Letters: The male vs. female athletes debate — biologically better, or just biologically different?

Biologically better athletes, or just biologically different?

Re: “Level the playing field?” July 23 commentary

Put a female athlete side by side with a male athlete of the same age, height and weight. Because of sex differences, the male will have a larger heart, greater lung capacity, greater muscle mass, more red blood cells, and less body fat, all of which give males performance advantages over females. These differences are obvious to most people, which is why most people believe it’s unfair and perhaps unsafe for men to compete against women in sports.

Many sports maintain restricted categories based on weight or age differences, such as separating welterweights from heavyweights, and seniors from juniors. But why should females have a restricted category just because their bodies are different than males?

Make girls compete with boys from the very start, as opinion editor Megan Schrader suggests, so girls never see themselves as different than boys. When they can’t perform at the same levels, maybe girls will believe it’s their own fault for not trying harder. Should we believe inequality can be easily solved if we just deny that it matters to be female?

Lisa Jones, Denver

Megan Schrader clearly is suffering from an acute case of chromosome anxiety, obviously distraught.

I never “gleefully extol” nor “harp on” the simple fact that when taken as a whole, males are genetically and biologically better athletes than females. When engaged in a conversation about the inherent and obvious advantage of men vs. women in athletics, I affirm that’s my belief. I don’t celebrate, laud, or high-five it.

And implied with that belief is that some females are individually superior athletes than some men. I don’t sing the praises of that either. Why? Because both notions fall under the “so what/who cares?” umbrella, so mundane and self-evident as to be unworthy of consideration. But I was curious about what brought her to this wordy position. It only took 28 paragraphs for the reveal. “Women need less consternation about the very few transgender women who happen to also be elite athletes …” Boom. There it is.

I’m looking forward to her take on whether biological men and boys, the x and y chromosome crew, should compete against the xx humans.

Never mind. I think I know it.

Jon Pitt, Golden

Mainstream GOP is still Trump-enabling

Re: “Colorado GOP leaders prepared to cheat to cancel the 2024 primary,” July 23 commentary

Krista Kafer’s piece on Colorado GOP leaders cheating (no surprise there) is insightful because she gets the big picture and sees that the GOP train is heading for the cliff. But Kafer is delusional in that she several times tries to differentiate the “mainstream GOP” from the MAGA zealots.

Sorry Krista, the polls clearly show that the mainstream GOP is pure Trumpism. Even the second leading candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is trying to out-Trump Donald Trump.

Dan MacInnis, Lakewood

Be snide about politics, but not true health concerns

You know, it is OK to be a bit snide about a Democratic caucus. I could probably think of many ways to snipe at Republican caucuses, but I will refrain.

There are so many ways to mock our opposing parties, but please stop mocking masking. It will save the lives of medically fragile people– transplant patients, those undergoing chemo and many other vulnerabilities.

It may not be COVID but it could be a summer cold or a norovirus. And when fall comes, you can probably put back risks of COVID, flu and RSV. Assume when you see a mask that that wearer is either protecting himself or herself or someone he or she loves.

Judith Pettibone, Denver

Climate crisis is what they lobbied for

Re: “Scientists say those numbers paint the story of a warming world,” July 23 news story

I’m tired of reading articles on weather disasters like in Sunday’s paper. Nowhere in these articles are informative references regarding accountability or transparency for the fine mess confronting humanity. The largest owner of CO2 gases is this country, the United States. And it was business and industry lobbies, along with chambers of commerce, that gave hundreds of millions in political donations over decades to Republican politicians to ensure that the American public remains bewildered and fails to mobilize against this existential threat to humans. Thank you, Republican Party and America’s business leaders.

Steve Morrow, Denver

Fossil-fuel workers should reap benefits of energy innovation

Re: “Fossil fuel workers could be left behind,” July 23 business story

Many fossil fuel workers will be left behind unless we anticipate and address their needs! We know large-scale loss of traditional jobs is inevitable as fossil fuel consumption inevitably declines. The article offers a clear picture of the impact of job loss on a single skilled worker, reduced to a third of her previous income.

Given the certainty that many workers will be displaced, we must, as a country, take responsibility for the long-term impact of job losses through the phasing out of fossil fuels. Appalachia is a good example of our past failure to support “obsolete” workers and their families.

People whose lives depend on wages, be they day laborers or high-tech wage earners, must demand that our representatives pay as much attention to the needs of working people as they do to the demands of big corporations and the wealthy, who can care for themselves.

We will need policies and programs that recognize that not every worker will be a viable candidate for retraining, that there have to be living wage jobs for the retrainees, and that not every displaced worker will have the resources to move across the country for a job. For some people, we need to be prepared to provide long-term economic support.

Is doing right by displaced workers too big of a challenge? What is the alternative if we accept politics as usual?

Richard Parsons, Pine

Profiting off of our illness, aging

Re: “Drugmakers: Pricing battles taken to courts,” July 23 news story

Listening to the hubris of big Pharma in its lamentations against negotiating Medicare drug prices is reminiscent of the rhetoric of the robber barons of the 1890s. Similarly, they decried regulatory intervention against child labor, monopolistic trade practices, and any other regulations that attempted to “level the playing field” from monopolies. While the actors may have changed, the issues remain the same in a society that is dominated by a monolithic corporate culture. For that matter, when did the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ever support any legislation that benefited consumers?

Drug prices in the United States are among the highest in the world and big Pharma wants to keep it that way. From 1999-2018, the pharmaceutical and health care industry spent $4.7 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions. Medicare is a “cash cow” for them and they don’t want that disturbed by consumers, insurance companies, or the federal government. Medicare is not some obscure government program. It provides medical services to me and other citizens. The federal government has the mandate and obligation to maximize the benefit it receives for the program’s beneficiaries.

It is incredulous that Big Pharma is perpetuating obtuse constitutional arguments and federal “judge shopping” to avoid negotiating in “good faith.”

Mark Boyko, Parker

The U.S. is the only nation that places profiteering middlemen between patients and their doctors. Since the 1980s, health care has been treated as a profit center to be mined by private equity, hedge fund and insurance investors. Billions of taxpayer dollars annually are funneled to private Medicare Advantage insurers, who treat the Medicare Trust Fund as their personal cash cow. Medicare Advantage games the system by such tactics as fraudulent “upcoding” – portraying the insured as sicker than they are to milk larger payments. Preauthorization requirements for medical care result in delay and denial of health care, more profit-taking maneuvers.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) was written into the Affordable Care Act under the guise of testing new payment models, inviting investor-controlled interests to act as for-profit fiscal intermediaries between providers and patients. CMMI spawned the Trump administration DCE Program, which morphed into the Biden administration ACO REACH program, which has moved thousands of seniors, without their consent, out of traditional Medicare into private health plans run by insurance and Wall Street profiteers.

We need to demand that Washington halt the privatization of traditional Medicare – by ending Medicare Advantage fraud and reversing the ACO REACH program. Protecting the Medicare Trust Fund from the ravages of profiteering corporate middlemen would permit improving and expanding traditional Medicare into comprehensive, universal, sustainable health coverage extended to all ages. Call and write to tell our leaders: stop prioritizing Wall Street wealth – we need “health care” not “wealth care.”

Laura Avant and Michelle Swenson, Denver

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Source: Read Full Article