It is wrong, wrong, wrong, for athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs in competition

National Review, June 14, 2004

* It is wrong, wrong, wrong, for athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs in competition. Everyone agrees on that, don't they? Well ... sort of. The International Olympic Committee has now ruled that transsexuals may compete in Olympic events as persons of their artificially acquired sex, so long as the necessary surgery has been followed by at least two years of hormone therapy.

Which is to say, two years of injecting yourself with body-changing drugs. As Dr. Renee Richards pointed out following the IOC decision: "Sex-reassignment surgery is based on putting materials into your body." Just so; and Dr. Richards should know, having been born Richard Raskind, undergone sex-change surgery, and been allowed to play tennis in the U.S. Women's Open after a sensational 1977 legal case. To anyone who thinks that athletes--or nations that see successful athletes as symbols of patriotic pride--will hesitate to take advantage of the IOC ruling, we commend the memory of those hulking, ursine, bass-voiced East German "female" swimmers. There's the ruling, though: Steroids--No! Estrogen--Fine. If you want your sports team to compete internationally from now on, better hire a couple of molecular biologists.