Beaten Giants Fan's Doctor Calls For More Funding For Brain Injuries
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) - The doctor tasked with overseeing the medical care of Bryan Stow is pleading for more money from Congress for traumatic brain injury research.
San Francisco General Hospital Chief of Neurosurgery Geoff Manley, M.D., discussed the issue during a media briefing last week.
"Right now, there's probably only a handful or 15 or 20 centers in the country that are really doing this and I think that's really a shame for people who sustain an injury somewhere in middle America that may not have this level of care," he lamented. "And we need to bring the level of care for traumatic brain injury up to the level that it is for cancer and heart disease."
He called on the federal government to better fund research of traumatic brain injuries.
"We just had the 30th anniversary of HIV/AIDS and we saw what billions of dollars can do in terms of reversing what was an epidemic where people were dying left and right," Manley argued, describing current levels of funding for traumatic brain injury research - an estimated $85 million - "insufficient."
KCBS' Bob Melrose Reports:
Manley also said during the briefing that Stow's condition was being upgraded from critical to serious. Still, Manley stressed that full recovery from the March 31 attack outside the Dodgers' stadium in Los Angeles was far off, and there remained a risk that it would never happen.
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