Centre for the Study of Contemporary Solidarity, Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, AUSTRIA
Host: S. Kerbavcic
Bioethics and Sport: Evidence, Values and Norms underlying competition for athletes
There is a fundamental tension intrinsic in athletics: human sex is not binary, and there are only two
categories in which people can compete: men, and women. In the late 1990s, all forms of sex testing
had been abandoned by the International Olympic Committee due to some high-profile false
positive cases. After a brief interval, sex testing re-emerged in 2009 with the case of South-African
runner Caster Semenya, whose gold medal at the World Track & Field Championship in Berlin was
revoked on suspicion of an unfair advantage derived from a “male biological make-up”. Following
an investigation, in May 2011,World Athletics (WA) enacted ‘Hyperandrogenism regulations’
which require that female athletes with endogenous testosterone levels above 5 nmol/Lit take
androgen suppressive therapy as a condition to compete in the female category. Since the original
formulation, the WA Hyperandrogenism regulations have undergone multiple iterations, the most
recent one in March 2023, and have been at the centre of three high profile legal disputes, two at
the Court for Arbitration of Sport also known as the “Supreme Court for Sports” (2015; 2019), and
one at the European Court of Human Rights (2023). In this talk I will provide a bioethics and sport
approach to the question of unfair advantage and eligibility to compete in the female category
for athletes with DSD, reviewing the evidence, values and norms underlying the World Athletics
regulations to compete in the female category for athletes with DSD.
Short bio: Silvia Camporesi is a bioethicist with a longstanding interest in technologies and health,
and an interdisciplinary background in biotechnology, ethics, and philosophy of medicine. She has
published more than 50 peer reviewed articles, and 3 monographs (2 in English, for UC Medical
Humanities Press in 2014 and Routledge in 2018, and 1 in Italian, for Fandango, 2023). She is Deputy
Chair of the British Philosophy of Sport Association, and a member of the Ethics Advisory Expert
Group of World Anti-Doping Agency. Her current affiliation is with the Centre for the Study of
Contemporary Solidarity, Department of Political Science, University of Vienna. You can reach her
And find out more about her research at: https://silviacamporesiresearch.org/
#ICGEBseminars #ICGEBAlumni
International Seminar Programme
Hundreds of videos, tens of playlists providing free scientific content worldwide