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Comment by daheza | Hacker News Reader

The Electronic Sports League (ESL) has recently decided to start testing for drugs during its tournaments. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/after-adderall-scandal-espo... They will be using this list to test players http://list.wada-ama.org/

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The implications of testing for anabolic steroids for previously non-gender-segregated competition is worrying. Previously, a transitioning transgendered person could openly compete in an eSports tournament; steroid use was just irrelevant to what eSports measure.

I'm kind of surprised there isn't an exception for medically necessary use of substances on the list (at least, that I can find). Obviously, medically necessary drugs can still give you a advantage, but taking a substance your body would typically produce seems a reasonable exception. For example, trans men don't produce significant amounts of testosterone, so they need to take it both to transition and to be competitive.

That exception wouldn't technically cover trans women because we often take spironolactone to totally eliminate testosterone rather than because it's missing. Apparently, it's banned because it's used by athletes to hide their past usage of forbidden steroids.

There is such an exception. Straight from the horse's mouth:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/3gmog8/esl...

Thanks for posting that! I should have mentioned in my previous comment that a medical exemption doesn't completely solve the problem — some trans people have issues getting hormones through a doctor and buy it without a prescription.

Still, it's much better than nothing.

That's disgusting. I hope attention is called to it to boycott such groups.

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