Caster Semenya loses landmark legal case against IAAF over testosterone levels | Hacker News Reader

Caster Semenya loses landmark legal case against IAAF over testosterone levels

theguardian.com

A line for female athletes has been put in place at a testosteron level of 5 nmol/L. according to the article: "more than 99% of females have around 0.12-1.79 nmol/L of testosterone in their bodies" and: "male range of 7.7-29.4 nmol/L"

Other sports have limits for molecules like EPO, where the limit is also different between men and women: https://www.nature.com/news/2006/060224/full/news060220-18.h...

This is just different because it is about the male hormone, and now the IAAF conveniently has a metric to distinguish between men and women.

It is just case that has no easy answer. Athletic games has been held for ages, celebrating the best people in their disciplines, while at the same time discouraging people to cheat.

It turns out some people exist with natural advantages, and this advantage is just particularly controversial because it is related to gender.

For those interested there is a 50 min bbc documentary about Caster called "Too Fast to Be a Woman": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-UX0LE_tCg

This is the best discussion I’ve read for anyone who wants a bunch of details on the history of this case, why we’d want to measure testosterone in the first place, how it may affect some women more or less than others, and how nonsensical the CAS ruling is, at least based on the evidence presented:

https://sportsscientists.com/2019/05/on-dsds-the-theory-of-t...

Pretty good but it fell apart when it tries to argue that androgenization due to high T is the only relevant benefit heritability for success in sports. "I guarantee you that having small feet or short arms is not as much of a disadvantage as having no benefit from testosterone."

The claim that women would all vanish from sport is also false. Testosterone is a predictor for athletic success, but not a defining one. A few women would still compete but they would be fewer.

People have done qualitatively and quantitively studies on biological traits that correlates with success in sports, and depending on which sport it is you get different answers. Weight in some, height in others, blood values, and so on.

The article says "a person who is identical in every respect with the exception of testosterone (Athlete B) will be 10% to 12% slower than Athlete A.". The problem is that the same can be said with red blood cells. A person who is identical in every respect with the exception of lower count of red blood cells (Athlete B) will be 10% to 12% slower than Athlete A. The exact same discussion of naturally high T values exist in skiing but on the topic of naturally high Hb.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a story about a society where all specially-enabled people had to be dumbed down or physically disabled in order to be "equal." Looks like we're almost there.

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