The Drug Company that Landed Brett Favre in Hot Water

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You’ve probably heard about Brett Favre’s involvement in a welfare fraud scandal in his home state of Mississippi. The Hall of Fame quarterback is accused of accepting money intended for the poorest citizens of America’s poorest state, and using the money to fund a volleyball facility at his alma mater: the University of Southern Mississippi. But Favre’s role in that case only became known to investigators when they began looking into something else entirely: a little-known drug company in Florida that was promising to give the entire football world the miracle it needed around concussion science. Mark Fainaru-Wada investigates the real story behind Prevacus and its gunslinging investor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mark VanderWada, we love having you on this show because you are one of the best investigative
0:04.8	reporters on the planet.
0:06.3	And when you turn your attention to something we want to know what you found and what you
0:09.7	turned your attention to most recently is Brett Farve.
0:13.4	And this Mississippi welfare scandal, but more specifically Farve's involvement with a
0:18.2	pharmaceutical company called Pravicus.
0:21.5	What made you interested in this part of that story?
0:24.7	I think that I'd done a lot of reporting along with my brother around concussions and
0:30.3	brain trauma.
0:31.8	Mark VanderWada is an award-winning writer for ESPN who co-authored the book League of
0:36.0	Denial, The NFL Concussions and the Battle for Truth in 2013.
0:41.6	The Mississippi story, the focus is all been on this question of welfare money being
0:46.6	misspent and misused.
0:48.2	But it was interesting to see that one of the companies at the center of this that Farve
0:52.0	was tied to is this company, Pravicus, and it's a concussion drug company.
1:01.1	The company Pravicus, I mean we don't learn about it until the Mississippi welfare fraud
1:06.0	case happens, but it dates back to 2012.
1:10.8	And that's really in the throes of the moment in which the NFL's concussion crisis has become
1:17.3	very much a public discussion.
1:19.9	There are growing concerns about the long-term effects of concussions and other hits to
1:24.3	the head.
1:25.3	It's become a whos who of former NFL stalks who've complained about or diagnosed with
	...

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