The rise of performance-enhancing genes
Summary
This article is about the inequality between men and women in athleticism and the fault is directed towards evolution. It seems likely that males and female hominids have become similar in size with the passage of evolutionary time. We still have distinct male and female sporting categories. What this means is that evolution has allowed a large scope for improvement to any female who can increase their male physical characteristics. Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative that was accused by the US Anti-Doping Agency of supplying anabolic steroids to a wide variety of athletes, including Great Britain's Dwain Chambers. There are methods other than steroids to close the gulf in performance that exists between male and female sports. The simplest is by direct subterfuge. The 1938 European champion high jumper Dora Ratjen was unmasked as a transvestite member of the Hitler Youth picked for Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics in place of the genuinely female Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann. Dora Ratjen had somewhat ambiguous genitalia at birth and was registered as a woman and brought up as a girl. The Nazis were unaware that she was a man. Suspicion about the gender of supposedly female athletes led the International Olympic Committee to introduce gender tests at the 1968 Olympics. These degrading and simple physical examinations were later replaced with a scientific chromosome test for the presence of the male Y chromosome. At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, eight of 3,387 female athletes were found to possess a Y chromosome. The cause for this was androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), a condition where the body does not respond to the male hormone testosterone. Most people with AIS syndrome have XY sex chromosomes, but still consider themselves female. The clear male/female differences in sport performance do raise interesting questions about athletes who are genetically rather than pharmacologically enhanced. Sport has so far avoided this problem by assuming that performance is multifactorial. To be an elite athlete, it is wise to choose the right parents, but no one has previously thought that this is due to inheritance of a single gene modification.
Response
In many mammals, it is the females that do the hunting. There seems no reason, apart from cultural, why a woman could not hunt as effectively as a man or whether over a short period or persistently for two days. Instead, the selection for strength is most likely a product of males fighting other males in competition for mates. Studies have found that steroids can help a female sprinter to lower her 100m time by about four-tenths of a second or four metres faster. The effects of steroids upon male 100m sprinters are about two-tenths of a second or two metres faster. What I think is that it does not matter how differently steroids can affect male and females, the use of it is not fair for other natural athletes so it should be illegal. It is hard not to argue with the implication that the steroid doping that was widespread in the 1980s has had a more dramatic effect in female sport than male sport but like I said earlier the consequences should be the same for any gender. However, while the prevalence of AIS in the general population is 0.002%, in women competing in the Olympic Games it is 0.2%. This 100-fold increase suggests the possibility of some performance enhancement due to this syndrome. Therefore, now it is quite clear that genes can be responsible for athletes performances. For example, Eero Mäntyranta, a Finnish cross-country skier who won gold medals in the 1960 and 1964 Winter Olympics, was found to have abnormally high levels of the protein haemoglobin in his red blood cells. High haemoglobin levels allow athletes to carry more oxygen and are a benefit in endurance sport. Mäntyranta, like all his family who were tested, achieved his high haemoglobin levels by having a genetic mutation in the protein in his body that responded to the hormone erythropoetin (EPO).
Source - MLA Format
Martins, Ana. " The rise of performance-enhancing genes | Sport | The Observer ." Latest US news, world news, sport and comment from the Guardian | guardiannews.com | The Guardian . N.p., n.d. Web. 19 June 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/06/drugs-sport-genes-athletics-women>.
This article is about the inequality between men and women in athleticism and the fault is directed towards evolution. It seems likely that males and female hominids have become similar in size with the passage of evolutionary time. We still have distinct male and female sporting categories. What this means is that evolution has allowed a large scope for improvement to any female who can increase their male physical characteristics. Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative that was accused by the US Anti-Doping Agency of supplying anabolic steroids to a wide variety of athletes, including Great Britain's Dwain Chambers. There are methods other than steroids to close the gulf in performance that exists between male and female sports. The simplest is by direct subterfuge. The 1938 European champion high jumper Dora Ratjen was unmasked as a transvestite member of the Hitler Youth picked for Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics in place of the genuinely female Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann. Dora Ratjen had somewhat ambiguous genitalia at birth and was registered as a woman and brought up as a girl. The Nazis were unaware that she was a man. Suspicion about the gender of supposedly female athletes led the International Olympic Committee to introduce gender tests at the 1968 Olympics. These degrading and simple physical examinations were later replaced with a scientific chromosome test for the presence of the male Y chromosome. At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, eight of 3,387 female athletes were found to possess a Y chromosome. The cause for this was androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), a condition where the body does not respond to the male hormone testosterone. Most people with AIS syndrome have XY sex chromosomes, but still consider themselves female. The clear male/female differences in sport performance do raise interesting questions about athletes who are genetically rather than pharmacologically enhanced. Sport has so far avoided this problem by assuming that performance is multifactorial. To be an elite athlete, it is wise to choose the right parents, but no one has previously thought that this is due to inheritance of a single gene modification.
Response
In many mammals, it is the females that do the hunting. There seems no reason, apart from cultural, why a woman could not hunt as effectively as a man or whether over a short period or persistently for two days. Instead, the selection for strength is most likely a product of males fighting other males in competition for mates. Studies have found that steroids can help a female sprinter to lower her 100m time by about four-tenths of a second or four metres faster. The effects of steroids upon male 100m sprinters are about two-tenths of a second or two metres faster. What I think is that it does not matter how differently steroids can affect male and females, the use of it is not fair for other natural athletes so it should be illegal. It is hard not to argue with the implication that the steroid doping that was widespread in the 1980s has had a more dramatic effect in female sport than male sport but like I said earlier the consequences should be the same for any gender. However, while the prevalence of AIS in the general population is 0.002%, in women competing in the Olympic Games it is 0.2%. This 100-fold increase suggests the possibility of some performance enhancement due to this syndrome. Therefore, now it is quite clear that genes can be responsible for athletes performances. For example, Eero Mäntyranta, a Finnish cross-country skier who won gold medals in the 1960 and 1964 Winter Olympics, was found to have abnormally high levels of the protein haemoglobin in his red blood cells. High haemoglobin levels allow athletes to carry more oxygen and are a benefit in endurance sport. Mäntyranta, like all his family who were tested, achieved his high haemoglobin levels by having a genetic mutation in the protein in his body that responded to the hormone erythropoetin (EPO).
Source - MLA Format
Martins, Ana. " The rise of performance-enhancing genes | Sport | The Observer ." Latest US news, world news, sport and comment from the Guardian | guardiannews.com | The Guardian . N.p., n.d. Web. 19 June 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/06/drugs-sport-genes-athletics-women>.