Physician Attitudes Toward Homosexuality and HIV: The PATHH-III Survey.

PurposeThe aims of this study were (1) to evaluate current physician attitudes toward homosexuality and homosexual, transgender, and HIV-positive individuals and (2) to compare current attitudes of those from prior surveys of the same population, the San Diego County medical community.MethodsAn online survey was conducted during November-December 2017 to assess general attitudes toward homosexuality and medically focused items that addressed homosexual orientation, transgender identity, and HIV. Responses were weighted for nonresponse. Predictors of stigma were assessed using generalized linear models. Trends across three surveys of the same population in 1982, 1999, and 2017 using common items were assessed using unweighted responses.ResultsOf 4418 eligible physicians, 491 (11.1%) responded (median age 55 years, 38% female and 8.7% gay or bisexual). Regarding admission to medical school, 1% opposed admitting a homosexual applicant, 2% a transgender applicant, and 5% an HIV-positive applicant. Regarding consultative referral to a pediatrician, 3% would discontinue referral to a homosexual pediatrician, 5% to a transgender pediatrician, and 10% to an HIV-positive pediatrician. Regarding discomfort treating patients, 7% reported discomfort treating homosexual patients, 22% transgender patients, and 13% HIV-positive patients. Earlier year of graduation from medical school, male gender, and heterosexual orientation were significant predictors of stigma-associated responses. Compared with the results from surveys in 1982 and 1999, the current results suggest substantively less stigma associated with homosexuality and HIV.ConclusionThere have been substantive declines over a 35-year period in the prevalence of stigmatizing attitudes toward sexual minorities and HIV-positive people among physician respondents in three survey waves of the San Diego County medical community

JUDICIAL ATTITUDES IN THE CUSTOMS-UNION CASE

The World Court decision of last September in the Austro-German Customs case has given rise in many quarters to an attack upon the Court itself. The criticism has not been based solely upon the eight-to-seven vote of the judges. We have too many one-man majorities in our own judiciary to find much concern there. But the alignment of nationalities from which the two groups of judges come has been the source of the greatest adverse comment. For it so happens that the majority, holding illegal the proposed Customs Union, was composed of judges many of whose nations were opposed to such a pact, while the minority included men from countries either favoring or indifferent to it. Thus, the critics conclude, the decision must not have been arrived at objectively; it must, on the contrary, have been the product of political prejudice and national loyalties

Elliott E. Cheatham: His Contributions to a Developing Sense of Professional Responsibility

It may not, after all, be difficult to be a nunc pro tunc prophet, but it takes real imagination to think of it. Hindsight is quite another matter; all of us are constantly explaining how a better decision years ago would have made for a happier world today. But to think in 1947 of assuming oneself to have been prophesying in 1897 as to what would be the state of affairs fifty years thence reveals an imaginative gift of some magnitude. Not only does it offer a sure-fire guaranty of accuracy of prediction, but also it dramatizes the fallibility of a genuine 1897 prophet who is operating in futuro and not nunc protunc. Elliott Cheatham, in a mischievous mood, made this all very clear over twenty years ago. Establishing himself at a point near the end of Queen Victoria\u27s reign, he proved beyond any reasonable doubt how incredible then would have been any prediction of what became the actualities of 1947. Not only that, but as recently as 1963 he had the temerity, with a certain engaging complacency, to glory both in his achievement and his technique in attaining it. But even Achilles is said to have had a weakness, and so it is with Professor Cheatham\u27s retroactive prophecies. Never, either in 1947 (as of 1897) or in 1963 (as of 1913), did he predict the position in esteem, admiration, and affection that he himself would occupy, come 1968

Phytochrome genes in higher plants: Structure,expression, and evolution

© 2006 Springer. All Rights Reserved. Phytochromes play critical roles in monitoring light quantity, quality, and periodicity in plants and they relay this photosensory information to a large number of signaling pathways that regulate plant growth and development. Given these complex functions, it is not surprising that the phytochrome apoproteins are encoded by small multigene families and that different forms of phytochrome regulate different aspects of photomorphogenesis. Over the course of the last decade, progress has been made in defining the number, molecular properties, and biological activities of the photoreceptors that constitute a plant R/FR sensing system. This chapter summarizes our current understanding of the structure of the genes that encode the phytochrome apoproteins (the PHY genes), the expression patterns of those genes, the nature of the phytochrome apoprotein family, and PHY gene evolution in seed plants. Phytochrome was discovered and its basic photochemical properties were first described through physiological studies of light-sensitive seed germination and photoperiodic effects on flowering (Borthwick, et al., 1948, Borthwick, et al., 1952). The pigment itself was initially isolated from extracts of dark-grown (etiolated) plant tissue in 1959 (Butler, et al., 1959), but it was not until much later that phytochrome was purified to homogeneity in an undegraded form (Vierstra and Quail, 1983). DNA sequences of gene and cDNA clones for oat etiolated-tissue spectroscopically in planta and purified in its native form, this dark-tissue phytochrome (now called phyA) remains the most completely biochemically and spectroscopically characterized form of the receptor. At various times throughout the first 40 years of the study of the abundant etiolated-tissue phytochrome, evidence for the presence and activity of additional forms of phytochrome, often referred to as green-tissue or light-stable phytochromes, was obtained. Initially, in physiological experiments, it was sometimes not possible to correlate specific in vivo phytochrome activities with the phytochrome provided the first complete descriptions of the apoprotein (Hershey et al., 1985). Because it accumulates to levels that permit it to be assayed known spectroscopic properties of the molecule. Later, direct evidence for multiple species of phytochrome in plants and in plant extracts was obtained using both spectroscopic and immunochemical methods (reviewed in Pratt, 1995). The molecular identities of these additional phytochrome forms were ultimately deduced from cDNA clones that were isolated by nucleic acid similarity to etiolated-tissue phytochrome sequences (Sharrock and Quail, 1989). More recently, analysis of a large number of complete and partial PHY gene or cDNA sequences from a broad sampling of plant phylogenetic groups and sequencing of several plant genomes have resulted in a much clearer and more general picture of what constitutes a higher plant R/FR photoreceptor family. It is likely that the major types of long-wavelength photosensing pigments have now been identified and the challenge that lies ahead is to understand how the signalling mechanisms, expression patterns, and interactions of these molecules contribute to plant responses to the R/FR environment. Extending the investigation of phytochrome gene families and their functions to additional angiosperm and gymnosperm genera will be an integral component of this effort and of our ability to utilize this growing understanding of phytochrome function to modify the agricultural properties of plants and to better understand the history of land plants