I am relating a comment I made on Think Progressive. My comment responds to an article written by Zack Ford titled Publishers of anti-LGBT 'special report' doth protest too much. Once again McHugh's findings about post-operative adjustment of transsexuals are cited as a gold standard. Ya, fool's gold.

I focused on trans people versus the entire LGBT spectrum. I have been researching the Hopkins findings for about a year. McHugh took over the pioneering gender program at John's Hopking Medical School and promptly shut it down.

I was surprised to find that McHugh's data is based only on 22 people. I focus on this as it shows what I think are slipshod research techniques and overly broad conclusions based on a small sample size of patients who experienced GD about 50 years ago. More recent data from the Netherlands and centers of excellence in the United States runs totally opposite. I did not go into that. I wanted to stay on point in the Thing Progressive forum.

Here goes:

QuoteInsofar as the oft cited trans data of McHugh, from the Johns Hopkins transgender program, a total of 22 patients had reassignment surgery. This sampling is very small, yet is cited as some revelation and sweeping insights are drawn from this. During this same period several thousand individuals outside Hopkins program surgically transitioned. However, McHugh has hung his academic hat on this very small sample of individuals.

During an interview in the Netflix documentary Trinidad, Stanely Biber, a former MASH surgeon who developed modern sex change surgery in the United States, said the Hopkins surgeries were crude, to put it kindly. The supposed poor post-operative social adjustment that McHugh's claims likely reflects primitive surgical techniques, if that.

If this is McHugh's modus agendi, his insights should across the board be taken with a heavy grain of salt.

Medical science is not a weapon to be twisted into an attack on a group that someone despises for personal reasons.

Dr. Paul McHugh, who runs the gender program at Johns Hopkins, is rather infamous for his homophobia and transphobia.  Given his well-known views, whatever he may write on LGBT issues is likely to be nothing more than bigotry dressed up in pseudo-scientific language.  He is also famous for advising the Catholic church on LGBT issues (and it shows.)

I understand that there was some sort of gender program at Johns Hopkins, at least recently, since I know someone who was sent there for some sort of evaluation a few years ago as a condition of being allowed to transition.  Of course, the experience she described sounded more like conversion therapy than evaluation, but I believe it was billed as "gender" something.

I must say, though, I'm rather amazed to hear that Johns Hopkins has done any gender reassignment/confirmation surgeries, given McHugh's well-known attitudes. 

Thank you for standing up anywhere and everywhere for the truth and the reality of our experience.  My career was as an anesthesia provider and evaluating research is/was always part of being up to date clinically.  Your assertion is spot on while McHugh continues into irrelevancy.