This Is A Little Unnerving

We'd apologize for bringing you down, but since it's Monday (get me out of TLA!) you're probably at the week's nadir already.

So there's this story out of Italy (via England). Apparently an anomalous number of Italian ex-football players are suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. Or are they?

Not to nitpick, but the article states that the players are being stricken with a motor nueron disease (MND), which, if I'm not mistaken is a broad class of disorder of which ALS (Gehrig's) is one. I'll cut them all the requisite slack because I'm not a doctor and only ever play one when a naughty nurse is involved. More importantly, the story is bizarre and disconcerting enough to not quibble and be a dick.

From the article:

[Andriano] Chio’s research has shown that professional footballers in Italy are seven times more likely to develop motor neurone disease than others... He discovered that 41 [former Italian footballers] had suffered lingering deaths since 1973 from MND, which destroys the body’s motor nerves, eventually resulting in paralysis. Among the victims were Gianluca Signorini, a former captain of Genoa, who died in 2002 at the age of 42, and Adriano Lombardi, a former Como midfielder who died last year, aged 62.

Chio is the neurologist trying to figure out what's going on. It's happening to Italians, it's happening to former football players, it's also happening to midfielders more than others. Theories the article mentions include everything from doping agents to pesticides used on the pitches.

It's truly strange. Then there is this wrinkle where an Ammar Al-Chalabi is calling for the FA to study the phenomenon in Britain after he discovered a "cluster" of three players who played for the same Kent football club suffering from MND. It was later discovered, though, that those three players had also suffered a large electric shock at one point in their lives.