Posted on 05/05/2019 1:19:36 AM PDT by Pontiac
In 1979 Dr. Paul McHugh closed the sex-change clinic at Johns Hopkins. In the ’80s he testified against phony ‘recovered memories.’ He hasn’t given up the fight.
Paul McHugh, 87... A professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a tenacious skeptic of the crazes that periodically overtake his specialty, Dr. McHugh has often served as psychiatry’s most outspoken critic. Either he’s crazy, or all the other psychiatrists are.
The best-known, and most controversial, decision of his professional life is newly relevant—and recently reversed. In 1979, as psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he shut down the Gender Identity Clinic, which performed sex-change operations. In his view, the hospital had "wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it," as he wrote in 2004. In 2017 the clinic was reopened as the Center for Transgender Health, performing what it now calls "gender-affirming surgeries." Its medical-office coordinator, Mellissa Noyes, told me "the demand is massive."
snip
As department head, Dr. McHugh encouraged a colleague to conduct follow-up research on patients who had undergone sex-change operations.
Although most of the patients "were reasonably satisfied with the change, they hadn’t any improvement in any of their psychosocial issues that were the whole reason for doing it in the first place." Worse, some of the patients became "suicidal and depressed and regretful." There was not enough good evidence to determine before the fact which candidates for surgery would fall into either group. With no way to predict which patients would be hurt by the operations, Dr. McHugh decided he could not allow them to continue. He says shuttering the clinic was a matter of adhering to the Hippocratic Oath and the scientific obligation to ground conclusions in empirical evidence.
(Excerpt) Read more at tat.xbopp.com ...
Why did you identify this article as coming from Wall Street Journal (WSJ)?
That is where I found the article. But WSJ has a pay wall.
No fun feeling cynical. Reading Epictetus helps me.
Is it still cynicism if reality is such as it often is?
Has anyone ever linked homosexuality to a specific genetic mutation? If so I never read about it.
The only theory about the origin of homosexuality that I ever read that made sense to me was of a spike (large imbalance) in the mother’s hormone levels at a critical point in the pregnancy.
This hormone imbalance would alter the fetus’ brain wiring to find its own gender sexually desirable.
I haven’t read about this research in a long time. Apparently, it did not meet with political approval and get more funding.
Pretty sad that federal prison inmates get their problem teeth yanked out rather than the state paying for fillings or root canals and crowns but let one claim he/she is a she/he and taxpayers must foot the bill for hormones and “gender reassignment” surgery!
Thanks! Good article!
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