engleski

Bioethics of Sport – Interdisciplinary Framework for the Future of Sport

Recent events in sports and complexed cases of cyborgized (Pistorius, Rehm), intersex (Semenya, Chand) and transgender (Hubbard, Thomas) athletes clearly showed that they can’t be approached or resolved by the single discipline or perspective, but only through collaboration of relevant scholars within the interdisciplinary settings. It is my claim that Bioethics of Sport is the perfect framework in this regard. To support my claim, in my paper I will use the case of transgender women athletes (TWA) and their attempt to compete in the women’s’ categories in sports and present the debate as a paradigmatic example for my claim. I will show that several disciplines are needed while dealing with the TWA case(es) such as medicine (for the medical side of the issue), biology (establishing biological sexes), chemistry (testosterone level), law (providing the legal status and make court decisions), bio-technology (necessary body procedures), sociology (discussion on social component and context) and ethics (examining ethical and moral side). Finally, as an (bio)ethicist I will put an emphasis on the ethical side of the issue. I will present two sided arguments in the literature: a) for TWA inclusion (Karkazis, Pielke) and b) for necessary exclusion of TWA (Pike, Imbrišević) in/from sports. Finally, I will consider possible solutions to the problem from the perspective of external/internal values dichotomy and conclude that internal values should play a more important if not crucial role in the decision-making process in sports, and not external ones. The research will be conducted by application of the interdisciplinary methodology, as well as the critical analysis method and a critical review method.

bioethics of sport, interdisciplinarity, inclusion

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