As the U.K. puts the brakes on the transgender agenda, many are wondering: Will America follow suit?
On Wednesday, Politico reported, “The British government indefinitely banned the use of puberty blockers by people under 18 years of age … after expert advice flagged an ‘unacceptable safety risk’ in their use.” England is not satisfied with “unreliable” studies, and so they’re creating legislation to halt the use of these experimental drugs “while further work is done to ensure young people’s safety.” Meanwhile, in the U.S., the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is throwing nearly $10 million in taxpayer money toward studies on puberty blockers only to keep the results private.
Tasked by the NIH, the prominent “gender doctor” Johanna Olson-Kennedy started her research on puberty blockers in 2015. The doctor heads the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, which is considered the largest gender transition clinic in the U.S. However, Olson-Kennedy’s nearly decade-long study didn’t seem to produce the results she was hoping for. In response, she chose to withhold the findings, allegedly because she did “not want [the] work to be weaponized.” But GOP lawmakers are signaling that they are not willing to let the doctor off the hook.
On Thursday, six Republican senators sent a letter to NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli regarding the “long-awaited” yet unpublished research from Olson-Kennedy. Senators Bill Cassidy (La.), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.), Ted Cruz (Texas), James Lankford (Okla.), Markwayne Mullin (Okla.) and Mike Lee (Utah) all signed the letter. They wrote that they’re “concerned about the transparency” of NIH funded studies. The letter stated in part:
“To be clear, we oppose taxpayer funding going toward gender transition interventions for minors. While we recognize that this particular study is observational, we remain concerned that minors lack the ability to fully understand the lifelong outcomes of the interventions studied in this project and provide their consent. Further, taxpayers have the right to know the outcomes of the research they fund, particularly when the intervention studied has life-altering impacts.”
The Epoch Times noted this is not the first effort put forth by these senators to call for the publication of this study. This most recent letter, the outlet added, “is a follow-up to inquiries launched by lawmakers in 2023 after two children, who identified as transgender or nonbinary, died by suicide while receiving hormone therapy as part of the study.”
Most of what little there is to know about Olson-Kennedy’s research comes only from what she has shared with the media. She “worked with over 400 children, placing the 95 younger children on puberty blockers and giving the older group cross-sex hormones.” The former group included kids averaging around age 11 and the latter group contained children with an average age of 16. Olson-Kennedy went into the study assuming the 95 gender-drugged children would experience improved mental well-being. This was not the case.
It turns out, there was no improvement at all. For the most part, the children’s mental state remained the same. Confusingly, Olson-Kennedy said recently that the lack of improvement was because the kids were already “in really good shape” both prior to and after the study. And yet, in August 2020, the study reported not that the children were in good shape, but that they had “elevated depression symptoms” and “clinically significant anxiety” before research began and they were placed on puberty blockers. Roughly a quarter of them were recorded to have suffered from suicidal thoughts.
While Olson-Kennedy claims she’s still probing the data, that hasn’t stopped the pressure from rising. Commentators from The Hill said Olson-Kennedy withholding the results is “the opposite of good science.” Amid the senators’ demands, Olson-Kennedy is also facing a major lawsuit from a young woman she previously worked with. Kaya Clementine Breen has accused the doctor of “medical negligence” for pushing her into a world of irreversible gender treatments at the age of 12. Breen, 20, now lives with a deep voice, an Adam’s apple, no breasts, and the likelihood of infertility due to the testosterone she took for over five years.
Breen’s case highlights the same issue at the heart of Olson-Kennedy’s unpublished research: a lack of transparency, as the senators had addressed. The foundation of Breen’s lawsuit was that she did not believe Olson-Kennedy, as well as the therapist and surgeon involved, warned her about the dangers of so-called “gender-affirming care.” In fact, Breen recalled little to no discussion before being thrown down the path of transgenderism. The New York Post noted that her current “medical records show that no one questioned her about whether the transition had helped or harmed her despite indications that things were going downhill.”
Americans are increasingly calling out this trans ideology and the harm it causes. At least 26 states have passed laws that protect children from “gender-affirming care.” Currently, the highest court in America just heard arguments in the case of U.S. v. Skrmetti concerning the Tennessee law protecting children from trans-related procedures. Dr. Albert Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently explained on his podcast “The Briefing” how this issue “has to be hit directly” — especially “from a Christian worldview perspective.”
He stated that “Christians need to understand this basis, [that] we’re talking about an attempted redefinition of what it means to be human. And that’s a fundamental problem.” Transgenderism, Mohler emphasized, challenges “the fact … that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 tell us what’s most fundamental in … that God made us in His image and made us male and female.” This conversation inevitably leads “us right to the Christian argument about creation order,” he argued.
Mohler continued, “If there is a Creator who created us in His image and made us male and female, then that’s the limitation on the categories. Period.” And so, he concluded, “as Christians, let’s pray for those who are really struggling with this issue because, made in the image of God, they are human beings for whom we ought to pray.” And we need to understand that something very, very deep and fundamental is going on in [their] lives” that must be addressed “with love and concern.”
