From LAT: X-rays could tell Chinese Olympic gymnasts’ ages, scientists say

This report appeared on the Science & Medicine section of LAT, which I appear to have subscribed. I love avoiding politics but, if sport is separated from politics, I might be allowed to talk about this a little.

The scientists cited in this report argued that ages can be easily pinpointed by forensic radiology:

Bones fuse together according to a well-documented schedule. For girls between the ages of 13 and 17, the best places to look are the knee, wrist, elbow and iliac crest on the pelvis, he said. The younger they are, the more obvious the evidence.

“A Caucasian girl is going to fuse her knee centers at about age 15; they’re going to fuse their iliac crest at about age 16; and part of the elbow will start fusing around 13 or 14,” he said. “That’s the way you do it.”

For the Chinese gymnasts, investigators would have to consult growth tables for Asian girls, Brogdon said.

Although confronted with some opposite opinion by other expert as

One complication with teenage girls is that strenuous exercise can suppress estrogen production, delaying bone development and making them appear to belong to a younger person, said Dr. Vicente Gilsanz, a professor of radiology and pediatrics at USC.

Brogdon still insisted that

But Brogdon said that by comparing multiple bones, “you could come pretty close” to distinguishing a 14-year-old from a 16-year-old.

More evidence can allegedly obtained from modern Odontology:

He [D. Senn] said he can pinpoint ages within 18 months using images of a person’s wisdom teeth, which start forming around age 9 and are not fully developed until around 19. For the Chinese gymnasts, Senn said, he would also look at their second molars, which grow until age 15 or so.

Finally, I think the most spicy sentence in this report is:

“If there is nothing to be afraid of, let their kids be X-rayed,” he said. “It’s almost incriminating if they don’t.”

Let’s reflect this issue with logic. IOC checks the gymnasts’ age by what shown from their passports, so China provided the ‘right’ passport for He Kexin. Therefore one should check the gymnasts’ age by what people can’t provide so easily, which is definitely not their passports, but others for example odontological evidences.

This suggestion should have been sent to IOC, and the latter should have revise its rules in the section of legal age of participants, and check all candidates of gymnastics with their teeth and bones for validity, rather than ages shown on their passports. Imaginably under the new rule some candidates may have been brushed off because of their bone condition even if their passports show 16-above ages.

Therefore China may then have chosen girls with the right teeth and bones instead of passports for a gold medal, if it is teeth and bones that concerns. And maybe another ‘He Kexin’ with perfect odontological condition but shown 14 only according to her passport may have been allowed on the uneven bars. Obviously this sounds more imaginable than feasible.

So why not both passports and bones should be checked together? Because letting the odontological perfect ‘He Kexin’ also be perfect in passport seems much less easier for China.

If China is deemed ‘always lying’, there is no hope that any kind of regulation could help it out of guilty. Sending He Kexin for X-ray study may not help much because the results may still be fabricated or manipulated by China. Even if it is not, new techniques besides forensic radiology/odontology that can ‘pinpoint ages’ within smaller range of error will keep being suggested by scientists like those in this LAT reports. And China should send He Kexin for all these up-coming tests successively. If not, it is still ‘almost incriminating’.

And I’m pretty sure the problem is not with the rule of IOC which is somewhat omissive, but the honesty of a nation which is deemed somewhat lacking. The problem is not whom the gold medal of female uneven bar should belong to – it belongs to China according to IOC and He Kexin’s passport – but whether China have manipulated, if not fabricated, the legal fact of her age, a problem of ethics, and, because of onus probandi and the infinitive suggestion of new sources of evidence possible, a problem that set China in an endless suspect. China may still reserve one of its 51 golds which it wants, but lose the ethical acknowledgment globally, which it wants more.