Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Games 2010 Intellectual Muscle Podcast Talk

Wolbring (2010) Transcript of a Podcast for the Intellectual Muscles Series of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic games: Title "Who will be the future Olympic and Paralympic Athlete Subtitle Advances in science and technology, bodily assistive devices and the future face and purpose of Sport

Gregor Wolbring
University of Calgary, Faculty of Medicine, Dept of Community Health Science, Program in Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies
gwolbrin@ucalgary.ca
Podcast for Intellectual Muscles Series for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic games

New and emerging science and technology products increasingly generate internal and external human bodily enhancements that go beyond the species-typical, enabling more and more a culture of increasing demand for, and acceptance of modifications of the human body (structure, function, abilities) beyond its species-typical boundaries. They generate products that can be employed to sell new social concepts such as transhumanism which is the idea “to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities”(37) and the transhumanization of ableism, (31) which is the set of beliefs, processes and practices that perceive the ‘improvement’ of human body abilities beyond typical Homo sapiens boundaries as essential.

As Beck states: “The degree to which, as well as the circumstances under which we want to allow or even support enhancements, who has to pay for it, and how we can secure equality will be crucial questions for the following decades.”(4)
In a 2009 “Human Performance Study” written for the European Parliament one reads, “Currently however, the EU has no platform for monitoring and discussing human enhancement issues. Arenas are lacking where the normative issues can be politically deliberated and the gap between the needs and the concerns of the broader public and the practitioners and experts bridged” (8).
Advances in sciences and technologies increasingly generate products that allow for the internal and external modification of athletes and they create external tools athletes can use, both of which influence the athlete’s ability to perform. (34)
Many highlight that the appearance of internal and external enhancements of the human body that enable the body to perform beyond the species-typical with the anticipated advantages of the enhanced person in areas such as competitiveness in sport, education and the workplace enable a culture of increasing demand for, and acceptance of, improvements to and modifications of the human body (structure, function, abilities) beyond its species-typical boundaries and vice versa (8; 17; 19; 28; 32-34; 36).
In sport these enhancement capabilities have various impacts.
Genetic enhancement, gene doping blood doping, and performance-enhancing drugs are already on the sport policy agenda (see Jim Rupert podcast in this series on gene doping and the World Convention on Doping for example). However as many show no real consensus has been reached so far as to the broader issue of enhancement (3; 4; 8; 18; 22; 26; 32)
The enhancement capabilities that increasingly influence existing sport disciplines will very likely (given today’s social dynamics) lead to new sport disciplines where the athletes of a given new discipline are all bodily enhanced. They will impact global sport and athletes. They will impact the relationship and identity of the Olympics and Paralympics and their athletes, the self understanding of all athletes but in particular Paralympic and Olympic athletes and blur the line between Olympic and Paralympic athletes. They will increasingly change expectations of athletes, officials, spectators, sponsors and governments (34). They very likely will lead to a category of athletes who incorporate enhancements openly, who outperform the non-enhanced and who will have their own events competing against each other’s.
They will also lead to a new gap between athletes from high and low income countries. It is to be expected that most of the bodily assistive devices leading to enhancements will be out of reach of athletes and sporting agencies of low income countries.

The appearance and discourse around ‘therapeutic’ enhancement devices and the social concepts of transhumanism, ableism and the transhumanism of ableism poses challenges for the Canadian Strategy to increase numbers and quality of participation of disabled and non disabled people in sport, physical activity and recreation and for the realization of the objectives of the What Sport Can Do report (25), the Canadian Strategy on Ethical Conduct in Sport (7) and the London, Ontario Declaration Expectations for Fairness in Sport (12)

Enhancement, Sport and people with disabilities
People with disabilities are seen (for example by the former secretary general of the World Transhumanist Association) to play a key role in mainstreaming and increasing the acceptance of especially body techno enhancements (13; 32). The time is near were so called ‘therapeutic devices,’ generated to mimic species-typical body structures and expected body functioning will outperform in numerous functions the species-typical bodies giving rise to ‘therapeutic’ enhancements.
Human ‘therapeutic’ enhancements add a new quality to the endeavour of the redefinition of sport whereby the Paralympic athlete can be expected to be at the forefront of the redefinition. Donovan, Egger, Kapernick and Mendoza investigated in 2002 what might generate a climate of achieving Performance Enhancing Drug Compliance in Sport (10). They found that the likelihood of drug use is highest when (a) threat appraisal is low; (b) benefit appraisal is high; (c) personal morality is neutral; (d) perceived legitimacy of the laws and enforcement agency is low; (e) relevant reference groups are supportive of drug use and (f) high vulnerability on personality factors (e.g. low self-esteem, risk taker, pessimist).

If it is indeed correct that Paralympic athletes receive less support and recognition than Olympic athletes (6; 11) and if this problem is linked to a lower level of absolute performance of the Paralympic versus Olympic athletes which seems to be a valid assumption taking into account the dominant culture of competitiveness and if this problem is not rectified it can be assumed that Paralympic athletes will embrace ‘therapeutic’ enhancements as a means to close the social attention, respect and support gap and that none of the preventive factors identified by Donavan will be in existence. One can predict that enhancements done in the open and achieved through ‘therapeutic’ devices will be seen as highly beneficial and not immoral. Paralympic athletes will have a high support level in the relevant support groups and laws and regulations will be seen as having no legitimacy to prevent these kinds of enhancements. Indeed one can make an argument that Articles 4g-i and article 20, 25 and 26 of the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities make a strong case for the production, development of and access to therapeutic devices by people with disabilities even if they enhance.(35) Paralympic athletes might simply see bodily enhancements generated by ‘therapeutic devices‘(from bionics to wheelchairs) as equipments as tools, in the same way the non-disabled athletes see a bobsleigh as a tool. Using them for competitions might be seen as legit equipments that could be standardized or compared enough to allow for new sport disciplines such as bionic runners and wheelchair races. Furthermore the advances of these ‘new’ sport disciplines based on the ‘new’ abilities might develop outside of the Paralympic field with the involvement of Paralympic athletes under ‘lifestyle sports’. Meaning of these lifestyle sport activities for the participants is found in their creative and self actualization potential. (27) “Lifestyle Sports is about value intense experiences and the “inner” or “felt” body—not the commodified, astheticized, and disciplined body that many describe as symptomatic and expressive of contemporary consumer culture”. (27)

The story of the Paralympic 21-year-old South African double below-the-knee amputee athlete Oscar Pistorius (34) is only the first of many to come. Pistorius a Paralympic champion asked to be allowed to run in the Olympics, if he qualified for his country’s team. The world governing body for track and field, the IAAF, ruled on 14 January 2008 – invoking its rule 144.2 which deals with technical aids – ‘that Oscar Pistorius is ineligible to compete in the Beijing Olympics because his prosthetic racing legs give him a clear competitive advantage. (14; 21) Pistorius appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) questioning the judgment that his prosthetic racing legs give him a clear competitive advantage and that his so called Cheetah legs are a case of techno doping. In April 2008 the CAS ruled in his favour stating that not enough evidence exist to claim that his Cheetah legs give an unfair advantage.(2; 24; 30), allowing him to attempt to qualify for the South African Olympic team.

However there is more to the ruling than that. The ruling also indicated that one could exclude a runner with prostheses, including Pistorius, from competing in a ‘natural leg’ running event if it could be proven that the prostheses lead to an unfair advantage.

The CAS ruling also indicates that the body structure, as such cannot be used as a basis to justify the separation between different kinds of –lympics. It did not say that a ‘normal’ body is a prerequisite for being in the Olympics. It did not close off the possibility that Paralympic athletes with intrinsic enhancements or the ones who use external tool (bionics, wheelchairs and other similar add-ons) could obtain their own event within the Olympics.

This scenario would be similar to the case of other external tools such as a pole used in pole vaulting by species-typical body-normative athletes (34). Pole vaulting athletes do not compete against the high jumper but they gained their own event. The wheelchair and other external tools used by Paralympic athletes would be treated in the same way as poles and other external tools used by the species-typical body-normative athletes.

How do advances in science and technology fit with the ‘One World, One Dream’ slogan of the Beijing 2008 Olympic and Paralympic games, the Vancouver 2010 motto of glowing hearts/Des plus brillants exploits and the values and themes of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and Paralympiad? Do they strengthen the ideas behind mottos, values and themes or do they threaten them? How can one support the first and minimize the second?

One can already see various athletes with his type of the same type of prostheses as Pistorius wears elsewhere and there are futuristic advertisements by mainstream companies, which articulate this new vision of ability.(20) For instance, in 2008 ESPN sports magazine ran a cover story highlighting ‘bionic’ athletes, highlighting ‘bionic’ athletes from different sport disciplines.(1) We can expect the future to consist of tighter integration between the prostheses and the remaining body. Neuro interfaces (29) and Bluetooth technology enabled legs(23) are just two areas in development. Many add-on devices that integrate with the body will become available for athletes without and with a ‘normal’ body. External tools used by Para-lympic athletes such as wheelchairs already out-perform the normal body with more to come. So called able-bodied people are already part of wheelchair basketball teams, which consist of mainly ‘as impaired’ classified athletes.(16)

This dynamic around internal and external enhancements leaves us with two options as a society, as spectators.

The first scenario involves a continued appreciation of elite performances and neglect of people who simply try their best within their limitations, meaning that we cherish absolute values such as who is the fastest. According to Dittmore, Mahoney and Andrew(9) the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) began to move away from funding mass participation and toward rewarding medal production in 1989 with the release of the Olympic Overview Report which stated, in part, "winning medals must always be the primary goal of the USOC”. (15) Dittmore, Mahoney and Andrew(9) highlighted that the USOC requiring starting 2004 member National Governing Bodies (NGBs) to present specific plans detailing how they plan to use financial resources from the USOC to increase their chances of winning Olympic medals.

We will therefore value the people who run the fastest – who would be the enhanced people – and devalue a person who simply tries their best with the body given to them and whose performance – statistically – is inferior to that of enhanced people. Such a position reflects the current system of sports appreciation. If we maintain this form of ableism, it will lead to the following: the increasing ability of new and emerging technologies to ‘improve’ and modify the human body (structure, function, abilities) beyond its species-typical boundaries will enable the transhumanization of ableism. By extension, such circumstances would lead to the transhumanization of the Olympics such that they become an arena for enhanced athletes (internal enhancements or external tools employed by ‘as impaired’ or ‘normal’-labelled athletes). In contrast, the Paralympics might be a forum for the unenhanced, the ‘impaired’ and ‘normal’ athletes who cannot compete against their enhanced counterparts. We would have the enhancement -lympics and the non-enhancement -lympics, with the majority of the spectators probably attending the former. The transhumanized form of ableism will not just be employed in sport for the excitement of the spectator. This sentiment will also trespass into the life of the spectator. People will have to use enhancements to be more competitive in a professional or educational setting. The rat race for ever-increasing abilities will continue with no end in sight.

The second scenario would involve humanity’s continued appreciation of the pursuit of excellence within whatever framework people find themselves. In this view, we would decide that the value of sport is not constituted wholly by those who have the highest level of cognitive and physical functioning, in absolute terms, but that sport is a celebration of personal bests. This version would require us to abolish ableism as described above. Instead, we would require a global shift in discourses on the governance of ableism and the privileging of abilities about the type of abilities we think are required in our society if we want to flourish as a species. In this context, it is necessary to ask whether a worthwhile life can be brought about by adding the newest gadget to the body for cognitive and physical enhancement. Alternatively, we might ask whether a good life is more likely to ensue through attention to how people relate to one another, on rewriting the social contract and increasing social cohesion. Which scenario fits best with the spirit of the –lympics, the Beijing and Vancouver motto and the values and themes of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and Paralympiad?

How can the ‘One World, One Dream’ vision of the Beijing 2008 Olympic and Paralympic games, the Vancouver 2010 motto of glowing hearts and the values and themes of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and Paralympiad be achieved in the context of ableism as exhibited today and its transhumanized version to come? Which scenario will fulfil the themes and values? What inspires and involves young people and what generates a positive legacy? Which scenario ensures honour and shares the values of the Olympic and Paralympic Games?

It is unrealistic to imagine that one can stop the development of enhancement products under scenario one. If one watches elite sport only because it involves the breaking of records, rather than sport simply being valued as extraordinary expressions of human struggle, then it will be necessary to consider the outcome of such extreme levels of competition.

The enhancement debate is not just a technical discussion to be dealt with through technical rules. It is a development that demands a broad public debate as to what people see as important about their culture, which abilities people consider to be important, and about the global impact of such transformations. It asks for a deep consideration of the governance of ableism and the privileging of certain abilities over others. Spectators will be required to rethink what they expect from athletes, life and each other. Athletes will need to reconsider what they expect from spectators, sport and life. If athletes use enhancements – not deceitfully but openly – this could have an impact on participation in sport at the grassroots, perhaps excluding some people because of the high cost of enhancements. Yet a further consideration is how enhancements become utilized outside sports. If the public modify themselves, then there is no reason why athletes should not be entitled to follow. In sum, our present assumptions about what is legitimate in sport and outside are currently in turmoil. New ways must be found to prevent a societal disaster looming because of the ever-increasing ability to modify the body beyond species-typical boundaries(5) and the increasing visibility of new social concepts such as transhumanism and the transhumanization of ableism,(31). All sport and athletes, at all levels, along with its broader practice community (coaches, spectators, administration and especially the youth of the world) should play a major role in shaping the vision for human futures that will inevitably come about.