A doctor has admitted to withholding publication of a $10 million taxpayer-funded study showing there were no mental health benefits for using puberty blockers on transgender children.
The National Institutes of Health funded a study starting in 2015 that observed 95 children with an average age of 11 taking puberty blockers, which would delay the development of breasts and the deepening of voices.
Transgender advocates have long said giving puberty blockers to children suffering from gender dysphoria would improve their mental health, but the study showed that no such improvement occurred after two years.
Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, who headed the study, claimed the children were in “really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” but, as the New York Times noted, her assertion contradicts researchers finding that around one-quarter of study participants “were depressed or suicidal” before receiving treatment.
Roughly nine years after the study was funded, Kennedy admitted to not publishing the research for political reasons. Per the Times:
That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment.
In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court.
She said that she intends to publish the data, but that the team had also been delayed because the N.I.H. had cut some of the project’s funding. She attributed that cut, too, to politics, which the N.I.H. denied. (The broader project has received $9.7 million in government support to date.)
“I do not want our work to be weaponized,” she said. “It has to be exactly on point, clear and concise. And that takes time.”
Dr. Olson-Kennedy has served as an expert witness in various legal challenges against bans on treatment of transgender children in many states.
Original researchers on the study expressed dismay that the findings have not been published. Boston College clinical and research psychologist Amy Tishelman, one of the researchers, said the evidence should be published.
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“I understand the fear about it being weaponized, but it’s really important to get the science out there,” said Tishelman. “No change isn’t necessarily a negative finding — there could be a preventative aspect to it. We just don’t know without more investigation.”
Erica Anderson, a clinical psychologist and a transgender youth expert, told the New York Post that Olson-Kennedy withholding the research contradicts the Scientific Method.
“We’re craving information about these medical treatments for gender questioning youth. Dr. Olson-Kennedy has the largest grant that’s ever been awarded in the US on the subject and is sitting on data that would be helpful to know,” she said.
“It’s not her prerogative to decide based on the results that she will or won’t publish them,” she added. “It’s contrary to the scientific method. You do research, and then you disclose what the results are,” she said. “You don’t change them, you don’t distort them, and you don’t reveal or not reveal them based on the reactions of others. You report as scientists what you’ve learned.”
