Hurdling over sex? Sport, science, and equity.

Between 1968 and 1999, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) required all female athletes to undergo genetic testing as part of its sex verification policy, under the assumption that it needed to prevent men from impersonating women and competing in female-only events. After critics convinced officials that genetic testing was scientifically and ethically flawed for this purpose, the IOC replaced the policy in 1999 with a system allowing for medical evaluations of an athlete's sex only in cases of "reasonable suspicion," but this system also created injustice for athletes and stoked international controversies. In 2011, the IOC adopted a new policy on female hyperandrogenism, which established an upper hormonal limit for athletes eligible to compete in women's sporting events. This new policy, however, still leaves important medical and ethical issues unaddressed. We review the history of sex verification policies and make specific recommendations on ways to improve justice for athletes within the bounds of the current hyperandrogenism policy, including suggestions to clarify the purpose of the policy, to ensure privacy and confidentiality, to gain informed consent, to promote psychological health, and to deploy equitable administration and eligibility standards for male and female athletes.

The Growing Regulation of Conversion Therapy.

Conversion therapies are any treatments, including individual talk therapy, behavioral (e.g. aversive stimuli), group therapy or milieu (e.g. "retreats or inpatient treatments" relying on all of the above methods) treatments, which attempt to change an individual's sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. However these practices have been repudiated by major mental health organizations because of increasing evidence that they are ineffective and may cause harm to patients and their families who fail to change. At present, California, New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois, Washington, DC, and the Canadian Province of Ontario have passed legislation banning conversion therapy for minors and an increasing number of US States are considering similar bans. In April 2015, the Obama administration also called for a ban on conversion therapies for minors. The growing trend toward banning conversion therapies creates challenges for licensing boards and ethics committees, most of which are unfamiliar with the issues raised by complaints against conversion therapists. This paper reviews the history of conversion therapy practices as well as clinical, ethical and research issues they raise. With this information, state licensing boards, ethics committees and other regulatory bodies will be better able to adjudicate complaints from members of the public who have been exposed to conversion therapies.