Editors: Tia Powell and Mary Beth Foglia

Medicine and law have served in the past as society’s enforcement arm toward sexual minorities, in ways that robbed many people of their dignity. The field of bioethics has an obligation to discuss that history and to help us as a society take responsibility for it. The essays in this special report take up this call by exploring, among other things, the role of medicine in gender identity, the complexities of addressing gender dysphoria in children, constraints on conducting research on lesbian and gay youth, problems in the physician-patient relationship for lesbian and gay patients, and both the importance of trying to elicit information about a patient’s sexual orientation and the difficulty. Selected commentaries are available for free. To order the full report, please contact John Wiley & Sons customer support at 800-835-6770 or cs-journals@wiley.com.

 

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

The Time Is Now: Bioethics and LGBT Issues 

Tia Powell and Mary Beth Foglia

FOREWORD

Identity or Behavior: A Moral and Medical Basis for LGBTQ Rights

Andrew Solomon

ARTICLES

Are Gay and Lesbian People Fading into the History of Bioethics?

Timothy F. Murphy

Medicine and Making Sense of Queer Lives

Jamie Lindemann Nelson

Ethical Issues Raised by the Treatment of Gender-Variant Prepubescent Children

Jack Drescher and Jack Pula

Hormone Treatment of Children and Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria: An Ethical Analysis

Brendan S. Abel

Reducing Health Disparities and Enhancing the Responsible Conduct of Research Involving LGBT Youth

Celia B. Fisher and Brian Mustanski

Legal and Ethical Concerns about Sexual Orientation Change Efforts 

Tia Powell and Edward Stein

Health Disparities among LGBT Older Adults and the Role of Nonconscious Bias

Mary Beth Foglia and Karen I. Fredriksen Goldsen

Moral Progress in the Public Safety Net: Access for Transgender and LGB Patients

Stephan Davis and Nancy Berlinger

Eliminating LGBTQQI Health Disparities: The Associated Roles of Electronic Health Records and Institutional Culture

Edward J. Callahan, Shea Hazarian, Mark Yarborough, and John Paul Sánchez

Ensuring Appropriate Care of LGBT Veterans in the Veterans Health Administration

Virginia Ashby Sharpe and Uchenna S. Uchendu

Repaving the Road of Good Intentions: LGBT Health Care and the Queer Bioethical Lens

Lance Wahlert and Autumn Fiester