A for effort, but unfortunately none of the studies you quoted are scientific. A survey is not science. A scientific approach would be studying people who had this surgery for years or decades afterwards, how many were still clinically depressed, how many had committed suicide, that type of thing.
Meyer was the head of the Sexual Behaviors clinic at Johns Hopkins. You are suggesting he would have come up with fraudulent data to support McHugh’s efforts to shut down the sex change facility there, a very serious charge indeed (with no evidence to back it up). The value of the Meyer study is it is long term as Johns Hopkins had been doing the surgeries since the early 60s. The program was started by Dr. John Money, the champion of “harmless” pedophiles, who just were just in mutual love with their child victims, and not at all sadistic. Most of the studies that are favorable that you posted above were done after a year, and basically asked people if you look in the mirror do you like what you see. They are no more scientific than my going out and interviewing a bunch of lads coming out of the pub on a Saturday night. Not to mention the fact that controls used in every other field of study were not followed, and more than half the study group couldn’t be located (I wonder why?).
Let’s start at the beginning, Psychology is not science. Psychology does not meet any of the requirements to be considered scientific; defined terminology, quantifiable, controlled experimental conditions, reproducible and testability. It is an insulting attempt to redefine science. Empirical Psychology can yield interesting information, but who knows how reliable it is. John goes to the therapist and claims there’s a unicorn in his bed every morning when he wakes up. Next visit the unicorn has gone. Which John do you believe? This is a brilliant article on the subject:
In attempts to duplicate the claimed results of 100 psychological studies, of the original 97% that claimed statistically significant results, only a third of them did in the replicate study. That’s the value of the English metastudy I posted earlier that exposed most of the published studies on sex change surgery as garbage, only publishing favorable data, ignoring the guidelines for controlled studies, making up the rules as they go along. All of science and medicine suffers from publication bias, but Psychology are the masters at it.
Ask yourself this question, if sex change surgery is so successful, why are their many surgeons that now specialize in reversal surgery? The truth would be appear to be that surgery produces a short term cosmetic benefit, but does nothing to resolve the underlying condition (which is psychological not physical). As for a scientific basis, your prior posted article by the student that attacked McHugh included a claim regarding a genetic basis for transgender. Well, the science refutes that claim, and this time it is actually science.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23324476
No genetic connection found, so the jury is still out. All of the evidence suggest the condition is one of the human mind. Chopping off genitals is no more likely to be successful than slicing brains in half to resolve depression.
I’m not saying McHugh is right on this question. I’m saying the claims of successful outcomes to surgery are very suspect, short term based anecdotal subjective evidence, and using unscientific methodology. Personally I don’t care how many lads decide to cut off their cock and balls, but I’d hate to be the lad that regretted it.
), I would not call it pathological in any way”.