Category Archives: Ethics & Sports

Raising the threshold for pain: Gene transfer, gene enhancement, or gene doping?

In this paper, co-authored with Professor House MD PillsMike McNamee from Swansea University,  we address the question whether it can be ethically justifiable to seek gene transfer to raise one’s own tolerance to pain in a therapeutic and in an elite sports context. As a case study we analyse a currently recruiting Phase 1 study that seeks to transfer Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor to treat pain in patients with peripheral artery disease, but that could plausibly be applied also in an elite sports context. We presented this paper at the International Association for Philosophy of Sport, Porto, Sept 12-15, 2012.

Camporesi S, McNamee MJ (2012) ‘Gene Transfer for Pain: A tool to cope with the intractable, or an unethical endurance-enhancing technology?’ Life Sciences, Society & Policy Journal 8: 20-31 doi:10.1186/1746-5354-8-1-20

You can read the full paper free of charge here.

Hyperandrogenism, unfair advantage and the myth of the level playing field in competition

In this paper, published on the American Journal of Bioethics and co-authored with Katrina Karkazis (Department of Biomedical Ethics, Stanford), Rebecca Jordan-Young (Barnard College, NYC), and Georgiann Davis (Southern Illinois University), I analyse and question the 2011 IAAF  policies on the eligibility of female athletes with hyperandrogenism to compete in the female category.

Caster Semenya

Caster Semenya

We argue that the policies are  flawed on at least three grounds: 1) the underlying scientific assumptions; 2) the policy-making process; and 3) the concept of fairness for female athletes, and that they should be withdrawn.

The new IAAF policies aim at  isolating the presumed positive effect of increased androgen levels on athletic performance from a myriad of other factors. However, as we show in the paper, such a move is logically flawed, and consequently, the new regulations themselves are logically flawed—it is impossible to reduce the complexity of athletic excellence to a univocal relationship between androgen levels and performance.

Read more: my post for Somatosphere.

Karkazis K, Jordan-Young R, Davis G, Camporesi S. (2012) Out of bounds? A critique of the new policies on hyperandrogenism in elite female athletes,  Am Journal Bioethics; 12(7):3-16