sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=ys-intersexplight090913
Print WASHINGTON - It's the birth defect people don't talk about. Sometimes the person with the problem doesn't even know it and finds out in an all too public way. That's been the painful plight of a few female athletes through history. And apparently that's the situation for South African track star Caster Semenya. Two Australian newspapers reported Friday that gender tests show the world champion athlete has no ovaries or uterus and internal testes that produce large amounts of testosterone. The international sports federation that ordered the tests wouldn't confirm the reports.
Two years ago, a star female track athlete who tested male attempted suicide. Unless she took some illicit substance, Semenya is a female with a birth defect, simple as that, said Dr. Myron Genel, a professor emeritus of pediatrics at Yale University. He was part of a special panel of experts convened by the International Association of Athletics Federations in 1990 that helped end much, but not all, genetic gender testing. "It's no different in a sense than a youngster who is born with a hole in the heart," Genel said. "These are in fact birth defects in an area that a lot of people are uncomfortable with." Estimates vary, but about 1 percent of people are born with abnormal sex organs, experts say. These people may have the physical characteristics of both genders or a chromosomal disorder or simply ambiguous features. Sometimes a sexual development problem is all too obvious when a baby is born. Other times, the disorder in girls may not be noticed until puberty, when she doesn't start her period. And still other times, especially with the androgen insensitivity syndrome experts think Semenya might have, it remains hidden until she tries to have a baby -- or in the case of an athlete, until she's given a genetic test. Genetic testing of women over five Olympics found genetic gender issues in 27 out of 11,373 women tested, according to a 2000 Journal of the American Medical Association article. However, none were men deliberately posing as women, as competitors fear. Louis Elsas, chairman of biochemistry at the University of Miami and a member of the IAAF panel with Genel, said he had hoped the genetic gender testing issue was over after the 1996 Olympics, when most major sports abandoned regular testing. He recalled having to talk to a female athlete and reveal that she had XY chromosomes and that she'd be infertile. It's something that shouldn't splash onto television, newspapers and the Internet, he said. The concern that women with XY chromosomes have a competitive advantage "is malarkey. We don't segregate athletes by height," said Genel, speaking from an international endocrinology conference in New York that has sessions on intersex issues. Joe Leigh Simpson, past president of the American College of Medical Genetics and a member of the IAAF panel, agreed: "Any elite athlete ... has a competitive advantage, or otherwise they wouldn't be an elite athlete." Simpson, associate dean at Florida International University, said the issue should be simply whether men are masquerading as women. Nearly all the disorders are caused by genetic mutations, Simpson said. And they usually happen in the first eight weeks of pregnancy, he said. There are many types of sexual development disorders, all of them rare, but they add up, the experts said. Depending on the particular disorder and individual condition, treatment could involve surgery or hormone therapy or both. The issue is often not just what sex to assign the child, but when to assign it. Sometimes they wait until the patient is old enough to help make a decision. David Sandberg, a pediatric psychologist at Michigan, said he advises families to go slowly when deciding whether to raise their child as a boy or girl or whether to have surgery. Treatment varies depending on the disorder, but has become more conservative over the years, he said. When it comes to some athletes like Semenya, it's not even known until tests reveal it. A world-class athlete, she was raised and looked like a normal female and even received the needed "certificate of feminity" to participate in the 1983 World Track and Field Championships in Helsinki, Finland. In 1985 at the World University Games in Kobe, Japan, her test came back with an XY and she was not allowed to compete. Martinez-Patino had androgen insensitivity, meaning she didn't respond to testosterone. That meant she also didn't have a competitive advantage from having an XY chromosome. "I sat in the stands that day watching my teammates, wondering how my body differed from theirs," she wrote in the medical journal The Lancet in 2005. "I spent the rest of that week in my room, feeling a sadness that I could not share."
I think the question should is whether the parents wanted a girl so they raised him as a girl. They're probably the ones to blame trying to raise a male with a defect as a girl. If he wants to be a girl, go through the hormone treatment whatever else is involved for the sex change, lose the sack and role on. If he wants to be a man then drop the sack, have an artificial penis put on and he's good to go. Thank the parents for trying to raise a male with a defect as a female, put him in an international competition and then try to blame the media and the rest of the world for doing their job.
Report Abuse For those who sqaubble and whine over of a issue that can,t be changed by this "" young lady caster"" who is awonderful human bieng and is a ,true example of bineng proud of who she is and understands that there is no way to change for those who offend her name and who she is , we need to remember if you got so much ball and monch mannism there is a war going on that needs your worthless words in the wind , there is a recruiter near you, if you got alot of """intesinalfordatude """ speaking from a formor combat marine , there are women who are in the fight around the world where are your balls ,and fordatude 3 Trapper 1144.
Being allowed to run as a female with unfair advantage racing against (other) females should not be the answer either. Being politically correct should never trump doing the right thing.
Report Abuse I feel absolute empathy for this woman's plight. I agree with the posters who say leave her alone and don't be so quick to judge. God only knows she must have more than her fair share of demons and emotions to deal with now in light of the test findings. I pray that she will be allowed to race as the woman she was raised to be and I pray for her the courage to step out onto that track after this public exposure and scrutiny. That in itself will proove to me that she indeed is a winner and rightfully so.
Report Abuse I concur that inorder to be an exceptional athlete there has got to be some exceptionality which would give you the advantage or the edge over the other competitors otherwise there would be no winners! The fact that this hormone wasn't deliberately induced to enhance her performance should make it a non-issue! I also think information of such delicate nature should not be made available for a public post-mortem. My prayers are with you Semenya and family, take heart you did nothing wrong! To the officials of the IAAF, shame on you, the aim of the meet should be geared toward the positive development of young talent in the psycho-motor domain - to make them into world class citizens - not to trample on there developing self esteems!
Report Abuse For those that said she has an advantage and how it's unfair. Well you could complain to God when you meet him because he's the one that gave her the advantage, not men. If you think about it, it's actually a punishment because how long does this so call "advantage" give her. A race last about 1 min, 2 min, maybe 3 min max, but she will have to live with this defect for the rest of her life. Assuming she live for 60 yrs, that's about 32,054,400 minutes of loneliness for 3 minutes of advantage in a race.
Report Abuse I feel absolute empathy for this woman's plight. I agree with the posters who say leave her alone and don't be so quick to judge. God only knows she must have more than her fai...
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