Doctor withheld results of puberty-blocker study for political reasons: report
October 25, 2024
A medical doctor who is a leading proponent of gender-affirming procedures for minors has admitted that she deliberately withheld the results of a recent study because it showed no positive mental health benefits for gender-dysphoric children who were given puberty blockers.
The Christian Post reports that Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy withheld the results of the $10 million taxpayer-funded study because she feared that they might be “weaponized” by opponents of the procedures.
Olson-Kennedy, who heads the largest youth gender clinic in the U.S. at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, told the New York Times that she worried that the study’s results “could be used in court to argue that ‘we shouldn’t use blockers.'”
The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, began in 2015 and followed 95 children who took puberty-blocking drugs to prevent normal bodily development such as breast growth in girls and voice changes in males.
According to the Christian Post, after two years time, the study showed no improvement to the mental health of those minors who had taken puberty blockers. Olson-Kennedy claimed that the reason there was no improvement was because the study participants were “already in good shape.”
Amy Tishelman, who is a clinical and research psychologist at Boston College and who was involved in the original study, criticized the decision to withhold the results, saying, “I understand the fear about it being weaponized, but it’s really important to get the science out there. No change isn’t necessarily a negative finding — there could be a preventative aspect to it,” she also noted. “We just don’t know without more investigation.”
News of Olson-Kennedy’s decision to suppress the study results brought harsh criticism from people like Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling who tweeted, “We must not publish a study that says we’re harming children because people who say we’re harming children will use the study as evidence that we’re harming children, which might make it difficult for us to continue harming children.”
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