On May 1, 2011, new international rules that determine whether certain female athletes can compete in the 2012 London Olympics have just gone into effect.
“After a lengthy review, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has decided that female athletes with unusually high androgen levels, a condition known as hyperandrogenism, will be banned from competition unless they undergo surgery or take drugs to lower their testosterone levels. This new policy comes as a response to Caster Semenya, the South African runner whose gender was called into question by fellow athletes at the Berlin Athletics Track &Field Championships in 2009″. 
This excerpt comes from “When gender isn’t a given” , a short piece signed by Silvia Camporesi and Katrina Karkazis from Stanford Centre of Biomedical Ethics, which has just been published as an op-ed on the San Jose’ Mercury News.
Those interested in topic could also read, by Katrina Karkazis: Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience, published for Duke University Press in 2008, and by Silvia Camporesi and Paolo Maugeri: Caster Semenya: sport, categories, and the creative role of ethics., a brief report appeared on the Journal of Medical Ethics in 2010.
Humanities and Health 