Olympics-Guide’s disabled descriptions to be amended

more here
one has to see whether the new language will be better

Oscar Pistorius: Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite

I’d be curious what readers think about the above video of bionic athlete Oscar Pistorius, obviously made before the most recent decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which Gregor Wolbring has discussed in earlier posts on the blog, including here. Anyone know where the video comes from? Who do you think the basic message is? What does it say about the Olympics? What does it mean to you? The thread for comments is open.

Nanotechnology, transhumanism and the bionic man

this piece by nanowerk explains a lot of my reasoning quite nicely

more hereTechnorati Tags: Ableism, nano, health, bionics, Pistorius, Wolbring Sports

What sort of Olympics Paralympics: Beijing Olympics guide on Paralympians

DISABLED people can be unsocial, stubborn, controlling, and defensive according to an official Beijing Olympics guide.  The Olympic manual for volunteers in Beijing is peppered with patronising comments, noting for example that physically disabled people are “often” mentally healthy……
more hereTechnorati Tags: Beijing, Olympics, Paralympics, Sports, Perception, Disability, Stigmatization

Pistorius decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sports

see here for the Court of Arbitration for Sports decision
and here the press release

My two main thoughts after reading the ruling and the press release are

1) The ruling I assume will be interpreted to be a ruling against the scientific data claiming that the cheetah legs lead to an unfair advantage. The ruling leaves the door open that one could exclude a runner with prosthetics from competing in a ‘natural leg’ running event if it can be proven that the ‘artificial’ legs lead to an unfair advantage.
This makes sense . So far the process of investigating theses new ‘artificial’ legs is not developed enough to be called a golden standard so its open for interpretations. Once tests are developed that are accepted as the golden standard and they show an unfair advantage one can see that that runner won’t be allowed to run against the ‘biological leg’ runners.

2) However the ruling seems to give the answer to another question. Are the Olympics about athletes who have a body adhering to the norm of the homo sapient species? In other words is the Olympics about athletes with a ‘normal biological body’? The ruling cements the view that the Olympics are not about biological bodies per se. So one can compete in the Olympics independent of whether certain biological parts are replaced by artificial parts.
If the replacement does not lead to a competitive advantage athletes with artificial body parts can compete against athletes where the body part in question is biological and not artificial.
If the replacement does leads to a competitive advantage one could see the ruling opening the door for the scenario where the athletes with artificial body parts compete against each others in the Olympics
whereby the artificial body parts are treated like a pole used in pole vaulting…
Cheers
Gregor

Double-amputee sprinter can pursue Olympic dream: ruling

In a unanimous ruling, the Court of Arbitration for Sport announced Friday that double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius will have a chance to represent South Africa at the Beijing Olympics this summer.
more here