A Sea Of Red

This is one for the "unbelieveable" category.

SOUTH AFRICAN middle-distance sensation Caster Semenya was at the centre of an inquiry on Tuesday due to concerns about whether she is a male or female.

The 18-year-old has emerged in recent months as a top 800 metres runner, and won her semi-final in commanding fashion at Berlin's Olympic Stadium on Monday night, eliminating Kenya's Olympic champion Pamela Jelimo along the way.

But the South African's physique and powerful style have sparked speculation in recent months that she might not be entirely female. IAAF rules state that competitors must be entirely female to compete in women's races but some people are born with a mixture of chromosomes and display both male and female characteristics.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/gender ... 74978.html

It really isn't that unbelievable. It isn't as easy as looking to see if both reproductive organs are present. XYY syndrome occurs in 1/1000 male births, Turner syndrome (Gonadal dysgenesis) occurs in about 1/2500 female births, and Klinefelter's syndrome (males with an extra X) occurs in 1/500 (although it is not always expressed as a syndrome). Point being that living as a chromosomal mosaic, that is a mixture of male and female or more in different tissues, is really not that uncommon. So you can't't start karyotyping everyone because they could be a mosaic and you wouldn't know which cells to sample from. You certainly wouldn't do every cell line. It certainly is an interesting gray area.

I wasn't saying that the condition was unbelievable (or "unbelieveable" as a put it in my op). What was crazy about it was that they waited until the day before the World Championship final to try to make a ruling on this.

By the way, she was allowed to run and DESTROYED the field to win the race.

We need to run that same test on HMO







Sorry HMO - I just don't know that many people on this board other than RocketFan and I know he gets sick of my poking:)