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This paper reports on a study of the views and experiences of 21 sperm donors and five egg donors registered with UK DonorLink (UKDL), a voluntary DNA-based contact register established to facilitate contact between adults who wish to identify and locate others to whom they are genetically related following donor conception. Specifically, the paper examines donors’ reasons for searching for, or making information about themselves available to donor-conceived offspring. Their expectations of registration with UKDL, experiences of being registered and finally, the experiences of those who had contacted donor-conceived offspring and other genetic relatives are investigated. While most respondents reported largely positive experiences of registration, the study found significant issues relating to concerns about donation, DNA testing, possible linking with offspring and expectations of any relationship that might be established with offspring that have implications for support, mediation and counselling. Research that puts the experiences, perceptions and interests of gamete donors as the central focus of study is a relatively recent phenomenon. This study contributes to this debate and highlights directions for future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Experiences of autism-spectrum disorder are now increasingly studied by social scientists. Human-animal relations have also become a major focus of social inquiry in recent years. Examining horse-assisted therapy for autistic spectrum disorders, this is the first paper that brings these fields together. Drawing on participant observation and interviews at a UK horse therapy Centre, this article examines how staff and the parents of riders account for the successes and limitations of equine therapy. To the respondents, horses ‘open up’ autistic children and make possible interactions that seemed impossible before. Horses were regarded as facilitating the emergence of apparently social behaviours, which included eye contact, pointing, and speech. Three key explanations emerged for therapeutic success: the sensorial, embodied experience of riding the horse; the specific movements and rhythms of the horse; and, the ‘personality’ of the horse. Equine therapy can be regarded as enabling a form of multispecies intersubjectivity, with the resonance between rider and horse seeming to make possible a new attunement between humans. Practices of equine therapy, and perceptions of its efficacy, serve in turn to attune social scientists to a version of empathy constituted through lively and sensorial interactions, as opposed to one that is restricted to particular kinds of humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, the primary public health response to injecting drug use in the UK has been one of harm reduction. That is, reducing the harms associated with drug use without necessarily reducing consumption itself. Rooted in a post-Enlightenment idea of rationalism, interventions are premised on the rational individual who, given the right means, will choose to avoid harm. This lies in stark contrast to dominant addiction models that pervade popular images of the ‘out of control’ drug user, or worse, ‘junkie’. Whilst harm reduction has undoubtedly had vast successes, including challenging the otherwise pathologising and often stigmatising model of addiction, I argue that it has not gone far enough in addressing aspects of drug use that go beyond ‘rational’ and ‘human’ control. Drawing on my doctoral research with people who inject drugs, conducted in London, UK, this paper highlights the role of the injecting ‘event’, which far from being directed or controlled by a pre-defined individual or ‘body’ was composed by a fragile assemblage of bodies, human and nonhuman. Furthermore, in line with the ‘event’s’ heterogeneous and precarious make-up, multiple ways of ‘becoming’ through these events were possible. I look here at these ‘becomings’ as both stabilising and destabilising ways of being in the world, and argue that we need to pay closer attention to these events and what people are actually in the process of becoming in order to enact more accountable and ‘response-able’ harm reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The world in 2010 is a very different place to 1987 when Bhugra's paper on homophobia was published. Huge shifts have occurred in society's attitudes to gender, sex, sexuality and identity - notably by the internet, changes in HIV treatment, media representation of homosexuality and feminism and the role of women in society. This paper updates the literature review on homophobia revisiting society's assumptions about homosexuals. Changes are discussed in the context of definitions of homophobia, socio-cultural and politico-legal perspectives and homophobia and medicine. New current assumptions are drawn up and offered as a way of understanding both development and limitations - whilst there has been a reduction in the fear associated with gay men and women, discrimination remains. Newer issues such as internalised homophobia, globalisation and mainstream representations of homosexuality add complexity to this ongoing concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine why risk-based policy instruments have failed to improve the proportionality, effectiveness, and legitimacy of healthcare quality regulation in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Rather than trying to prevent all possible harms, risk-based approaches promise to rationalise and manage the inevitable limits of what regulation can hope to achieve by focusing regulatory standard-setting and enforcement activity on the highest priority risks, as determined through formal assessments of their probability and consequences. As such, risk-based approaches have been enthusiastically adopted by healthcare quality regulators over the last decade. However, by drawing on historical policy analysis and in-depth interviews with 15 high-level UK informants in 2013–2015, we identify a series of practical problems in using risk-based policy instruments for defining, assessing, and ensuring compliance with healthcare quality standards. Based on our analysis, we go on to consider why, despite a succession of failures, healthcare regulators remain committed to developing and using risk-based approaches. We conclude by identifying several preconditions for successful risk-based regulation: goals must be clear and trade-offs between them amenable to agreement; regulators must be able to reliably assess the probability and consequences of adverse outcomes; regulators must have a range of enforcement tools that can be deployed in proportion to risk; and there must be political tolerance for adverse outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Employment for people with learning difficulties is considered key to their social inclusion. This contradicts the perceived un-employability of people with learning difficulties that has been part of their social identities throughout their history hitherto. The national rate of employment for people with learning difficulties remains extremely low and has barely changed in the 20 years between 1990 and 2010. This paper investigates links between learning disabilities and employment, drawing on interview-based research. It analyses the quality of experience of the minority in employment to consider whether employment can serve the inclusive purpose expected of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent research study found that being more directly involved in medical abortion places greater demands on the nurses. The demands required by nurses working in abortion care may be increased by the stigma attached to such an antisocial action. This paper presents an application of stigma theory, as espoused by Goffman, based on a qualitative research study on abortion. It is argued that women attending for abortion are stigmatised and nurses, although 'wise', have an affiliate stigma through their close association with the procedure. It is proposed that the situation can be ameliorated by addressing stigma at policy, local and personal levels. Examples from other areas of practice are outlined for possible application to practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first of two articles based on small-scale empirical research involving several hundred Muslim university students in Britain that was conducted between December 2003 and April 2004. In this paper first I will explain how the data was collected: a written survey concentrating on the West/Muslim world dialectic, followed by in-depth interviews with some of the survey respondents. Second, I delineate three strategies undertaken by British Muslims to express their religio-political identities: turning away from Islam by assimilating entirely into British society; subscribing to a culturally transcendental form of Islam by arguing that British cultural outputs are alien and threatening to Islam; and accepting that Islam is practiced differently in different contexts, and that British Muslims must understand their religion in light of their context. Finally, I discuss competing claims on the students' political loyalty: from the Muslim ummah and the British state. Part II of the research to be published in the next issue of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs , Volume 25, Number 3, will present the major survey findings including students' views of the events of September 11, 2001 and the influence of these events on the lives of Muslims in Britain as well as an analysis of their views of the West/Muslim world dialectic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]