Chromosome Testing Will Take Sports Back To The Dark Ages | Defector

"In the late 1990s, Olympics officials were suddenly eager to exit the business of testing women's DNA. After three decades of requiring all women athletes to sit for chromosome tests in order to compete, the International Olympic Committee, in a daze, seemed to realize it was on the wrong side of history. The American Medical Association had recently come out against DNA testing in sports."

"There was something frankly queasy about the whole DNA testing business, which the IOC had first embraced in the late 1960s, during the height of U.S. and USSR hostilities. But in the aftermath of the Cold War, the logic of DNA tests seemed woozier than ever. When the IOC announced it would ditch chromosome tests beginning in 2000, the Salt Lake City Tribune wrote that "an unfortunate vestige of the Cold War" had finally been eliminated."

"The sentiment sounds preposterous today. This month, as the world gathers for the Winter Olympics in Italy, chromosome tests have quietly returned-copy-pasted from the '90s, just with a new sheen. Sports officials are positioning the very DNA tests they had once left for dead as a "noninvasive" and "extremely accurate" way to protect "the integrity of female competition," the new chosen euphemism for disqualifying trans and intersex women."

In the late 1960s the IOC adopted chromosome tests for women athletes, requiring them for three decades. By the late 1990s broad opposition from medical bodies, athletes, and governments led to the IOC ending mandatory tests beginning in 2000. That policy reversal was seen as removing a Cold War-era practice. In recent times chromosome and DNA tests have reappeared at major competitions. Sports officials present the revived tests as noninvasive and extremely accurate measures to protect the integrity of female competition. The renewed testing functions as a mechanism to disqualify transgender and intersex women. Major federations including World Athletics and World Boxing have announced reinstated testing for women.

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