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Prosthetic-Limbed Runner Disqualified from Olympic Games
contraba55 wrote with a link to an Engadget story on a sign of the postmodern times. Oscar Pistorius, a world-class sprinter, has been denied a shot at participating in the Olympics this year. He's a double-amputee, but he's not out because of his handicap; he's disqualified because he's faster than most sprinters. "The runner — who uses carbon-fiber, prosthetic feet — was reviewed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (or IAAF), a review which found the combination of man and machine to be too much for its purely human competitors. According to the IAAF report, the 'mechanical advantage of the blade in relation to the healthy ankle joint of an able bodied athlete is higher than 30-percent.' Additionally, Pistorius uses 25-percent less energy than average runners due to the artificial limbs, therefore giving him an unfair advantage on the track."
I bet he's kicking himself now
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
The runner wasn't disqualified. The artificial limbs he had been using were prohibited.
It's still possible for the runner to compete, so long as he does not use equipment that gives him an unfair advantage.
paintball
The 'blade' does look like a spring. When he's just walking around, one can see him bouncing up and donw a bit. So this seems reasonable. He might qualify if he used a different prosthetic technology. I just hope athletes don't start thinking about replacing their naturla legs to get 'a leg up'!
Well, it's not really "him" that's disqualified. I'm sure he's welcome to compete without the spring-legs. I don't say that to be glib, but heck, even a bicycle could be called an extension of yourself if you strapped it on. You have to draw the line.
Why is he being discriminated against?
People are not allowed to use technical assistance in competitions. You wouldn't let someone run the 100 meters with shoes with wheels and a gasoline engine, would you?
While the limbs this fellow is using are not as good as gasoline engines, they are still apparently better than natural limbs - an advantage other athletes can not overcome without amputating their legs.
It's the same logic used in regards to banning steroids - you shouldn't have to destroy your body to have a chance at winning.
paintball
I am a transhumanist--behind it all the way. Stories like this trivialize the serious nature of transhumanism. It's not about implanting a bike or something. It's about the relief of suffering, and the unlocking of our true abilities. Read Kurzweil's latest books. Go to Transworld or the Singularity Summit. Betterhumans.com is growing in quality. Sentientdevelopments.blogspot.com feature George Dvorsky, an experienced thinker and speaker. The wise atheists among us don't need to be told the obvious--that our disabled are quickly become our first transhumans. The real developments await.
He isn't disqualified because he is faster (he isn't faster than the fast guys) its because he is more efficient. What this means is that in a 400m race he has more energy coming down the last straight than the competition does which is clearly unfair.
The only real surprise is that he hadn't worked this out and competed at the 800m, 1500m or even the 5,000m as that efficiency would really pay off.
Its an artificial aid in the same was a drugs are or riding a bike would be. Its unfortunate for the chap but its the right decision, otherwise you might as well let Marion Jones back in with a terminator suit and a jet-pack.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The summary and the truth are far from the same....
He's not out because he's "too fast"
He's out because his specific prosthetic lower legs and feet have less wind resistance than normal legs, return WAY more energy per stride than normal legs, and offer him what amounts to a competitive advantage over other runners.
If he wants to compete, he's free to do so, just not with those specific prosthesis.
He can submit others to the Committee for acceptance all day long.
This is no different than the way the olympic committee judges the use of certain swimsuits, softball bats, or any other equipment in use during the Olympics.
It seems fairly straightforward to me. He has a mechanical advantage, due to strength and low weight of materials it seems, that is impossible for other athletes to compete against. I think it becomes more straightforward if you turn it around a bit. If I were to intentionally replace my legs with superior artificial constructs, with the specific intention of being a superior athletic competitor as such, I think everybody would be screaming and crying that I shouldn't be allowed to compete.
:P
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that this guy has been able to overcome such a tremendous disadvantage so effectively, but in the end it would unfortunately be both unfair and set a bad precedent to allow him to compete. Now, if he wants to handicap (oh the irony) himself by adding weight (?) to his artificial limbs and such to make them more closely approximate the mechanical characteristics of natural limbs, then I think it'd be fair game
And I can hold a conversation in complete darkness, or with my back turned, or pay attention to two people in completely different directions at the same time. Their communication isn't more advanced, just different.
Special olympics are for mentally disabled athletes.
He could however compete in the Paralympics which are geared towards physical disabilities such as amputees or blind people. They are held in the same year and same city as the regular olympics. The one catch with the paralympics is that because there are so many classifications disabilities they have to rotate through which type gets to compete each year. Think: you couldn't very well have someone missing a leg and a half swimming against someone only missing a foot. I can't remember exactly how many classifications of amputees there are but I think there are enough that an athlete might only get to compete in one Paralympics that falls into their particular condition.
I don't think having artificial legs is "cheating", though. He couldn't live a life close to normal without them. Because of a device he needs to live as well as he can, he's being blocked from his profession/hobby/avocation/whatever.
Using a mechanical device that provides an advantage over natural body parts is in fact cheating. The Olympics are not about what can be done by machines, it's about achieving the limits of the human body. When machines are involved, e.g. bicycling, they're a separate event unto themselves. We have devices that could hurl a discus farther than any human possibly could. But that's not what the Discus Throw is about, now is it?
Not that it really matters to the fundamental argument, but really, he does -not- need these particular legs to live a close to normal life. These are legs specifically designed for sprinting, not to let him walk around. He has other legs for that.
a chess tournament that banned players with hearing aids (seriously, WTF?)
I don't know anything about it, but I would wager that it's more about the fear that the hearing aid is actually a wireless speaker and they are receiving coaching. It is presumably a one-on-one chess tournament, and just like using mechanical devices in a foot race is cheating, so is using extra brains.
Though the policy is probably stupid, I'm sure there's a better way to ensure nobody gets remote coaching.
I'm not sure I like this trend of accusing anyone who has artificial replacements for body parts that don't work right of doing something naughty.
He isn't being accused of doing something "naughty". He isn't "accused" of anything. It's just a matter of fact assessment that his synthetic legs provide a mechanical advantage over human limbs, and that this is not what the Olympics are about.
"Naughty" would be if he were trying to somehow hide the fact that he was using performance-enhancing limbs, like athletes lie about using performance enhancing drugs. Maybe if cybernetics become more advanced, this will become an actual issue. In this case though he approached them openly and they said "um, no." It's not a value judgment of his character.
Personally I think this guy and his limbs are pretty awesome. But I also think that a competition about human performance should be about human performance.
The enemies of Democracy are
In fact, Bonds *does* wear a performance-enhancing mechanical device on his elbow, that not only allows him to lean over the plate but also locks his swing into a groove and provides some mechanical advantages.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Look at it another way. Consider glasses as a removable prosthetic (which they are - correcting a visual disability).
In sharpshooting competitions (which I've been in), you're allowed to compete even if you wear corrective lenses (I'm also a four-eyed "handicapable" person). This is largely because glasses and contacts provide vision that falls well within the range of the average human eye. No distinct advantage is provided by glasses (or contacts) other than allowing the myopic to see roughly as well as their peers can. Vision isn't the only deciding factor in who wins, but it's significant.
Lasig and other forms of eye surgery are now capable of providing vision (in some) that starts to reach into the upper ranges of human vision. This has caused some minor controversy in the sport, but most are not too concerned since it's a common procedure and can still easily be matched by anyone with pretty good vision.
Now what would happen if you took someone who had been blind, but given an operation that restored his sight? It would be uplifting to see such a person compete in a sport they had been previously incapable of competing in. Now what if that same operation involved bionic implants, no matter how simple or complicated, that gave him visual acuity that the very best "naturals" couldn't honestly beat? Even if his advantage was relatively minor, even if his story was so inspiring it made everyone want to cry, the ultimate outcome is that any specific competition he was a part of would be damaged due to one player having a distinctly unfair advantage, little different from allowing someone to use a scope (when others are not).
The Olympics is politically charged, utterly serious, and is full of athletes who devote a significant portion of their lifespan towards training for the opportunity to win. If the rules are all obeyed, they are guaranteed that no competitor will be physically superior to them except by the virtue of better genes or even more intense training. The day someone with a distinct man-made advantage enters the field, the nature of the game changes entirely - the basic measure of fairness is lost.
I'm always proud to see someone with a damaged body overcome their limitations (you know he didn't learn to run on those things overnight), and it's always invigorating to see technology find replacements that, even if limited in scope, surpass nature. But I don't believe that it serves the best interests of the Olympic Games to allow someone with a clear unnatural advantage to compete, no matter if it's their fault or not. Would it be a future track star's fault if his parents had chosen to have him genetically engineered to be a super-human runner?
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
First, why he uses prosthetics isn't the issue. It doesn't matter how you came across the advantage, or even *why*. An unfair advantage is unfair. When asthmatics started competing well in Biathalon, other competitors started coming down with asthma, and taking beta blockers to reduce attacks. And also slow the heart rate to improve shooting accuracy. Darned if those crazy asthmatics didn't ruin it for everyone else, huh? I wonder if an asthmatic can even compete any more, of if they need a lifetime record of their disease to get the IOC to accept them, Albuterol and all.
Second, while most anyone can get a set of limbs like this runner has, actually they can't without significant sacrifice, ie, amuptation. The IOC should, for the sake of decency, not permit that. Speed skaters only had to buy a pair of clapper skates - the barrier was either money or a willing supplier, neither of which was as expensive nor life-altering as amputation for sprinters. Cyclists go through this a lot, with new equipment and all. IIRC, the NBA may have banned a certain Nike sneaker because it assisted jumping too much. Yes, define 'too much'. the IOC has.
Now, if the running community can come up with a similar prosthesis designed for non-amputees that offers the same or nearly equal advantage, then the IOC has an interesting, but easy decision to make. No. The solution isn't to give everyone else some mechanical advantage. It's to resign ourselves to the reality that life is so unfair that a dual amputee needs to use a less effecient prosthetic to compete fairly. And that way lies so much trouble. It becomes some sad exercise in statistics, engineering, and the frustation of figuring out what 'fair' is.
We know fair doesn't include using drugs. And it may not even include using hypobaric chambers to enhance training, someday. It involves runners using the same basic equipment (their natural body, shoes available to all, etc).
I wish this guy could compete. No doubt he will go back and have the limbs redesigned to be more equal to natural limbs. Then he might get a fair shake from the IOC. I hope they let him compete on equal terms.
ps- If he got waxed by Olympic-caliber sprinters with the 'hot' limbs, that doesn't really change anything. It may be that he's not that good, but let him in and surely some runner will say they should be allowed to wear a prosthesis. And another. Chaos. Pure chaos.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.