Most people dread being the subject of interest for doctors, scientists, regulators, and lawyers. While we may joke about the arrogance of the medical profession and the aggressiveness of the legal field, both lie at the core of environmental public health. They are inseparable, sometimes complementary and other times in tension. The role of medicine and science in EPH is clear, but their relationship with law is often opaque. Yet in no other area of public health, from infectious and chronic (...) disease prevention to providing health care in underserved communities, is law so central as an instrument and partner. In this article we explore the relationship of law and science in the broader context of EPH, beginning with an overview of potential goals and challenges. We then offer three organizing principles that inform and guide the integration of law, science and policy in EPH. (shrink)

Most people dread being the subject of interest for doctors, scientists, regulators, and lawyers. While we may joke about the arrogance of the medical profession and the aggressiveness of the legal field, both lie at the core of environmental public health. They are inseparable, sometimes complementary and other times in tension. The role of medicine and science in EPH is clear, but their relationship with law is often opaque. Yet in no other area of public health, from infectious and chronic (...) disease prevention to providing health care in underserved communities, is law so central as an instrument and partner. In this article we explore the relationship of law and science in the broader context of EPH, beginning with an overview of potential goals and challenges. We then offer three organizing principles that inform and guide the integration of law, science and policy in EPH. (shrink)

An overview of the key debates in biomedical researchethics, presented through a wide-ranging selection of casestudies.

Researchers are pursuing various ways to synthesise human male and female gametes, which would be useful for people facing infertility. Some people are unable to conceive children with their partner because one of them is infertile in the sense of having an anatomical or physiological deficit. Other people—in same sex couples—may not be individually infertile but situationally infertile in relation to one another. Segers et al have described a pathway towards synthetic gametes that would rely on embryonic stem cells, rather (...) than somatic cells. This pathway would be advantageous, they say, for same-sex couples even though it would not offer those couples 50%–50% shared genetics in their children but only 50%–25%. It is unclear, however, why this approach should be preferred morally speaking since it represents a falling off from the kind of shared genetics in children that are functionally a gold standard in parents' expectations generally. Despite raising concerns about whether genetic relatedness is necessary or sufficient as a condition of parental interest in children, Segers et al cede the sociocultural importance of that standard. If so, same-sex couples seem entitled to press a case for some measure of research priority that would offer the same level of access to that social good as everyone else. (shrink)

Some commentators argue that conception signals the onset of human personhood and that moral responsibilities toward zygotic or embryonic persons begin at this point, not the least of which is to protect them from exposure to death. Critics of the conception threshold of personhood ask how it can be morally consistent to object to the embryo loss that occurs in fertility medicine and research but not object to the significant embryo loss that occurs through conception in vivo. Using that apparent (...) inconsistency as a starting point, they argue that if that embryo loss is tolerable as a way of conceiving children, it should be tolerable in fertility medicine and human embryonic research. Double-effect reasoning shows, by contrast, that conception in vivo is justified even if it involves the death of persons because the motives for wanting children are not inherently objectionable, because the embryo loss that occurs in unassisted conception is not the means by which successful conception occurs, and because the effect of having children is proportionate to the loss involved. A similar outcome holds true for in vitro fertilisation in fertility medicine but not for in vitro fertilisation for research involving human embryos. (shrink)

Arthur Caplan has argued that the presumptive naturalness, universality, and inevitability of aging are no obstacles to conceptualizing aging as a disease since those traits are themselves merely contingent. Moreover, aging lends itself to discussion in terms of diagnostic symptomatology and etiology. Is aging therefore a disease? I argue that aging need not be shown to be unnatural or a disease in order to make it the subject of biomedical interest. I suggest that rather than ask "Is aging a disease?", (...) the better point of philosophical departure would be to ask "Is aging objectionable such that its prevention and cure ought to be sought?". In this way, the moral issues at stake emerge more clearly. Chief among these issues are the potential results of curing aging and the implications for the prospect of meaningful human life without the de facto limitations that aging (and perhaps death) put upon it. A convincing argument that aging should be cured, therefore, would need to show that human significance warrants and possibly seeks such a cure and that the social costs of curing aging are morally acceptable. Keywords: aging, disease, cure, immortality CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

According to an almost axiomatic standard in bioethics, moral commitment should ground parents’ relationship with their children, rather than biogenetic relatedness. This standard has been used lately to express skepticism about extending existing assisted reproductive treatments (ARTs) to same‐sex couples and to research into novel fertility interventions for those couples, but this skepticism is misplaced on several grounds. As a matter of access and equity, same‐sex couples seem presumptively entitled to genetic relatedness to their children as far as possible both (...) in regard to existing ARTs and to novel ARTs under investigation. For those worried about the effects of trying to secure biogenetic relatedness for same‐sex couples, it may be noted that same‐sex couples will only ever be a fraction of the parents implicated in propping up “biologism,” as the expectation of biogenetic relatedness it is sometimes called. The cultural force of biologism would survive almost intact even if no same‐sex couples were ever to have genetically related children. It is therefore hard to see why same‐sex couples should forfeit aspirations to biogenetic relationships with their children or enjoy less subsidy for ARTs than the subsidy given to different‐sex couples. As matter of moral consistency, the full implications of the biologism critique have yet to be evaluated relative to different‐sex couples. (shrink)

Some commentators have criticized bioethics as failing to engage religion both as a matter of theory and practice. Bioethics should work toward understanding the influence of religion as it represents people's beliefs and practices, but bioethics should nevertheless observe limits in regard to religion as it does its normative work. Irreligious skepticism toward religious views about health, healthcare practices and institutions, and responses to biomedical innovations can yield important benefits to the field. Irreligious skepticism makes it possible to raise questions (...) that otherwise go unasked and to protect against the overreach of religion. In this sense, bioethics needs a vigorous irreligious outlook every bit as much as it needs descriptive understandings of religion. (shrink)

Developments in uterus transplant put assisted gestation within meaningful range of clinical success for women with uterine infertility who want to gestate children. Should this kind of transplantation prove routine and effective for those women, would there be any morally significant reason why men or transgender women should not be eligible for the same opportunity for gestation? Getting to the point of safe and effective uterus transplantation for those parties would require a focused line of research, over and above the (...) study of uterus transplantation for non-transgender women. Some commentators object to the idea that the state has any duty to sponsor research of this kind. They would limit all publicly-funded fertility research to sex-typical ways of having children, which they construe as the basis of reproductive rights. This objection has no force against privately-funded research, of course, and in any case not all social expenditures are responses to ‘rights’ properly speaking. Another possible objection raised against gestation by transgender women is that it could alter the social meaning of sexed bodies. This line of argument fails, however, to substantiate a meaningful objection to gestation by transgender women because social meanings of sexed bodies do not remain constant and because the change in this case would not elicit social effects significant enough to justify closing off gestation to transgender women as a class. (shrink)

Developments in uterus transplant put assisted gestation within meaningful range of clinical success for women with uterine infertility who want to gestate children. Should this kind of transplantation prove routine and effective for those women, would there be any morally significant reason why men or transgender women should not be eligible for the same opportunity for gestation? Getting to the point of safe and effective uterus transplantation for those parties would require a focused line of research, over and above the (...) study of uterus transplantation for non-transgender women. Some commentators object to the idea that the state has any duty to sponsor research of this kind. They would limit all publicly-funded fertility research to sex-typical ways of having children, which they construe as the basis of reproductive rights. This objection has no force against privately-funded research, of course, and in any case not all social expenditures are responses to ‘rights’ properly speaking. Another possible objection raised against gestation by transgender women is that it could alter the social meaning of sexed bodies. This line of argument fails, however, to substantiate a meaningful objection to gestation by transgender women because social meanings of sexed bodies do not remain constant and because the change in this case would not elicit social effects significant enough to justify closing off gestation to transgender women as a class. (shrink)

The Human Genome Project is an expensive, ambitious, and controversial attempt to locate and map every one of the approximately 100,000 genes in the human body. If it works, and we are able, for instance, to identify markers for genetic diseases long before they develop, who will have the right to obtain such information? What will be the consequences for health care, health insurance, employability, and research priorities? And, more broadly, how will attitudes toward human differences be affected, morally and (...) socially, by the setting of a genetic “standard”? The compatibility of individual rights and genetic fairness is challenged by the technological possibilities of the future, making it difficult to create an agenda for a “just genetics.” Beginning with an account of the utopian dreams and authoritarian tendencies of historical eugenics movements, this book’s nine essays probe the potential social uses and abuses of detailed genetic information. Lucid and wide-ranging, these contributions will interest bioethicists, legal scholars, and policy makers. Essays: “The Genome Project and the Meaning of Difference,” Timothy F. Murphy “Eugenics and the Human Genome Project: Is the Past Prologue?,” Daniel J. Kevles “Handle with Care: Race, Class, and Genetics,” Arthur L. Caplan “Public Choices and Private Choices: Legal Regulation of Genetic Testing,” Lori B. Andrews “Rules for Gene Banks: Protecting Privacy in the Genetics Age,” George J. Annas “Use of Genetic Information by Private Insurers,” Robert J. Pokorski “The Genome Project, Individual Differences, and Just Health Care,” Norman Daniels “Just Genetics: A Problem Agenda,” Leonard M. Fleck “Justice and the Limitations of Genetic Knowledge,” Marc A. Lappé. (shrink)

Some parents have taken steps to ensure that they have deaf children, a choice that contrasts with the interest that other parents have in enhancing the traits of their children. Julian Savulescu has argued that, morally speaking, parents have a duty to use assisted reproductive technologies to give their children the best opportunity of the best life. This view extends beyond that which is actually required of parents, which is only that they give children reasonable opportunities to form and act (...) on a conception of a life that is good for them. Does the selection of deaf children violate that responsibility? Morally speaking, parents should refrain from using assisted reproductive treatments or prenatal interventions in order to have a child with a disability. Deafness and other disabilities represent intrinsic disadvantages that cannot be offset by other advantages that families and society can offer to people. By the same token, neither should parents seek enhancements of intelligence or physical traits that would undercut intrinsic goods of human life in similar ways. These moral arguments do not, however, sustain the judgment that the law should necessarily interfere with parents' decisions in these matters, even if those choices are morally unwise. (shrink)

The term “ectogenesis” has been around for about a century now, and it is generally understood as the development of embryos and fetuses outside a uterus. In this sense, all in vitro fertilization is ectogenesis, but in vitro development can only proceed to a certain point, at which time human embryos are then either implanted in the attempt to achieve a pregnancy, frozen for that use in the future, used in research, or discarded.

Antinatalist commentators recommend that humanity bring itself to a close, on the theory that pain and suffering override the value of any possible life. Other commentators do not require the voluntary extinction of human beings, but they defend that outcome if people were to choose against having children. Against such views, Richard Kraut has defended a general moral obligation to people the future with human beings until the workings of the universe render such efforts impossible. Kraut advances this view on (...) the grounds that we are obliged to exercise beneficence toward others and on the grounds that the goods available in human lives are morally compelling. This account ultimately succeeds in making no more than a prima facie defense of human perpetuation because considerations of beneficence could override – in some cases probably should – override any duty to perpetuate human beings. While the goods of human life may be distinctive, they cannot serve as reason-giving in regard to their own perpetuation. Ironically, the exercise of beneficence may authorize the extinction of human beings, if it becomes possible to enhance the goods available to human descendants in a way that moves them away from human nature as now given. The defense of a morally obligatory and strictly human future remains elusive, even as it becomes morally desirable to work against Fateful Catastrophes, those human-caused events that threaten to extinguish existing lives already good and enriching for their bearers. (shrink)

Most advocates of biogenetic modification hope to amplify existing human traits in humans in order to increase the value of such traits as intelligence and resistance to disease. These advocates defend such enhancements as beneficial for the affected parties. By contrast, some commentators recommend certain biogenetic modifications to serve social goals. As Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu see things, human moral psychology is deficient relative to the most important risks facing humanity as a whole, including the prospect of Ultimate Harm, (...) the point at which worthwhile life is forever impossible on the planet. These risks can be mitigated, they say, by enhancing moral psychology in novel ways. Persson and Savulescu argue that some parents should modify the underlying biogenetics of their children's moral psychology, if such measures were safe and effective, but they admit these interventions may not decouple humanity from Ultimate Harm. Neither are these modifications the only options, they concede, for addressing risks to humanity. Even with these concessions, saving humanity from itself is a fairly poor reason to modify the moral psychology of children. In most ways, adults would be better candidates, morally speaking, for modifications of psychology. Even then, there is no direct link between morally enhanced human beings and the hoped-for effect of better protection from Ultimate Harm. Asserting a general duty of all to contribute to the avoidance of Ultimate Harm is a better moral strategy than intervening in the moral psychology of some, even though meeting that duty may involve substantial interference with the free exercise of one's interests. (shrink)

In this humane and graceful book, philosopher Timothy Murphy offers insight into our attempts--popular and academic, American and non-American, scientific and ...

The value of extending the human lifespan remains a key philosophical debate in bioethics. In building a case against the extension of the species-typical human life, Nicolas Agar considers the prospect of transforming human beings near the end of their lives into Galapagos tortoises, which would then live on decades longer. A central question at stake in this transformation is the persistence of human consciousness as a condition of the value of the transformation. Agar entertains the idea that consciousness could (...) persist in some measure, but he thinks little is to be gained from the transformation because the experiences available to tortoises pale in comparison to those available to human beings. Moreover, he thinks persisting human consciousness and values would degrade over time, being remade by tortoise needs and environment. The value available in the transformation would not, then, make the additional years of life desirable. Agar’s account does not, however, dispose of the tortoise transformation as a defensible preference. Some people might still want this kind of transformation for symbolic reasons, but it would probably be better that no continuing human consciousness persist, since that consciousness would be inexpressible as such. Even so, it is not irrational to prefer various kinds of lifespan extension even if they involve significant modifications to human consciousness and values. (shrink)

There are no technologies at the present time that would allow parents to select the sexual orientation of their children. But what if there were? Some commentators believe that parents should be able to use those techniques so long as they are effective and safe. Others believe that these techniques are unethical because of the dangers they pose to homosexual men and women in general. Both sides point to motives and consequences when trying to analyse the ethics of this question. (...) These arguments are reviewed, and it is concluded that opponents of these technologies have not shown good reason why the law or policy should override parental choice in this matter. In general, therefore, if technologies become available to choose the sexual orientation of children, parents should be allowed to use them, provided they are safe and disrupt no interest of the child. This use will, at the very least, protect homosexual children from parents who do not want them, but it will also allow parents who want homosexual children to make that choice as well. (shrink)

Some commentators argue that conception constitutes the onset of human personhood in a metaphysical sense. This threshold is usually invoked as the basis both for protecting zygotes and embryos from exposure to risks of death in clinical research and fertility medicine and for objecting to abortion, but it also has consequences for certain religious perspectives, including Catholicism whose doctrines directly engage questions of personhood and its meanings. Since more human zygotes and embryos are lost than survive to birth, conferral of (...) personhood on them would mean – for those believing in personal immortality – that these persons constitute the majority of people living immortally despite having had only the shortest of earthly lives. For those believing in resurrection, zygotes and embryos would also be restored to physical lives. These outcomes do not mean that conception cannot function as a metaphysical threshold of personhood, but this interpretation carries costs that others do not. For example, treating conception as a moral threshold of respect for human life in general, rather than as a metaphysical threshold of personhood, would obviate the prospect of the afterlife being populated in the main by persons who have never lived more than a few hours or days. (shrink)

One way to help ensure the future of human life on the planet is to reduce the total number of people alive, as a hedge against dangers to the environment. One commentator has proposed withdrawing government and insurance subsidies from all fertile people, to help reduce the number of births. Any proposal of this kind does not, however, offer a solution commensurate with current problems of resource use and carbon emissions. Closing off fertility medicine to some people – or even (...) to all – would have only negligible effects in environmental protection. Moreover, the proposal to withdraw financial subsidies from fertile people would have prejudicial effects on lesbian and gay people, who must always reach beyond their same-sex relationships for help in having children. It is, moreover, entirely unclear why some people turning to fertility medicine for help in having children should have to pay their own way even though they contribute to the pool of money available for government and insurance subsidies. Entitlements based on an alleged moral difference between the ‘fertile’ and the ‘infertile’ cannot support such a conclusion. (shrink)

The value of extending the human lifespan remains a key philosophical debate in bioethics. In building a case against the extension of the species-typical human life, Nicolas Agar considers the prospect of transforming human beings near the end of their lives into Galapagos tortoises, which would then live on decades longer. A central question at stake in this transformation is the persistence of human consciousness as a condition of the value of the transformation. Agar entertains the idea that consciousness could (...) persist in some measure, but he thinks little is to be gained from the transformation because the experiences available to tortoises pale in comparison to those available to human beings. Moreover, he thinks persisting human consciousness and values would degrade over time, being remade by tortoise needs and environment. The value available in the transformation would not, then, make the additional years of life desirable. Agar’s account does not, however, dispose of the tortoise transformation as a defensible preference. Some people might still want this kind of transformation for symbolic reasons, but it would probably be better that no human consciousness persist, since that consciousness would be inexpressible as such. Even so, it is not irrational to prefer various kinds of lifespan extension even if they involve significant modifications to human consciousness and values. (shrink)

Anja Karnein has suggested that because of the importance of respect for persons, law and policy should require some human embryos created in vitro to be available for adoption for a period of time. If no one comes forward to adopt the embryos during that time, they may be destroyed or used in research. This adoption option would increase the number of embryos available for couples looking for help in having children, but that effect is less important—Karnein argues—than the observance (...) of respect for human persons. As possible persons, she holds that embryos ought to be treated, as if they will become children, if only for a while. If enacted as a matter of law and policy, an ‘adoption option’ would wrongly interfere with the dispositional rights women and men ought to have over embryos they create in the course of trying to have children. Karnein's proposal would also deprive researchers of certainty that the embryos they create for research would actually be available that way, leading to increased burdens of time and money and maybe even to more embryos than would otherwise be produced. Karnein's analysis does not show, moreover, that any duty of rescue applies to embryos. No woman is required to adopt any embryo, which significantly undercuts the justification for an obligatory adoption period. (shrink)

Some commentators indirectly challenge the ethics of using synthetic gametes as a way for same-sex couples to have children with shared genetics. These commentators typically impose a moral burden of proof on same-sex couples they do not impose on opposite-sex couples in terms of their eligibility to have children. Other commentators directly raise objections to parenthood by same-sex couples on the grounds that it compromises the rights and/or welfare of children. Ironically, the prospect of synthetic gametes neutralises certain of these (...) objections, insofar as they would ensure that children have parents whom they can know as their genetic parents, which outcome is not always possible when same-sex couples involve third parties as the source of gametes or embryos. Not all commentators in bioethics throw the use of synthetic gametes into doubt as far as same-sex couples are concerned, but even these commentators put parenting by gay men and lesbians at the conclusion of an argument rather than presupposing parental legitimacy from the outset. Synthetic gametes do raise questions of ethics in regard to parenthood for gay men and lesbians, but these are largely questions of access and equity, not questions of parental fitness and/or child welfare. (shrink)

Should parents be able to select the sexual orientation of their children, if that were possible through prenatal interventions? _Ethics, Sexual Orientation, and Choices about Children_ reviews the history of this debate which started in the 1970s and has been invigorated by scientific reports about the origins of sexual orientation. This book describes the debate and offers an evaluation of key issues in parental rights, children's rights, and family welfare.

Anja Karnein has suggested that because of the importance of respect for persons, law and policy should require some human embryos created in vitro to be available for adoption for a period of time. If no one comes forward to adopt the embryos during that time, they may be destroyed (in the case of embryos left over from fertility medicine) or used in research (in the case of embryos created for that purpose or left over from fertility medicine). This adoption (...) option would increase the number of embryos available for couples looking for help in having children, but that effect is less important—Karnein argues—than the observance of respect for human persons. As possible persons, she holds that embryos ought to be treated, as if they will become children, if only for a while. If enacted as a matter of law and policy, an ‘adoption option’ would wrongly interfere with the dispositional rights women and men ought to have over embryos they create in the course of trying to have children. Karnein's proposal would also deprive researchers of certainty that the embryos they create for research would actually be available that way, leading to increased burdens of time and money and maybe even to more embryos than would otherwise be produced. Karnein's analysis does not show, moreover, that any duty of rescue applies to embryos. No woman is required to adopt any embryo, which significantly undercuts the justification for an obligatory adoption period. (shrink)

In many ways, we live in propitious times for gay and lesbian people. In 1996, the Supreme Court struck down Colorado law prohibiting any kind of protected status based on sexual orientation. In 2003, the Supreme Court held that states may not criminalize sexual conduct between consenting adults of the same sex in private, so long as no money changes hands. In 2010, the Congress repealed the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy that excluded openly gay men and lesbians from military (...) service. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down key elements of the Defense of Marriage Act that prohibited any federal recognition of same‐sex marriage. Most states do not allow same‐sex marriage, but more and more states are joining the fold. Likewise, most U.S. states do not forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation, but the number that does is increasing. Arguably, no other social minority has made as much legal progress in so short a time. Despite these advances, the story of gay and lesbian people and the law is not yet finished, and the meaning of homosexuality for bioethics is still being written too. Concerns about gay and lesbian people remain important to bioethics in key domains, especially in seeing to the conferral of optimal health care benefits and in sorting through the priorities and social effects of research. Progress in these domains still involves lifting certain burdens of medical and social misjudgments about same‐sex attraction. (shrink)

A commentary on “Time to Decriminalize HIV Status,” from the September‐October 2013 issue.

The nationally-famous advocate of physician-assisted suicide did not die by his own hand. Dr. Jack Kevorkian died the old-fashioned way in America: in a hospital, with multiple disorders undercutting his life. Kevorkian took up interest in assisted suicide early in his medical career, and he wanted prisoners on death row to volunteer for experiments just before their execution. Kevorkian saw individual consent as the wheel, axle, and grease for all decisions in these matters. He helped many people die, but it (...) is unclear what moral principle guided his decisions to say yes and no to requests for help in dying. His spree in helping people die came to an end, when he himself injected a man with a lethal substance. Because of his single-minded focus on the value of assisted suicide and experimentation before execution, he had little impact on the broader ethical analysis of assisted-suicide and the rights of prisoners. He leaves little legacy in ethics for the analysis of assisted-suicide or in vivo experimentation. (shrink)

Queer perspectives have typically emerged from sexual minorities as a way of repudiating flawed views of sexuality, mischaracterized relationships, and objectionable social treatment of people with atypical sexuality or gender expression. In this vein, one commentator offers a queer critique of the conceptualization of children in regard to their value for people's identities and relationships. According to this account, children are morally problematic given the values that make them desirable, their displacement of other beings and things entitled to moral protection, (...) not to mention the damaging environmental effects that follow in the wake of population growth. Objectionable views of children are said even to have colonized the view of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people who – with the enthusiastic endorsement of bioethics – increasingly turn to assisted reproductive treatments to have children. In the face of these outcomes, it is better – according to this account – that people reconsider their interest in children. This account is not, however, ultimately strong enough to override people's interest in having children, relative to the benefits they confer and relative to the benefits conferred on children themselves. It is certainly not strong enough to justify differential treatment of LGBT people in matters of assisted reproductive treatments. Environmental threats in the wake of population growth might be managed in ways other than devaluing children as such. Moreover, this account ultimately damages the interests of LGBT people in matters of access, equity, and children, which outcome is paradoxical, given the origins of queer perspectives as efforts to assert and defend the social interests of sexual and gender minorities. (shrink)

Gay Ethics is an anthology that addresses ethical questions involving key moral issues of today--sexual morality, outing, gay and lesbian marriages, military service, anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action policies, the moral significance of sexual orientation research, and the legacy of homophobia in health care. It focuses on these issues within the social context of the lives of gay men and lesbians and makes evident the ways in which ethics can and should be reclaimed to pursue the moral good for gay men (...) and lesbians. Gay Ethics is a timely book that illustrates the inadequacies of various moral arguments used in regard to homosexuality. This book reaches a new awareness for the standing and treatment of gay men and lesbians in society by moving beyond conventional philosophical analyses that focus exclusively on the morality of specific kinds of sexual acts, the nature of perversion, or the cogency of scientific accounts of the origins of homoeroticism. It raises pertinent questions about the meaning of sexuality for private and public life, civics, and science.Some of the issues covered: Sexual Morality Outing Same-Sex Marriage Military Service Anti-Discrimination Laws Affirmative Action Policy The Scientific Study of Sexual Orientation Bias in Psychoanalysis Homophobia in Health Care Gay Ethics presents a wide range of perspectives but remains united in the common purpose of illuminating moral arguments and social policies as they involve homosexuality. The chapters challenge social oppression in the military, civil rights, and the social conventions observed among gay men and lesbians themselves. This book is applicable to a broad range of academics working in gay and lesbian studies and because of its current content, is of interest to an educated lay public. It will be a standard reference point for future discussion of the matters it addresses. (shrink)

In the face of growing public sentiment that AIDS is getting more than its share of media attention, resources, and social indulgence, we do well to remember that HIV remains a highly lethal, communicable virus.