The Ethicscope

spring 2019

Ethics of CRISPR

The Internet of Things

The Transhumanist Movement

Discrimination Against Intersex Athletes

Keeping a Finger on the Pulse of Science

Contributors Laila Sheerin

Photo by Elijah Stewart

Laila Sheerin is currently a 9th grader at LASA High School. Her favorite subject is science, specifically biology and genetics. She hopes to major in a branch of science when she’s in college. One of Laila’s favorite things to do is write fictional stories, and she is currently in the middle of writing three stories.

Tushar Bhagawatula

Tushar Bhagawatula is a 9th grader who attends LASA High School. His interests are generally oriented around most sciences, though he has a passion for computer science, robotics, and earth sciences in particular.

Photo by Elijah Stewart

Elijah Stewart Elijah, a 9th grader at LASA High School, plays alto saxophone in the LBJ marching band. Interested in ethics and philosophy, specifically the historical context for common beliefs on morality, he hopes to go to law school.

Photo by Laila Sheerin

Adolfo Aguirre Adolfo is a 9th grader who goes to LASA High School and is highly interested in math and hopes to become some type of engineer when he is older. He is also taking French and hopes to become fluent in it someday. Outside of school, he enjoys playing soccer and watching movies.

Photo by Elijah Stewart

Letter From the Editors

Dear Reader, We at The Ethicscope thank you for taking the time to read our magazine and familiarize yourself with some of the emerging trends of our world which we have highlighted. Technology is developing at an increasingly rapid pace, and social norms and ethics must be able to progress at the same speed. However, society does not yet evolve at the same pace at technology, and unless norms are implemented, people may use these technologies for good or for evil. It is up to us, the people, to collectively decide what is and is not acceptable with the use of these technologies, and to this aim, we bring to you several of the upcoming trends that need to be addressed. The future is in your hands.

Photo by Cate Sloat

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Table of Page #4 Diving into the Gene Pool - The benefits and risks of CRISPR-Cas9 CRISPR is a groundbreaking development, but it comes with some ethical issues

Page #8 The Making of CRISPR

Page #10 Connection with the Internet through Smart Devices - Is it worth the risk?

Smart devices have revolutionized our way of living over the past years, but there are several things a person puts at risk when using them.

Page #14 The Interrelation of Society and the Internet 2

Covers and trolley problem answers by Laila Sheerin Inside covers and letter to the editors design by Adolfo Aguirre Letter to the editors text and table of contents by Tushar Bhagawatula Trolley Problems by Elijah Stewart

Contents Page #16 Beyond Human - our transhuman future?

A movement of philosophers and others seek to enhance the human body with various technologies.

Page #20 The Evolution of Prosthetics

Page #22 Chromosomal Regulations - the role of sex and gender in modern athletics

Athletics organizations-both domestic and abroad-force intersex competitors to conform to strict rules in order to participate.

Page #26 Submitting Scientific Papers 3

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Laila Sheerin

hroughout history, certain people have had to live with genetic diseases, some so far incurable, but with a new technology being developed, there may be a way to change that.

However, with the groundbreaking scientific discovery come ethical issues. It’s just a matter of whether or not the benefits outweigh the risks.

This new technology is CRISPRCas9. for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and Cas9 is a protein.

This development is a method

of genome editing that originated in bacteria. They have an immune system, but 4 since they’re single cell organisms, their immune

system is a little different from that of humans. When a virus attacks an organism, it inserts its DNA into the cells of the organism and that is what the viruses use to copy themselves over and over and spread to other cells. There are no antibodies, such as white blood cells, that can detect the invader in bacterial cells, so their way of defending themselves is to cut up the DNA. This is how CRISPR-Cas9 was discovered. The DNA that gets attacked is not random, as it is important that the bacteria does not

bacteria, et cetera, and even humans.

They realized that it could be used to attack very specific parts of the genome and make precise cuts in a

Illustrations by Laila Sheerin

attack its own necessary DNA, and scientists figured out fairly recently that they can use this as a way to edit the genomes of plants, animals,

beneficial way to us. There are many genetic diseases humans can be born with, ranging from deafness to cystic fibrosis. With CRISPR, those

Photo by Laila Sheerin Dr. Lisa Goering, associate biology professor at St. Edwards University looks into a microscope at fruit flies that have been genetically modified to have a mutation. Biologists study mutations in fruit flies because they breed and die quickly, and they can see what editing differnet genes does to the fly.

diseases could possibly be cured. an issue.

The ethical problem that may “Artificial does not necessarily immediately come to mind when mean wrong and natural does not thinking of gene editing is that it’s necessarily mean right,” Cherry said. not natural. However, according Just because it was made by humans or defies nature does not

took them off and put them back on and asked if it was bad, since he was defying nature. Glasses aren’t something humans normally think of as artificial or wrong at all, but they are a non-natural correction for

to Dr. Mark Cherry, associate professor of bioethics at St. have to mean that it is bad. Cherry humans that happens to Edward’s University, that may not be used his glasses as an example. He be used in everyday life.

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One of the ethical problems with CRISPR is consent. The embryo of the child is not capable of deciding whether or not they what CRISPR to be used on them, meaning it’s up to

baby grows up,” Samarajeewa said, “until the baby’s able to decide what’s good for him.”

The child may not want their parents to spend all that money on

Dr. Lisa Goering, associate professor of biology at St. Edward’s University said. “Other people are making that decision for them which is always just something to be very cautious

sit amet, cong elit, sed diam

Photo by Laila Sheerin Dr. Mark Cherry, associate bioethics professor at St. Edwards University works on his computer. As a college professor, he has to prepare for his next class.

the parents.

Dr. Himali Samarajeewa, Professor of Organic Chemistry at Austin Community College said that it would be better if people could wait to edit the genes until the child can decide.

“I would [want to] wait until the

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them, or the disease may not be that serious, and using CRISPR could lead to off-target effects which could end up being worse than the original problem.

“Those embryos are gonna grow up into children and then eventually adults who didn’t have a say in this,”

about.”

Ultimately, the children are going to be the ones growing up in the body they’re born in, not the parents, so it’s important that CRISPR has been tested many times on other cells before it is used on a human embryo that could come to term.

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“Do parents get to make that said. call for their children and what Designer babies are a hypothetical consequences does that have? situation in which parents choose Goering said. “So if you grow up exactly what they want their child knowing that your parents spent all to look like and use CRISPR to this money to edit you as an embryo make it come to life, for example, life with it. so that you were X, Y, and Z, does that blond hair and blue eyes. Fixing “Things like add extra pressure to be, I dunno, to very harmful diseases is one thing, d e a f n e s s , down be an extra good kid or something?” but changing the characteristics of syndrome, disorders Even if the child’s genome was a baby because the parents want it that might mean you’re missing edited and physically nothing went a certain way is a whole different wrong, there could be psychological thing.. Designer babies are similar pressures on that child to a digit or something, like live up to what their parents who gets to make those calls?” may have wanted when the Goering said. “The waters can get child grows up. It could muddy pretty fast.” lead to the child constantly It’s not always black and white, feeling like they’re not good like it would be if it were the child enough or not worthy, living or dying. which would then create a As of March, 2019, a group new challenge. of bioethicists argued that there Another issue is should be a moratorium placed unintended consequences. on CRISPR research in humans CRISPR is new enough because of the ethical challenges. that scientists cannot be However, that isn’t the opinion of completely sure of whether everyone. or not the edit would “As a scientist, I don’t think be successful, or even - Lisa Goering, associate professor we should put a moratorium on the percent chance that of biology at St. Edwards CRISPR,” Goering said. I think something would go wrong. we need to study it; I think it’s “Safety is always going University unethical that we have a tool that to be the first concern,” can potentially do so much good Goering said. to the idea of chimeras, which would to just say no.”

If something could go horribly be combining a bunch of different Despite all the ethical problems wrong with the child during the traits that would not normally go with CRISPR, it’s not all bad. It has changing of their genes, then a new together into one baby. This is what the potential to cure many currently plan probably needs to be made.

Cherry said would be considered an incurable genetic diseases and that is Another issue is that with such a intrinsic wrong. revolutionary. These genetic illnesses powerful technology on hand, that “Intrinsic wrongs are something are a specific DNA sequence that, power could be abused. People could that is wrong in itself,” Cherry said. with CRISPR, could be cut out and start making designer babies.

He provided another example of the problem could potentially be “I think the biggest ethical thing an intrinsic wrong which would be fixed. with genome editing is always, well changing the gender of a child.

“If we can just use CRISPR to are you doing it to alleviate disease Designer babies are one thing, but cut it out you’re talking about a real and something bad or are you using then there’s the matter of diseases cure,” Goering said. it to make designer babies,” Goering where a person can still lead a great

“If we can just use CRISPR to cut it out you’re talking about a real cure.”

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Francisco Mojica realized not only that what had previously been recognized as different sequences turned out to actually be the same, but also that CRISPR is like an immune system.

Alexander Bolotin noticed that there was a gene associated with CRISPR coding for a large protein that could break bonds between parts of DNA, which is called Cas9. He also discovered the gene sequence used for target recognition, which is known as the protospacer adjacent motif, or PAM.

Eugene Koonin came up with a hypothetical scheme where CRISPR Cascade proteins (for example, Cas9) could be a bacterial immune system based on DNA that is relatively similar to proteins that hold a DNA strand, and got rid of the idea that Cas proteins were a new DNA repair system.

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Philippe Horvath studied and showed how CRISPR is an adaptive immune system. He said that new DNA is integrated into the CRISPR DNA which allows it to fight off attacking DNA and that Cas9 is the only protein needed for interference.

Laila Sheerin

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Sylvain Moineau showed that CRISPR-Cas9 breaks both strands of target DNA in precise positions, three nucleotides up from the PAM sequence, and they confirmed that Cas9 is the only necessary protein for CRISPR-Cas9.

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John van der Oost showed how CRISPR-Cas systems “interfere” with invading DNA or RNA by discovering that sequences derived from viruses that eat bacteria are transcribed into small RNAs (CRISPR RNAs or crRNA) that could lead Cas proteins to the target DNA.

Luciano Marraffini and Erik Sontheimer discovered that the molecule that is being targeted is not RNA but DNA, and wrote that it could be a powerful tool if it were on systems that are not bacteria.

Source: The Broad Institute

Emmanuelle Charpentier and his group of researchers discovered that it wasn’t just the crRNA that was guiding Cas9 to the targets, but also a smaller RNA called trans-activating CRISPR RNA or tracrRNA, which forms a pair with crRNA.

Feng Zhang successfully adapted CRISPR-Cas9 for editing the genes in eukaryotic cells. He and his team made two separate but similar Cas9 proteins and showed targeted gene cutting in eukaryotic cells.

Virginijus Siksnys and her colleagues demonstrated that CRISPR systems are self-contained and that they could provide resistance against independentlyreplicating small segments of DNA. They looked at Cas9’s mode of action and confirmed the place where the DNA is cut for the PAM sequence. They also showed that crRNA could be cut down and that Cas9 could be reprogrammed to target a specific site of their choice. At nearly the same time, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna added that crRNA and tracrRNA could be merged together and make a single, fake guide which simplified the system.

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Connection With the Internet Through Smart Devices Is it worth the risk?

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Adolfo Aguirre echnologies all around the world have revolutionized the world humans are living in. Devices made by the Internet of Things (IoT)makes everything so much easier for humans, such as helping them with their daily day routine, but everything comes with a price.

The IoT is when everyday objects is connected to the interweb and other objects that are also connected to to the internet.

Glen Hiemstra believes that the IoT has many positive effects as well as negative ones in our society and in our way of living. Whether humans know it or not, everyone with a piece of technology is part of the IoT. Humans are connected to everyone and everything when they are using the 10 Internet. This means

Internet that they

Illustration by Adolfo Aguirre

can gain access to pretty much any information, but that also means that it is possible for people to obtain any personal information they have out in the web. This could be a bad thing since they may be losing their privacy if someone out there is able to somehow acquire their information.

Objects in the realm of the IoT allow humans to connect to the Internet and gain access to everything the device allows them to. Regardless, the IoT can be really useful for humans. If they hope to accomplish a simple task, a smart device could help them with that. If they’re trying to produce a major film, they can obtain metadata from the network to help with the motion picture.

“For the studios, they see the Internet of Things as supplementary material that can be included in the film so that they are getting more than just the film itself, so that there’s additional value to it,” Drew Diamond, a film producer, said.

“Now film makers are being tapped to a degree with collecting as much data as possible to add value to the final film product.”

When people buy the film, they will be able to understand how and where to access the objects that appear in the the movie within the Internet. The film makes the audience interested in these products, and it makes it easier for them to find the products out there in the web.

“World building is a major part of storytelling that this kind of technology and this kind of immersion can really amplified,” Diamond said. “and I think that’s great because then that’s allowing people and allowing the fans to get the value that they really want out of the film,” By getting the products from the

founder of Futurist. com, said.

Any activity humans engage in using devices that are within the IoT will be recorded. This means that their information is somewhere out there in the Internet, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is public.

However, hackers have way on dealing with locks that are blocking people from seeing this information. If they manage to break through the virtual lock, their information will then be at their disposal.

Banafa Illustration by Adolfo Aguirre believes that this privacy “Sustainability is actually one of breach is one of the major the most likely positive outcomes, as problems people have with the IoT we can do things like more carefully and the Internet itself. calibrate energy Though there needs and may be some outputs, increase negative effects, efficiency of Hiemtra believes growing food that there can be with fewer severl positive inputs, and so oucomes caused on,” Hiemstra by the IoT. He said.

“For believes that the example, recent data from the work with data Internet can be analytics and machine implemented Photo by Rock Paper Sketch Creative. learning have into the devices resulted in 20 to helps with large Glen Hiemstra is the founder of futurist. percent increases com. futurist analyze modern society and manufacturing. infer how it will be like in the future. in efficiency of wind farms.”

H u m a n film the audience feels like they are Photo by Loretta Morgan . part of the made up world of the Tim Morgan is a member of the Association film. of Professional Futurist.

“The primary impacts are increased tracking of all transactions 11 that you engage in,” Glen Hiemstra,

life depends on food. Without it people would starve to death.

Growing food at a more efficient rate and with fewer inputs means that there will be more food. The world population is growing at an exponential rate, while food only grows at a linear rate. This means that in the fu ture there will not be enough food to maintain the entire world if humans keep growing crops the same way they do it today.

To avoid this problem they need to increase the efficiency of growing crops over time. As Hiemstra said, they are already working on this, and seems to be working thanks to t h e IoT. If they keep this up, the problem will minimize.

12 Tim Morgan then elaborated on the

negative effects the IoT has on society. Several of his ideas match the ones of Glen Hiemstra.

“Privacy becomes much harder the more IoT devices spread throughout our homes, businesses, and public spaces,” Morgan said As mentioned before, and said by Hiemstra, the IoT keeping private information is much harder when everything is in the interweb. When public something or interact with the internet using an IoT device, whether it is public or private, the Internet becomes owner of the information.

“If you have a smart phone you are part of IoT and if you have a smart lock or smart Illustration by Adolfo Aguirre speaker like Alexa you are in the middle of IoT. Everything you do is recorded on that machine,” said Ahmed Banafa, who has written a book on the effects the IoT has on security. “Smart phones keep track of all your moves and send it back to the app company”.

Pretty much everyone has a smart phone so emost people are part of the IoT. Some people may say that it doesn’t affect their privacy or security but that doesn’t mean there is not a risk of affecting them in the future.

“No privacy with IoT, you use it Photo by David Schmitz from San Jose State University. you lose it,” Banafa said.

Ahmed Banfa is author of Secure and Some people argue if losing Smart Internet of Things(IoT):Using privacy is worth gaining the benefits Blockchain and AI. His book talks the IoT has to offer. about security issues that arise from technology.

Glen Hiemstra talks about the

possible effects the IoT could have in the future.

“It will indeed continue to spread and grow and more things will be connected at higher speeds, via fiber, 5G and satellite networks all in the works in the next 5-8 years,” Hiemstra said.

“As we increase AI’s capacity for solving human problems, we humans will be able to use these tools to address even more difficult problems,” Tim Morgan, a futurist, said. “As we spread more digital intelligence through our environment, we will adapt to it and it to us. We co-evolve with our technology,” Morgan said.

Technology helps us create better and more advanced technology. We help create new technology with old technology. This

“No privacy with [Internet of Things], you use it you lose it,” - Ahmed Banafa, author

also causes our society evolve and adapt to the new innovations. Morgan also believes that this will happen as the internet is inbedded in more and ore objects.

“IoT will automate many of the jobs and that will cause a loss of jobs in some areas of services,” Banafa said.

When devices take over people’s jobs, those people won’t have a way to make money or will at lead struggle to find another job.

This is very bad because it won’t allow the people to maintain themselves and can lead them to become homeless or suffer from some other severe impacts.

The IoT has brought controversy on whether the Internet of Things is the one of best things that has been brought to humans or if it is something that can cause harm to the society. Some argue that the Internet of Things is threatening our privacy and security, that is why it is believed that the Internet of Things is not as great as it seems.

Others believe that It is easier and faster to interact with the network with IoT devices.

Illustration by Adolfo Aguirre

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Many home devices are being created. Companies such as Amazon, Nest, and philips are dedicated to making a “smart” home. They create devices that allows you to connect pretty much your entire house to the network. Alexa is one of Amazon’ s creations, which is basically the home base of all the “smart” devices that are connected to the same network. Alexa also allows you to search things up in the internet with voice commands.

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The Internet of things is involved with film producing and film making in many different ways. Filmakers need to collect meta-data to inform them what the viewers would like to see and how they could implement this data into the film.

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Adolfo Aguirre

Source: Gridconnect

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The Internet of things makes the life of people much easier. People use the internet of things everyday and they don’t even realize it. With the internet of things, everything pretty much anything in the network is at our disposal.

We can connect with anything that uses the internet with our phone.

With our portable devices, we can access the internet and find anything we want. New devices are being created with the bluetooth option.

Bluetooth allows phones or portable devices to connect to other devices that are near them and excahnge information.

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Beyond Human Our Transhuman Future?

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Tushar Bhagawatula here is a new movement on the horizon. A group of various people and organizations collectively known as transhumanists seek to push technology beyond its current limits to benefit humanity as much as possible.

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Transhumanism is a movement starting to gain some prominence around the world which advocates increased development of technologies which directly interact with the human body to improve life, such as genetic therapies and more advanced prosthetics. They seek to effect social change and make technological enhancement not only legal, but normal.

In their ideal world, people would no longer be constrained by biology,

as tools to improve humans would be available to all. Transhumanism is not a single movement however, but a collection of different organizations and individuals with varying ideologies, politics, goals and technologies.

According to James Hughes, the director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), there is one shared thing that unites all transhumanists. He says that they are “amazed folks who are interested in the real social justice consequences and public policy solutions to emerging technology questions that most public policy people think are science fiction.”

Transhumanist philosophers believe that new, cutting edge technologies that could be very beneficial to humanity are already present or coming very soon, and seek to answer the ethical questions that come up with regards to their use, even when those outside the movement believe these technologies are very far in the future. Transhumanists seek to figure out not only what technology is here or coming, but also how this technology should be applied. There are several institutes of philosophers and ethicists who debate that latter point, and it is possibly the key point of actual contention within the movement itself. The two main factions on this point are the techno-progressives or democratic transhumanists, and the libertarian transhumanists.

“A democratic transhumanist is basically an individual who very much agrees with democratic principles,” said

George Dvorsky, a transhumanist writer and member of the Board of Directors of the IEET, “by what I mean by that is trust in institutions, trust in democratic processes, trust even in constitutions, in oversight regulations, this faith if you will I think ultimately the betterthe best ways of putting it is just simply

The techno-progressives believe that the government has a place in regulating the use of these technologies, but that the regulations should only be in cases where use of the technology is directly harmful, while the libertarians believe that the market and people can regulate themselves, and that there is no need for government intervention in the emerging technologies market.

Augmenting the human body isn’t the kind of thing one can do without attracting opposition, as pointed out by Mr. Dvorsky, “A lot of bioethical groups... were in an existence back then and almost all of them tended to be on the bioconservative side,” Dvorsky said.

The bioconservatives are what the transhumanists call those who oppose emerging technologies. Despite their name, bioconservatives pan the entire political spectrum and Zoltan Istvan, transhumanist seek to either regulate to the point of exclusivity, or straight politician up ban these technologies that enhance the human body.

Again, Dvorsky having a trust in institutions, in the points out one of the key democratic process, and not being arguments they use in their favor. afraid of government, and not being “You can also have bio conservatives... afraid of restrictions and regulations, who basically argue that, on secular whereas libertarians and libertarian grounds if you will, that this is a grave transhumanists, they’re definitely mistake,” Dvorsky said, “that the human more of that ‘get your hands off me’ form in its current shape is is good attitude, minimal if not even negligible enough, and that if we modify human government, this idea that people nature, human capacities, that we should be given the control over their actually risk unsettling the this delicate bodies, control over the reproduction, balance that holds humanity together. and have virtually nothing in terms of A common reason for opposition the government to restrict those things” among most factions of the

“It’s very normal to imagine upgrading our brain. It’s very normal to get in a driverless car. It’s very normal to have an exoskeleton suit that allows us to run 70 miles per hour.”

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bioconservatives is said to be that modifying the human body and mind will somehow cause us to lose what ineffable quality makes us human in the first place. They will say that there is some essential factor that d e f i n e s humanity, and that transhuman modifications will cause humans to lose that.

Whether that be a soul, or some other secular counterpart, the common bioconservative argument is that transhuman modifications will irrevocably alter the nature of humanity in a negative way.

Some others say that there are potential dangers of such technology being used for nefarious purposes. Mr. Dvorsky posits one theoretical dystopia, were the technology to run amok.

“My mind drifts more toward those Orwellian kind of nightmares, the Aldous Huxley Brave New World type fears where you get these eugenic nightmares,” Dvorsky said. “Where these are state controlled injunctions, where you know it’s not the people at the grassroots level, it’s not couples making decisions for themselves but what they want themselves and for their offspring, that what i t ’ s turned into is these state controlled impositions on the populace” Bioconservatives point to such fears as reasons for not developing any of these technologies further.

Were the technology to be 18 used for the wrong reasons, society could be radically

speaker, posits his vision of a world.

“People start funding more of the scientists, people start embracing the science and the technology and very quickly we find a world where it’s very normal to imagine upgrading our brain,” Mr. Istvan said. “It’s very normal to get in a driverless car.

It’s very normal to have an exoskeleton suit that allows us to run 70 miles per hour.”

The transhumanist movement seeks to push technology to the limit, and advance the means available to the people to improve their lives.

The human body is not known for its invulnerability, nor the human mind for its flawlessness, so the movement wishes to rectify those issues. They not only seek to fix the problems, they wholeheartedly believe it is possible.

What the future holds for the transhumanists is uncertain, but they are pushing technology to their limits and will not be backing down any time soon.

Transhumanists seek to enhance the human body using technology in myriad ways, from biological to technological.

altered in a negative way.

The transhumanists firmly believe that technology is perfectly capable of being used safely and without undue harm to people or society, and are optimistic about the future. Zoltan Istvan, a prominent libertarian transhumanist

Illustrations by Tushar Bhagawatula

Trolley Problems Which path should the trolley travel down?

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The Trolley Problem is a classic ethical thought experiment put forth by Philippa Foot in 1967. In it, you must decide whether to do nothing, allowing the trolley to kill the group on the main track (three strangers in the case of problem 1) or pull the lever, killing the group on the side track. Many variations of this problem exist.

Answers on page 28

2 Petty criminals

Close family member

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Frontier of Elijah Stewart

Along with many other areas of technology, the field of prosthetics has had rapid progress in the past century.

Cochlear implants help those with hearing loss. Other recent developments into neural implants, a field of prosthetics which focus on sensory devices, include artificial eyes which give the user limited sight. Photo Courtesy of Thomas Haslwanter.

Hugh Herr giving a TED Talk on his work in prosthetics. A researcher at the MIT Center for Extreme Bionics, he is focusing on improvements in amputation and the development of sensory input from the prosthetics.

Photo Courtesy of Steve Jurvetson.

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Sources: TED, Plastic Surgery (Oakville), Smithsonian

Prosthetics Many of the ideas which we now take for granted were far less common in the 19th century and before.

While humans are the main focus of prosthetics, animals are not forgotten.

Wheelchairs are the most common way in which animals are helped, but others include artificial limbs, much like those developed for humans, and artificial beaks for birds. Photo Courtesy of Compassion Over Killing.

The most well-known area of prosthetics is artificial limbs.

Recent progress has led to body suits, 3D printed limbs, and the Modular Prosthetic Limb (above), one of the most advanced bionic arms currently developed.

Photo Courtesy of the US Navy.

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Caster Semenya, center left, racing in 800m in Berlin in 2011. Semenya is one of many athletes affected by the regulations on testosterone. Photo courtesy of AndrĂŠ Zehetbauer.

Chromosomal Regulations

The Role of Sex and Gender in Modern Athletics

Elijah Stewart

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successful runner from South Africa is challenging a new regulation whose discriminatory rules could destroy her career, as well as those of other intersex athletes around the world.

In March of 2018, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the international governing body for athletics, set forth a policy for the eligibility of female athletes.

The significant difference from the eligibility regulation in place beforehand was a limit to a woman’s testosterone levels. While synthetic testosterone, which is commonly used in the form of steroids, is agreed to boost athletic ability, the IAAF

claimed that natural testosterone was similarly effective. For those that have a circulating testosterone level equal to or above five nanomoles per liter of blood (the average level for women is below two nmol/L), there are two options: reduce their testosterone level below five nmol/L or have restricted competition. This would prevent them from competing in international competitions unless they do so in the male division.

For Mokgadi Caster Semenya, commonly referred to as Caster Semenya, and others like her, these regulations could have massive consequences. This is because Semenya has a condition called difference of sexual development (DSD), meaning that she is intersex, according to Brandon Beck, a transgender male educator and activist for the transgender community.

“Intersex is a term that is used to group label define people who have development that is different sexually, genetically, biologically, physiologically from what we consider standard for what we call male and female,” Beck said.

“Someone who we call intersex might have a different chromosomal combination than our standard XX or XY, or they might have different genitalia than the standard penis or vagina or the standard testes or ovaries.”

There are many forms of DSD, none of which fit expected phenotypes of male and female.

Semenya has hyperandrogenism, which means that her body produces a much higher level of testosterone than the athletes she competes against and therefore would be forced to conform to this regulation, but if she were to race in the male

Dutee Chand, right, racing in 22nd Asian Athletics Championships.

Chand fought against the first set of testosterone regulations in 2015.

Photo courtesy of the Athletics Federation of India.

division, she would find herself at a disadvantage. In order to avoid this outcome and protect other intersex athletes from facing a similar fate, Semenya took the IAAF to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which is essentially the supreme court for international sports. To the outcry of her supporters and many human rights organizations, the CAS sided with the IAAF, stating that while the rules were discriminatory, they were necessary. Following this development, the South African government came to Semenya’s support, and Athletics South Africa (ASA) is considering approaching the Swiss federal tribunal asking to overturn the ruling.

This is not the first time the IAAF has attempted to introduce such regulations. In 2014, Dutee Chand, an Indian sprinter with a similar condition to Semenya, disputed a policy with the same rules for female eligibility. After an extensive hearing, the CAS found the guidelines to be lacking in scientific justification and forced the IAAF to end the policy.

Before 2014, intersex athletes still faced discrimination. Both the IAAF and the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, have uprooted people, especially women, that don’t fit the sexual binary, including intersex and transgender 23

people. They have done this using such humiliating policies as forced sex testing and gender verification cards. One example of this crackdown is that of

they sound female, they might have high testosterone levels but the testosterone is not doing what testosterone normally does.”

Despite her high testosterone not

athlete to formally go against the sex and chromosome testing, she fought for three years before the IAAF conceded that she had no advantage and allowed her to return, but by that point, she had no chance of making the Olympics. This discrimination has affected many people through the years, and the regulations put forth by the IAAF would allow this to continue.

While many athletes support Semenya in her mission, the racing community is quite divided on the issue. Many feel that the higher natural testosterone gives those like Semenya a significant advantage over the competition. They feel that the regulations are a needed step in order to ensure fair competition. When Semenya was first discovered to be intersex, at a world championship Women’s 800m at 2009 World Championships, featuring Madeleine Pape, far left, and Caster Semenya, obscured center right. Semenya’s test results in Berlin in 2009, many accused her were leaked in the days following this race. Photo courtesy of Madeleine of being a man. One of those people Pape. was Madeleine Pape, a runner from Maria José Martínez Patiño, a having an effect on her cells, Spanish Australia, who had lost to Semenya Spanish hurdler. Just before a athletics officials told her to fake an just before she had been outed. race in 1985 in Japan, she was injury and stay away from athletics “I was surrounded by coaching told that, while she was female, permanently. Becoming the first staff as well as teammates from both she had XY chromosomes and internal testes, which caused her The pride flag of the intersex community. In the expanded acronym for the LGBTQ+ community, LGBTQIA+, the “I” stands for intersex. Graphic courtesy of the Intersex Human Rights Australia. to have much higher testosterone.

She also had a condition called androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), which affects the body’s interaction with testosterone, as explained by Dr. Susan Dubois, an endocrinologist in Austin.

“The testosterone receptor is not responding to the testosterone so the testosterone level could be very high, but it does not interact with the hormone receptor, and therefore nothing that testosterone does happens, and those persons with that are female phenotypically.

That means they look female, 24

my team and other teams who were saying very harmful and derogatory things about Caster Semenya,” Pape said. “At the time, I went along with that and was kind of happy I guess to sort of accuse Semenya of having an unfair advantage, I think in part because it sort of helped me to come to terms with the fact that I had not performed as well as I had hoped at those championships, and so it was kind of an easy scapegoat.”

Since then, Madeleine Pape has switched to the other side of the debate. Having left the field of athletics, Pape pursued a graduate degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the field of sociology. There she encountered criticism of the policies of the IAAF and the IOC when taking gender-

related courses. Since then, Pape has continued studying this subject and testified for Dutee Chand during the hearing challenging the IAAF.

majority in track and field,” Pape said. “My position is that if I accept my friends as women outside of sport, if I can look them in the eye and say, ‘Yes, you’re a woman to me. I accept your identity as a woman, and I accept that you’re a woman like me.’”

The athletics community is divided on this - Madeleine Pape, athlete issue, and there are many aspects “For me, it was difficult because it of it that are disagreed on. While was sort of a moment where I knew both sides believe that synthetic I was kind of outing myself in a way testosterone aids one’s physical like I was making it known to people ability, natural testosterone isn’t as in my track and field community that simple. Past that there is a question I didn’t support those regulations over whether that even matters. where the majority of people do. So For many, it is a moral question. for me, it was sort of difficult in that Regardless of whether the way to like sort of be taking a stance IAAF succeeds and testosterone that was against the stance of the is regulated, the traditional understanding of Caster Semenya at a race in Berlin in 2010 in the Women’s 800m. Photo the human body courtesy of André Zehetbauer. is changing, and systems put in place which relied on this understanding will have to change with it.

“I’m not prepared to say that to them only to then turn around and tell them that they’re not welcome in sport,” Pape said. “I don’t feel like I can hold that double standard.”

“I didn’t support those regulations where the majority of people do.”

25

How To Get Rese Tushar Bhagawatula re atu

Applied Physics

Science

N

Org a Che nic mis try

Step 1: Select a Journal

The journal you are publishing in should be determined right at the beginning of the process. Many scientific journals have a scope, the areas of science that the journal covers, as well as other instructions to the authors. Another thing that must be taken into consideration is the intended readership.

Step 2: Create a Title

The title should succinctly summarize what your paper will be about. It should not be very long, and should contain keywords that would get it to show up when a search is done on the topic of your paper.

Step 3: Abstract

The abstract is a one-paragraph description of your paper that succinctly summarizes the contents of the paper.

It is the first impression of the paper seen by readers and reviewers.

26

earch Published Step 6: Submission

Once you have finished your paper, go to the website of the journal. The journal should have instructions on how to go through the submission process. For example, Science requires a few supplementary documents. Then, the paper will go through multiple layers of cross-reviewing by those appointed to do so. They will decide whether your paper makes the cut.

Step 5: References and Conflicts

Any assertions that are made that are not demonstrated in your paper must be cited from somewhere else. Next to the assertion, you can include a link to the references section, which should have the list of sources that you used. You should also have a section listing conflicts of interest. If the results of a study could benefit you or a benefactor of yours in some way, it must be disclosed.

Step 4: IMRaD

IMRaD: Introduction, Materials/Methods, Results, and Discussion. This is the general ordering skeleton for a paper, and is the main components of one. The Introduction covers relevant background knowledge and existing observations, and

Source: Journal of Human Reproductive Sciences

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There are no answers, as these are deep philosophical questions

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Special Thanks To

Drew Diamond Ahmed Banafa Glen Hiemstra Tim Morgan Dr. James Hughes George Dvorsky Zoltan Istvan Lisa Goering Mark Cherry Himali Samarajeewa Madeleine Pape Brandon Beck Dr. Susan Dubois Kevin Garcia