By Thomas Søbirk Petersen. The tennis world is in shock. Jannik Sinner, the men’s Number 1-ranked tennis player and winner of the two recent grand slams in tennis (the US Open 2024 and the Australian Open 2025), has received a three-month doping ban from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The ban was initiated on February […]
Category: sport
Smart mouthguards and contact sport: The data ethics dilemma
By Richard B. Gibson & Anna Nelson While concern about the long-term health consequences of head injuries obtained during rugby matches and training is not a new issue, it is one which has been garnering increased attention in recent years. In June 2024, researchers found that retired rugby players who had suffered multiple concussions had […]
Should we use AI to detect doping?
By Sebastian Jon Holmen, Thomas Søbirk Petersen and Jesper Ryberg. Artificial intelligence (AI) is now widely employed by both private and state actors to aid them in attaining their goals more efficiently. AI is, for example, already being employed to catch tax evaders and to identify persons at risk of developing certain types of cancer, […]
Sex, Drugs and Athletics: Should female athletes like Caster Semenya be required to take drugs to lower their performance levels?
By Sebastian Jon Holmen, Thomas Søbirk Petersen and Jesper Ryberg The South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya, former winner of two Olympic gold medals, recently participated in the 2022 World Athletics Championships. Semenya was permitted to run in the women’s 5,000m competition, where she did not qualify for the final. However, she was not allowed […]
Are the IAAF rules on women’s eligibility in middle distance running unethical?
By Sigmund Loland According to the Differences of Sex Development (DSD) Regulations of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), athletes with heightened testosterone levels are considered non-eligible in women’s middle distance running races. The case is contested by athletes, scientists, and bioethicists. In 2019, World and Olympic Champion South African middle distance runner Caster […]
Stopping kids heading the ball misses the goal
By David Shaw On the 16th of January it was reported that the Scottish Football Association is to ban children under the age of 12 from heading the ball at football training. The change is due to the results of a study published in 2019, which showed that death rates from neurodegenerative disease including dementia […]
Transwomen in elite women’s sport – clarifying the nuances of our approach
By Taryn Knox, Lynley Anderson, and Alison Heather Our paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics entitled Transwomen in elite sport: scientific and ethical considerations, along with the related posts on the Journal of Medical Ethics and British Journal of Sports Medicine blogs, have generated widespread debate around New Zealand and the rest of the […]
When ideology and physiology don’t align: transwomen in elite women’s sport
By Lynley C. Anderson, Alison Heather, Taryn Knox In recent years there has been a huge amount of media interest in the inclusion of elite transwomen athletes in the women’s division. Reasoned debate focuses on the delicate balance between the inclusion of transwomen based on “a fundamental human right for everyone to be recognized in […]
Limits of Informed Consent in United States Secondary Schools
By Nicholas Spangler & Zachary Winkelmann. The law for most US states require that individuals under the age of 18 must provide parental consent for medical services. For healthcare providers who work in secondary school settings, this would mean that every patient who walks in the door requesting services would need parental consent and child […]