In what is being hailed as a landmark discovery, a medical study has been published that indicates that the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (more commonly referred to as CTE) was diagnosed in a living person for the first time.
While not explicitly named in the study, doctors have confirmed that the subject of the study was former Minnesota Vikings linebacker Fred McNeill. McNeill passed away in 2015, but the study in question took place in 2012, three years prior to his death.
Up until now, the only way to effectively diagnose CTE has been to do a scan of the brain after a person’s passing.