Posted on April 05, 2017
Source: The Washington Post
"Nearly four decades after he derailed a pioneering transgender program at Johns Hopkins Hospital with his views on 'guilt-ridden homosexual men,' psychiatrist Paul McHugh is seeing his institution come full circle with the resumption of gender-reassignment surgeries.
McHugh, the hospital’s chief of psychiatry from 1975 to 2001, still believes that being transgender is largely a psychological problem, not a biological phenomenon. And with the title of university distinguished service professor at Johns Hopkins Medicine, he continues to wield enormous influence in certain circles and is quoted frequently on gender issues in conservative media.
'I’m not against transgender people,' he said recently, stressing that he is 'anxious they get the help they need.' But such help should be psychiatric rather than surgical, he maintains.
Hopkins, however, is moving beyond McHugh. This summer, it will formally open a transgender health service and will resume, after a 38-year hiatus, an accompanying surgical program."
