A group of six GOP lawmakers has sent a letter to the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) regarding a study on puberty blockers that began in 2015 but has not yet been fully disclosed to the public.
The senators are urging Monica M. Bertagnolli to release the complete findings of the research study titled âThe Impact of Early Medical Treatment in Transgender Youth,â which focuses on the effects of puberty blockers on children.
The letter emphasized that taxpayers deserve to know the outcomes of research funded by them, especially when the intervention being studied can have significant life-altering consequences.
Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), and Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) all signed the letter.
This is not the first time lawmakers have raised concerns on this issue.
The letter follows previous inquiries made in 2023 after two children, who identified as transgender or nonbinary, tragically died by suicide while undergoing hormone therapy as part of the study.
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The legislators pointed out that while researchers had published 29 papers summarizing results from the older study group’s first two years, no publications summarized the findings from the younger group.
In September 2023, the NIH responded to Cassidy and Tuberville, stating that the younger age group was not studied extensively in biomedical research.
However, a month later, The New York Times revealed that the results were being withheld for political reasons.
Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the medical director for the Center for TransYouth Health and Development at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, expressed concerns about potential misuse of their work.
The study aimed to replicate findings from the Netherlands showing that puberty blockers and hormone therapy could enhance mental health in children with gender dysphoria.
Funded by taxpayers, the research focused on mental health outcomes in children with gender dysphoria, divided into two study groups: an older group with an average age of around 16 and a younger group with an average age of around 11.
Olson-Kennedy and other researchers worked with over 400 children, administering puberty blockers to 95 younger children and providing cross-sex hormones to the older group.
However, when the study failed to reproduce the Dutch results, Olson-Kennedy attributed the lack of mental health improvement to the children already being in good mental health both before and after the study.
Before the study, around a quarter of the children on puberty blockers reported elevated depression symptoms and clinically significant anxiety. Similarly, a quarter had experienced suicidal thoughts.
The study indicated that life satisfaction was lower in both cohorts compared to population-based norms.
When questioned about the discrepancies, Olson-Kennedy mentioned that she was still analyzing the data during her initial statements to The New York Times.
The senators’ letter coincides with the U.S. Supreme Court’s hearings on overturning Tennessee’s prohibition on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and other gender-affirming care for children.
Twenty-six states in the U.S. have enacted similar laws.
Additionally, this letter follows the decisions of the United Kingdom, Finland, and other European countries to move away from such interventions for minors with gender dysphoria.
The shift in the UK was influenced by the “Cass Review” conducted by Dr. Hilary Cass, which highlighted the weak evidence supporting the effectiveness of these treatments. As a result, the UK stopped prescribing these treatments to children under 18.
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