The wall of noise out there has a nasty little habit of suffocating the truth. The football authorities, for example, will tell you they're enlightened when it comes to understanding the sport's links to dementia, when the heart-breaking story of Laraine Astle's telephone calls to the Professional Football Association in the winter of 2002 suggests otherwise.
Mrs Astle was learning to live with a residual sense of grief at the time. Her husband Jeff, a former West Bromwich Albion striker, had died in front of her, on the living room floor at her daughter's house.
What was supposed to have been a celebration of her daughter's birthday descended into a scene of unspeakable horror as her husband choked to death in front of three generations of the family; a consequence of the illness.