Why do some medical studies exclude gays, lesbians?
Perhaps an institutional bias from the historically conservative medical establishment? Or maybe some researchers believe gay men do not suffer from erectile dysfunction? A few years ago there was controversy over the blanket exclusion of minority's and women from many studies, for instance heart medications.
D.H.
MILWAUKEE - A small but significant portion of medical studies exclude gays from participating, sometimes without an apparent scientific reason, several cancer researchers say.
In a letter in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, three scientists from the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia cite several dozen studies requiring a participant to be "in a reciprocal relationship with a person of the opposite sex."
There are legitimate scientific reasons for excluding gays from certain studies. Scientists would want only heterosexuals if they were studying how HIV spreads during male-female sex, for example.
But the Fox Chase folks found cases where the reason for excluding gays is not clear: tests of a drug for attention-deficit disorder, a treatment for erection problems after prostate cancer surgery, and studies on sexual function related to diabetes, depression and benign enlargement of the prostate as men age.
Brian Egleston, a biostatistician at Fox Chase, made the observation while overseeing enrolment of patients into clinical trials at the cancer centre.
"When I first saw this, I thought it was a fluke. The second time, I thought I'd dig deeper," he said.
Egleston and Roland Dunbrack Jr., a biologist, and Dr. Michael J. Hall, a medical oncologist, did a spot check of a government database of thousands of studies and turned up more examples, most of them private-industry trials.
Researchers seeking federal money for their work must explain why a study excludes a group based on gender, race or ethnicity, but no explanation is needed for exclusion based on sexual orientation, Egleston said.
Exclusion can become self-perpetuating: Researchers designing a study often "cut and paste" participation criteria from earlier trials on a similar subject.
"It becomes the way it's done," and any bias gets repeated, Egleston said.
Estimates of how much of the U.S. population is gay or bisexual vary widely; some polls have put it around 4 per cent.
Source CBC News
On the Net:
Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org
A restaurant in a northwest suburb of Adelaide, Australia that refused a blind man entry because it thought his guide dog was "gay" was ordered by the Equal Opportunity Tribunal to pay him $1,500, The (Adelaide) Sunday Mail.
Ian Jolly, 57, was barred from dining at the Thai Spice restaurant in May 2009 after a staff member mistook his guide dog Nudge for a "gay dog," a tribunal heard this week.
A statement given by restaurant owners Hong Hoa Thi To and Anh Hoang Le said one of the restaurant's waiters said that Jolly's partner Ms. Chris Lawrence stated "she wanted to bring a gay dog into the restaurant."
Jolly and Lawrence were refused entry to the restaurant -- which displays a "guide dogs welcome" sign -- even after providing staff with a guide dogs fact card.
At an Equal Opportunity Tribunal conciliation hearing Friday, the restaurant agreed to provide Jolly with a written apology and attend an Equal Opportunity education course, in addition to paying him $1,500.
"The staff genuinely believed that Nudge was an ordinary pet dog which had been desexed to become a gay dog," a statement from the hearing said.
Jolly said while he was happy with the result, the embarrassing incident had dampened his enthusiasm for eating out at restaurants. "It gives you some comfort that Equal Opportunity is there," he said.
"But I always have that fear now, when I go out.
"I just want to be like everybody else and be able to go out for dinner, to be left alone and just enjoy a meal."
Thai Spice refused to speak to the Sunday Mail when contacted for comment.
Source: The (Adelaide) Sunday Mail
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A hotel near Brentwood, Tennessee has abruptly closed after being sold at auction for $9 million. Employees and guests at the Holiday Inn on Old Hickory Boulevard, near Franklin Pike Circle, were kicked out on Thursday. The hotel’s new owner is Matrix Hospitality Group in New Orleans. The hotel was owned by Tarun Surti, who recently lost a discrimination lawsuit that alleged that he’d fired employees because they were gay. Those workers were awarded $2 million in damages but have yet to collect any money. The Holiday Inn was sold at auction on May 29 in Nashville.
The adamantly heterosexual dating website, E-Harmony which has accepted only male-female couples since its inception in 2000, has launched a gay matchmaking service called Compatible Partners (
It's not a comfortable fit for EHarmony's founder, Neil Clark Warren, who based the original service -- which requires applicants to fill out lengthy questionnaires -- on his own practice as a psychologist. "It's what I did for 40 years," said Warren, 74, who is retired but remains on the board. "I never had a gay couple."
The 
That this kind of discrimination is still legal in Houston makes it more outrageous. A coalition of GLBT rights groups, including the Houston GLBT Political Caucus, the Houston Stonewall Young Democrats, the Harris County Impact Houston and 
