I’m thankfully escaping winter for a few days (yes, I know
how ridiculous that sounds to Lounge readers in, say, Minneapolis or Chicago,
but indulge me: I’m southern and really, really prefer warm weather) for the
2nd World Conference on the Hormonal and Genetic Basis of Sexual
Differentiation Disorders and Hot Topics in Endocrinology.
From the conference
program (via AP):
The International Olympic Committee will convene a special
conference of medical experts to draw up guidelines for dealing with
“ambiguous” gender cases in the wake of South African runner Caster Semenya’s
sex-test controversy.
IOC medical commission chairman Arne Ljungqvist told The Associated
Press on Tuesday that his panel will organize a symposium in Miami Beach,
Florida in January to look at gender issues and advise sports bodies how to
respond. “Sometimes you come across cases that are uncertain and ambiguous, and
it changes from being a sports matter to a medical matter,” Ljungqvist said.
“That’s where we need to have a review.”
The move comes amid intense international scrutiny on
Semenya, the 18-year-old athlete who won the women’s 800 meters at the world
championships in Berlin in August. . . .
The IOC symposium – to be attended by 10 to 15 scientists and
sports federation doctors – will take place in conjunction with the 2nd World
Conference on Hormonal and Genetic Basis of Sexual Differentiation Disorders,
from Jan. 15-17 in Miami Beach,
Fla.
This is a first for me –a pure medical conference – and I’m
sure that I’ll feel a bit like a fish out of water. The other conferences related to law and medicine that I
have attended in the past, such as the American Society
for Bioethics and The Humanities, had a lot of non-doctors and
non-scientists in attendance, including lawyers.
At the fall ASBH annual
meeting in DC, for example, I moderated a panel on Ethics, Policy, and Human Fertility Markets with Aaron Levine (School of Public Policy,
Georgia Tech), Lisa
Ikemoto (School of Law, University of California-Davis), Rene Almeling
(Sociology, Yale), and Jennifer
Haylett (Graduate Student, Sociology, University of California-Davis). Although the panelists hailed from
different disciplines, we all pretty much spoke the same language.
Luckily, I’ll have colleagues Doriane Coleman (law
professor, two-time Swiss national 800-meters champion, and co-counsel to Mary
Decker Slaney in her fight against doping charges) and Richard Clark
(Clinical and Medical Supervisor of the division of Metabolic and Urogenital
Diseases at Glaxo Wellcome Research and Development, and an Associate
Consulting Professor in the Divisions of Endocrinology, Metabolism and
Nutrition and Reproductive Gynecology at the Duke University Medical Center), with
whom I’ve been kicking around ideas on the Semenya case, to keep me company
(and translate, if necessary).
I, in contrast, as Lounge readers already know, have no
athletic ability or relevant medical or scientific expertise, but dislike cold
weather and am interested in issues of doping,
“cheating,”
and intersex in sports. Stay tuned
for an update when I return.