Ethics

Pistorius and the Enhancement/Therapy Distinction

By Adam Kolber

The NYT recently ran a story about Oscar Pistorius, discussed previously on this blog.  Here's are the opening two paragraphs:

When an international court ruled Friday that a double-amputee sprinter from South Africa was eligible to compete in this summer?s Olympic Games in Beijing, the stage was set for disabled athletes to meet their own trailblazer.

The watershed ruling made the runner, Oscar Pistorius, the first amputee to successfully challenge the notion that his carbon-fiber prosthetics gave him an unfair advantage and assured his right to race against able-bodied athletes in the Olympics, should he qualify. Previously barred from competing in such races by track and field?s world governing body, Pistorius will continue to stoke the debate over the competitive issues created by evolving technology in sports.

One aspect of the case that does not seem to get a lot of attention is the following: Scientists seem to be studying his body to see if he has an unfair advantage over able-bodied runners. (Incidentally, "able-bodied" is surely an odd way to put the distinction, considering just how able-bodied Pistorius is).  Underlying the analysis seems to be the view that the body mechanics of ordinary running should serve as the appropriate baseline.  In other words, people seem to focus on whether Pistorius would be in the Olympics were he able-bodied.  But it could be the case that his body is unusually well-suited to running with "Cheetah" prosthetics.  In fact, it could be that, were we all to have amputations at 11-months-old and then run with Cheetah prosthetics, Pistorius would be the best runner in the world.  Alternatively, he might just be extraordinarily good without quite being Olympics material. 

Given that the ideal body for Cheetah-running is probably different than the ideal body for traditional running, there is an interesting underlying question about what exactly we are trying to assess about Pistorius's running ability.  Right now, the analysis seems to be "Does he have an unfair advantage against people who are excellent "biological feet" runners?"  But one might instead ask, "Is he a top specimen among those who are excellent "cheetah prosthetic" runners?"  I suspect that the difference between these questions may not be huge in this context, but may very well be big in the context of other kinds of bodily enhancements we can imagine.

Full post as published by Neuroethics and Law on May 19, 2008 (boomark / email).