Monday, April 04, 2005

Dear Friends:

With the help of my queer brother across the pond, Peter Tatchell of OutRage!, we've persuaded the UK doctor responsible for the content and listing in the General Practitioner's Notebook, to not only delete the term "gay bowel syndrome," but also to apologize to us, and all queers, for previously including it in their materials.

You may recall that we first sent letters to the GP Notebook editors back in December, which means it took them almost four months to expunge "gay bowel syndrome." Microsoft and Bloomsbury did its deleting in less time, but at least two deletions of this noxious phrase have come to pass, and for that, I'm grateful.

You'll also pardon the expression, but let's make sure this "gay bowel syndrome" sh-t never again appears in medical text or dictionaries as a legit disease, without a vigorous challenge.

It's fantastic to read the three listings below for the alleged gay syndrome using the GP Notebook's search engine, because they have nothing to do with the syndrome.

Best,
Michael
^^^




Forwarded Message:

Subj: THANKS - Bloomsbury, Microsoft delete "gay bowel syndrome" from Encarta
Date: 4/4/2005 1:19:03 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: peter@tatchell.freeserve.co.uk
To: MPetrelis@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)




Hi Michael,

Congratulations! You have won! Thanks for all your efforts.

I presume you received the email below from GP Notebook.

Best wishes, Peter



>Dear Michael and Peter

>Thanks to the advice from the both of you, we have deleted “Gay Bowel Syndrome” >from the GPnotebook website. We had not appreciated the offence that was caused by >this term and would like to apologise for this oversight. From a clinical >viewpoint the term has truly become obsolete with no English language medical >articles on the subject since 1997
>(Pubmed search, April 2005).

>Thank you again for your input and support for our medical database that has been >compiled over 12 years as a voluntary effort by a team of UK medics. We make our >work available free of charge to over 500,000 clients per month around the globe.

>Best wishes,

>Dr Damian Crowther

- - -


http://www.gpnotebook.co.uk/homepage.cfm


Pages with both "bowel" and "syndrome" in the title are:

irritable bowel syndrome

bacterial gastroenteritis and irritable bowel syndrome

gastroenteritis and irritable bowel syndrome
Total number of pages found: 3

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