Is signing Wes Welker unethical?

[Messiah]

Someone made this comment on another forum and I thought about it. Rams recently signed Welker, who was a free agent largely because of his extensive concussion history. Knowing what we know about concussions today, this is really serious.

Do you think the Rams should have stayed clear of him because of this and that putting him at this kind of risk, despite how willing he seems to be, is unethical?

[The Legend]

It's close and it's a weird blurry line of a situation. On one hand you have a guy that really wants to go to work doing what he knows how to do best. On the other hand, at this point it's pretty clear that for him in particular that thing is going to dramatically affect his life if not shorten it altogether.

On some level, I don't blame the Rams individually. What I don't understand fully is how in this day and age of information, the NFL's independent neurologists could reasonably could allow him to pass a physical. Realistically it should have come from a league level. For a lack of a better term he should have been blackballed for his own good.

[DBSoT]

It's close and it's a weird blurry line of a situation. On one hand you have a guy that really wants to go to work doing what he knows how to do best. On the other hand, at this point it's pretty clear that for him in particular that thing is going to dramatically affect his life if not shorten it altogether.

On some level, I don't blame the Rams individually. What I don't understand fully is how in this day and age of information, the NFL's independent neurologists could reasonably could allow him to pass a physical. Realistically it should have come from a league level. For a lack of a better term he should have been blackballed for his own good.

I would tend to agree with this. I do partially blame the Rams because it seems that every other team knew not to take the risk. However, if Welker was termed unfit to play and given proper medical guidance from the league, it may not have come to this. My guess is, Welker was evaluated by Rams personnel and deemed fine to play. Which may say a lot about the current concussion tests.

[Everlong]

If Welker was cleared by doctors then I guess teams will do what they want to do. I'm not a medical professional so it's not for me to say whether a team is doing the right or wrong thing by signing a guy who doctors say is fine to suit up.