Rubio demands transparency as NIH seems to hide effects of ‘gender-affirming care’

(The Daily Signal) – The National Institutes of Health could be hiding the effect of puberty blockers, drugs that often are given to minors as part of so-called gender-affirming care, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., suggested Monday in a letter to the agency’s director obtained by The Daily Signal.

In his letter to NIH Director Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, Rubio draws particular attention to an NIH-funded study by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a physician who is the medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Despite the Obama administration’s decision to support Olson-Kennedy’s study more than nine years ago, the findings have yet to be released, allegedly out of fear of the political repercussions.

Rubio writes that Olson-Kennedy was part of a group of researchers who received nearly $6 million from NIH to study physical and mental health outcomes for children who receive puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone treatments as part of “transitioning” to the opposite sex. 

Olson-Kennedy outlined a few of her findings in a 2020 report that said approximately a quarter of the children in the study who received these transgender medical treatments were experiencing depression or suicidal ideation.

“According to [Olson-Kennedy], she fears the findings will be used to show that puberty blockers do not improve the mental health of youth,” Rubio writes. 

If Olson-Kennedy’s NIH-funded findings are being suppressed, Rubio writes, the physician is “masquerad[ing] political ideology under a veil of scientific legitimacy.”

In response to the potential coverup, Rubio demands that the National Institutes of Health investigate Olson-Kennedy and other researchers in the group to discover whether they are willfully withholding information on the damaging effects of puberty blockers and how left-wing political biases might affect the quality of published NIH research.