Although there is clearly a need for evidenced‐based behavioral or biomedical prevention or treatment programs for suicide, substance abuse, and sexual health targeted to members of the LGBT population under the age of eighteen, few such programs exist, due in substantial part to limited research knowledge. Ambiguities in regulations that govern human subjects protections and the related inconsistencies in institutional review board (IRB) interpretations of regulatory language are the key reason for the lack of rigorous clinical trial evidence to support (...) treatment choices and prevention approaches to reducing health disparities for this population. Given the socially sensitive nature of suicide, substance abuse, and HIV and STI research in general and LGBT research specifically, in the absence of empirical data to guide their decisions, IRBs must often rely on subjective judgments of minimal risk, which can lead to overestimation of the magnitude and probability of psychological, social, and informational harms that might arise from LGBT youth participation in clinical trials. In addition, more than other youth, LGBT adolescents whose families are unaware of their sexual orientation or gender identity or whose families have victimized them on account of it may be reluctant to participate in studies that require guardian permission. This, in turn, intensifies problems of recruitment and unbiased sampling. However, many IRBs are reluctant to apply federal regulations permitting waiver of guardian permission under conditions in which such permission is clearly not “feasible” or “reasonable” to require. Consequently, many investigators have excluded LGBT individuals under eighteen years of age in health intervention research proposals because of anticipated or actual difficulties obtaining IRB approval. This situation is in conflict with current ethical discourse focusing on the right of youths to participate in trials that will protect them from receiving developmentally untested, inappropriate, and unsafe treatments. In this article, we describe these barriers and recommendations for providing LGBT youth safe and fair access to health research. (shrink)

Our goal in producing this special issue is to encourage our colleagues to incorporate topics related to LGBT populations into bioethics curricula and scholarship. Bioethics has only rarely examined the ways in which law and medicine have defined, regulated, and often oppressed sexual minorities. This is an error on the part of bioethics. 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. We feel that bioethics (...) has an obligation to discuss that history and to help us as a society take responsibility for it.We can address only a small number of topics in this special issue of the Hastings Center Report, and we selected topics we believe will stimulate discourse. Andrew Solomon offers an elegant overview of the challenges that bioethics faces in articulating a solid basis for LGBT rights. Timothy F. Murphy asks whether bioethics still faces issues related to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, given the deletion of homosexuality as a disease and the progress toward same‐sex marriage. Jamie Lindemann Nelson's essay addresses the search for identity for transgender persons and the role of science in that search. Two articles, those by Brendan S. Abel and by Jack Drescher and Jack Pula, take up the complex issue of medical treatment for children who reject their assigned birth gender. Celia B. Fisher and Brian Mustanski address the special challenges of engaging LGBT youth in research, balancing the need for better information about this vulnerable group against the existing restrictions on research involving children. Tia Powell and Edward Stein consider the merits of legal bans on psychotherapies intended to change sexual orientation, particularly in the light of current research on orientation. Mary Beth Foglia and Karen I. Fredricksen‐Goldsen highlight health disparities and resilience among LGBT older adults and then discuss the role of nonconscious bias in perpetuating disparities. Stephan Davis and Nancy Berlinger assess the challenges of access to care and health policy for transgender persons. Edward J. Callahan et al. tackle the ways in which diverse aspects of medicine should change to better incorporate the needs of LGBT patients, including through use of the electronic medical record, education of health professionals, and recruitment efforts for LGBT health professionals. Virginia Ashby Sharpe and Uchenna S. Uchendu describe multifaceted efforts within Veterans Administration facilities to create change for LGBT veterans across the largest integrated health care network in the United States. Lance Wahlert and Autumn Fiester find a mixed record in the use of case studies in teaching about LGBT issues. (shrink)

This paper argues that self-consciousness and associated psychic consciousness emerges as a consequence of a recursive selfdirecting on itself of the cognitive centre in the human brain. The neural mechanisms and circuits underlying self-consciousness appeared and developed during biological evolution as an adaptation that increased the fitness of our social ancestors, chances of their survival, and reproduction. These mechanisms/circuits strengthened the efficiency of individuals in various social relations, enabled separation of 'I' from 'he/she' or 'them' and the formation of firstand (...) higher-order theory of mind, stimulated development of complex, recursive language, facilitated forming temporary coalitions directed to achieve a particular goal, helped to establish social hierarchies, and increased coherence and cooperativity of a social group. The reciprocal reinforcement of the development of the neural network in the brain underlying self-consciousness and of the network of various social relations and aspects was a self-driving process, one of positive feedbacks abundant in anthropogenesis. (shrink)

According to Russell, the aim of education is three-fold: acquisition of the skills necessary for making life comfortable, to provide for the wise use of leisure by proper cultural growth and to cultivate the sense of citizenship. Russell argues that utility should not be the only aim of education. In addition to that, the humanistic elements of education are to be cultivated. He prefers to distinguish between ‘education of character’ and education in knowledge’. What he means is that the education (...) system must aim at eliciting in every boy and girl, the intrinsic quality that exists. Russell rejects the view that classics are ornamental and science is useful. The study of classics, he feels, will enable a man to become a full-fledged human being because they touch upon the aesthetic and spiritual dimensions of man. According to Russell, education should aim at broad cultivation of the mind leading to an awareness of man’s place and destiny in the society and the universe. (shrink)

In list-method directed forgetting, reexposure to forgotten List 1 items has been shown to reduce directed forgetting. proposed that reexposure to a few List 1 items only during a direct test of memory reinstates the entire List 1 episode. In the present experiments, part-list reexposure in the context of indirect as well as direct memory tests reduced directed forgetting. Directed forgetting was reduced when 50% or more of the items were reexposed, and was intact when only 25% were reexposed. Furthermore, (...) part-list reexposure appeared to reinstate only reexposed items-not the entire List 1 episode. (shrink)

Georgians' acquaintance with Islam was with the first Arab raids. From the first Muslim Arab domination, Georgians started to become Muslims with cultural interaction. Islam spread especially in Eastern Georgia during the time of Muslim Arabs, Seljuks and Mongols. The spread of Islam in Western Georgia started with the Ottomans. The Ottoman Empire's contact with Georgia begins with the conquest of Trabzon by Fatih Sultan Mehmed. When the Ottomans contacted the region, the geography of Georgia was divided into small kingdoms. (...) With the conquest of Trabzon, the Georgian border was reached and in 1479, Acaristan, Borcka and Maçahel surroundings joined the Ottoman lands. On the one hand, Sukhumi was captured from the north. Then, continuing to advance in the region, Yavuz Sultan Selim paid tribute to the Kingdom of Güryel and Imeret (Açıkbaş) in 1508 during his governorship of Trabzon. Thus, the Ottoman borders had reached beyond the Black Sea coast into Western Georgia. As a result of the increasing relations around Adjaria, which came under Ottoman rule, Islamization began to spread rapidly among the people. Contrary to what is claimed, the spread of Islam in the region did not spread from the ruling strata to the lower, but from the popular strata to the ruling strata. This process was surprisingly fast. In the process of Islamization, many mosques, masjids and schools were built in Adjara, especially with the help of the people. The foundations operating in the region and the mosques and masjids serving under them show that, contrary to the claims of Russian and Georgian historians, Islamization took place rapidly at the beginning of the 17th century in Adjara. In this process, many mosques, masjids and schools were built in the region. In this research, based on the numerous Hurufat records belonging to Adjara, Batumi, Gönye, Çürüksu and Maçahel, the Islamization process will be evaluated by making a social reading with the data obtained from the religious structures established in the rural settlements of the Adjara geography and their officials. Evaluations were made on the Islamization process in Adjara by making a social reading. (shrink)