The Associated Press published quotes from discredited doctor Paul McHugh attacking the legitimacy of transgender identities and transgender people’s right to health care without providing any context on his reputation or history of peddling anti-LGBT junk science. Faculty members at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently disassociated themselves from McHugh -- condemning him for “mischaracterizing” scientific evidence to “further stigmatize and harm” LGBT people -- and have urged the university to do the same.

In Pennsylvania, three transgender students are suing their school district for prohibiting them from using the appropriate restroom for their gender identity, according to The Associated Press. The October 6 article featured a quote from a 2014 essay written by Johns Hopkins professor Paul McHugh in which he argued that transgender identities are “confusions” that should not be affirmed. McHugh’s depiction of transgender people as mentally ill and in need of “prevention” treatments contradicts expert medical consensus agreed on by national organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

McHugh has a long history of peddling anti-LGBT pseudoscience and ignoring established evidence-based best practices for providing physical and mental health care for LGBT people. Most recently, McHugh published a report that smeared LGBT people with faulty attacks based on questionable analysis of existing research. McHugh’s colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found the report and methodology so “troubling” that they published an op-ed in The Baltimore Sun condemning the report for “mischaracterizing” scientific evidence in a way that will “further stigmatize and harm the health of LGBTQ communities.” In addition, nearly 700 members of the Johns Hopkins community -- including more than 30 faculty members, 264 Hopkins alumni, and more than 100 staff, medical interns, medical residents and fellows -- have formally called for Hopkins to distance itself from McHugh’s latest “misguided, misinformed attack on LGBT communities.”

But the Associated Press article introduced McHugh as an “expert” even though he has been widely discredited, and it made no mention of his history of peddling anti-LGBT junk science, nor the controversy surrounding his recent report.

From the October 6 AP article:

Three transgender seniors at a Pennsylvania high school, including the oldest sibling of teen singing star Jackie Evancho, have sued their school district for making them use restrooms corresponding to their biological sex.

[...]

The lawsuit contends they were “designated” male or female on their birth certificates and are being discriminated against by the new policy, which their federal lawsuit seeks to reverse. They're also seeking unspecified monetary damages, other policies to avoid transgender discrimination and training for administrators.

“The reality is Juliet is a girl, Elissa is a girl and A.S. is a boy,” Gonzalez-Pagan said, noting that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has weighed in on the need to allow people to pursue their true gender identity.

Some experts disagree, notably Paul McHugh, the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, which pioneered sexual reassignment surgery but later discontinued the practice as harmful.

"(P)olicy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention," McHugh originally wrote in a 2014 editorial essay that's been reprinted in several publications.