease, damage, or malfunction), Alzheimer's disease, dementia pugilistica, aka punch drunk syndrome, and/or schizophrenia. At this time there was no disease that I was aware of that was called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Dementia pugilistica was unlikely since he was not a boxer. Schizophrenia was unlikely since he did not have any diagnosis of that disease in the extensive pre-mortem clinical workup that he had. Alzheimer's disease was less likely given his age. Post-traumatic encephalopathy was about the only remaining diagnosis I had in mind while I performed the autopsy and considered the case. Based on what I knew about Webster's career and his post-football behavior, I expected to see the residual damages of recurrent contusions
  • 3. and necrosis (death of body tissue), and even atrophy of a lobe in his brain, which would be characteristic of post-traumatic encephalopathy. The story of the discovery of Webster's brain disorder is worth telling, not only because of the upcoming release of the film "Concussion," but also because some detractors have raised questions that I believe are unjustified. _______________________________ http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/opinions/omalu-discovery-of- cte-football-concussions/ Dr. Bennet Omalu at a screening of "Concussion." No visible damage I was flabbergasted when I opened his skull and saw a brain that appeared completely unremarkable without any visible damage. I saved his brain and fixed it in formalin because I was totally lost and confused by what I observed during the autopsy. When I examined his brain and requested a battery of tests -- histochemical and immunohistochemical stains -- I honestly did not know what I was looking for, and I did not have any expectation of what I would see. When I examined slides of Webster's brain under a microscope I
  • 4. found abnormalities that I could not explain. The unique and distinctive topographic patterns of abnormal accumulations of proteins called tau and amyloid did not match with any neurodegenerative disease that I was aware of. Because I had already excluded Alzheimer's disease and dementia pugilistica, I was very surprised to see the abnormal accumulations of tau and amyloid in his brain, both of which occur in those diseases. Yet the topographic pattern, cellular architecture and distribution of these abnormal proteins were inconsistent with those diseases or any other of which I knew. I believed I had found something distinctive. At this juncture, I wanted to show the slides to Dr. Ronald Hamilton, my professor and mentor who had taught me neurodegenerative diseases as a physician in training. Seeking Hamilton's opinion was consistent with the guidelines and standards of practice of pathology as has been established by the College of American Pathologists, that when you see something distinctive in a microscope, you may show it to a second pathologist to confirm the microscopic findings that you are observing. I took the slides to Hamilton, and he confirmed that I was not being delusional or hallucinatory: The microscopic findings in Webster's brain were distinctive and unique. Hamilton suggested that we show the slides of Webster's brain to Dr. Steven Dekosky, the
  • 5. chairman of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Department of Neurology, and director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Hamilton arranged the meeting. I went to Dekosky's office and showed him the slides. He, too, confirmed that this was not Alzheimer's disease and it was not dementia pugilistica. He agreed that I had observed a new syndrome and advised me to publish the paper of my findings. At this point we still had no clue what this new syndrome was. _______________________________ A new disease I went home and began a very comprehensive and extensive literature review to see if this observation had been published before in an American football player. I was utterly surprised that it had not. http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/opinions/omalu-discovery-of- cte-football-concussions/ Not a single paper had been published describing what I had observed in Webster's brain. None whatsoever. I honestly could not, and did not believe it. It was simply impossible. Yes, much had been published on boxers, (the "punch drunk" condition known as dementia pugilistica) but nothing had been written on any American football player. However, I did not want to report the paper simply as a case report describing the distinct
  • 6. pattern I had observed in Webster. I believed I had discovered a new disease in an American football player, a disease that had to be named. I did not know what name to give it, but I decided that whatever name I would give it would satisfy three criteria: 1. The name must be erudite and intellectually sophisticated. 2. The name must have a good acronym to facilitate recall should someone not be able to say the scientific name. 3. The name must be sufficiently generic, so that if someone down the road proved me wrong that this was not a distinctive disease, the name would still accurately describe the observed symptoms. I am a forensic pathologist, and in the medico-legal consultations I had done, I had learned that precedent is very important in case law. This same principle applied to the acceptability of medical concepts in the court of law, frequently referred to as the Daubert rule or principle in the American judicial system. If I derived a name that had been used in the literature as a descriptive terminology, took that descriptive terminology and converted it into a proper noun as the name of a disease, I was less likely to be deemed a radical, making my proposition more likely to be accepted by the medical community. I therefore went back to the medical literature looking for
  • 7. descriptive terminologies that had been used to describe conditions resulting from primary brain injuries. In my research I identified and selected 24 descriptive terminologies that referred to long- term and delayed complications and outcomes of traumatic brain injury, but were not proper nouns of any specific disease with established pathology, especially in an American football player. They are: cerebral neurasthenia, chronic traumatic brain injury, chronic brain injury, compensation hysteria, concussion neurosis, delayed traumatic apoplexy, dementia traumatica, encephalopathia traumatica, litigation neurosis, postconcussion neurosis, postconcussion syndrome, post-traumatic concussion state, post-traumatic head syndrome, post-traumatic psychoneurosis, terror neurosis, traumatic constitution, traumatic encephalitis, traumatic encephalopathy, traumatic encephalopathy of boxers, traumatic hysterias, traumatic insanity, traumatic neurosis, traumatic psychosis, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. _______________________________ Choosing a name http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/opinions/omalu-discovery-of- cte-football-concussions/ I spent days going through these names and analyzing them within the context of the three
  • 8. criteria I listed above. I finally settled upon two names: 1. Chronic traumatic brain injury 2. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy Of the two, I preferred chronic traumatic encephalopathy. It accurately described what I found in Webster's brain. Chronic means long-term, traumatic is associated with trauma, and encephalopathy refers to brain damage, disease or malfunction. The acronym, CTE, seemed easy to grasp and remember. The name sounded intellectually sophisticated. The name was sufficiently generic that if I were proven wrong and this was not a newly discovered brain disease, it still referred to a bad brain associated with trauma . Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, thus became the name of the disease I observed in Webster's brain. Following DeKosky's advice, I documented my findings in a paper entitled, "Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in a National Football League Player," which was published in the journal Neurosurgery. In the paper, which listed Hamilton and my boss, Dr. Cyril Wecht, as co-authors, I differentiated CTE as a distinctive disease, and presented the defining microscopic features in a case report defining Webster as a sentinel case. The paper indicated that other football players also suffered from the same disease. This is a very basic and fundamental step in epidemiological methods for the surveillance, identification and introduction of new diseases.
  • 9. Before the case report on Webster, there was not a disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE, although chronic traumatic encephalopathy had been used as a descriptive terminology in the literature. And this is why the National Institutes of Health recently published a paper for the diagnostic criteria for the pathologic diagnosis of CTE claiming that this was the very first time in history the pathologic criteria for the diagnosis of CTE were being published. If it was not a new disease, why would the NIH be publishing and presenting such criteria today? _______________________________ Discovering more cases Having published the sentinel case, I began searching for more cases in football players, because I believed a great majority, if not all professional football players, suffered from CTE. Discovering new cases was not difficult. Going by epidemiological methods, I published the second case of CTE in Terry Long, a football player and teammate of Webster, then a third in Andre Waters, a football player who played for the Philadelphia Eagles. The third case qualified as a case series. I still searched for more cases of CTE in football players, and eventually published a cohort study. I identified and linked CTE with a distinctive constellation of presenting symptoms, which included suicidal behavior and suicides, which I also published.
  • 10. http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/opinions/omalu-discovery-of- cte-football-concussions/ I believed CTE existed in other high-impact contact sports athletes, and when Chris Benoit, a professional wrestler, committed suicide, I secured his brain and identified the first case of CTE in a wrestler. I again believed that some, if not all, the so called PTSD in military war veterans was a "blast variant" of CTE. Again I was the first to identify CTE in military war veterans. Moving forward, I believe CTE will become a disease that will have sub-types and variants. Today, chronic traumatic encephalopathy has become a generally accepted disease and principle, if not common knowledge, in the medical literature. It has become a broadly diagnosed disease by clinicians and pathologists. In fact, I am very proud that some people have described the Webster autopsy as one of the most significant single events in the history of sports because of the discovery and diagnosis of CTE. _______________________________ Knowledge of the disease spreads Knowledge of the disease has now spread through all levels of football and society. Even my 8- and 6-year-old daughter and son, Ashly and Mark, know what CTE is. They may not be able to say chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but they can say CTE.
  • 11. The search for the real cause of Webster's death was, for me, a faith journey that epitomizes who we are as a common humanity. The search for this disease was not about gaining any sort of recognition for myself. Rather, I wanted to make a difference both for Mike and for all of us. Some detractors, just like NFL doctors in the past, continue to deny that I discovered and named CTE when I performed an autopsy on Webster. These detractors continue to ridicule me like the NFL doctors have done. These insinuations are extremely hurtful and these are part of the reason I have always said that I wish I never met Mike Webster. I would never have imagined that 13 years after the Webster autopsy that certain people will still be making very calculated efforts to dehumanize, belittle, discredit and marginalize me and my work, just like it was 2002 all over again. According to the Oxford Dictionary, to discover something means "to find (something or someone) unexpectedly or in the course of a search." Therefore, just like Will Smith has said in the movie "Concussion," "If you continue to deny my work, people will continue to die." Anyone who continues to deny and misappropriate this work is dehumanizing Webster and the other athletes who guided me to the truth of the disease that ultimately contributed to their deaths. It is my conviction that we are one love, one hope, one spirit and one body, bound together by the bond of peace. I wish us all every joy and happiness this Christmas, for that is actually what
  • 12. the movie "Concussion" is all about. http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/opinions/omalu-discovery-of- cte-football-concussions/