The Left has gone crazier by the day. But now their extremism is on full display.
Because an incriminating Congressional investigation could bring down the Democrat Party.
Last week, a House Oversight Committee subcommittee launched a probe into a nearly $10 million taxpayer-funded study by a gender industry researcher who appears to be withholding results because they don’t support puberty blockers as effective treatment for mental health issues related to gender dysphoria.
In a letter dated November 4, Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services Chair Rep. Lisa McClain, R-MI, asked NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli for documents tied to an ongoing project led by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy. Olson-Kennedy directs the nation’s largest gender clinic for children and teens at Los Angeles Children’s Hospital.
CatholicVote reported that Olson-Kennedy revealed to the New York Times in October she was keeping her study results under wraps — results stemming from research that began in 2015 and received $9.7 million in taxpayer funding. Her concern, she explained, is that the unexpected findings could be “weaponized” in lawsuits, suggesting that puberty blockers may not be an effective treatment for children with gender dysphoria.
“We are alarmed that the project’s principal investigator, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, is withholding publication of the project’s research findings which cast doubt on the efficacy of the ‘gender affirming’ model, because she believes the findings could be ‘weaponized’ by critics of transgender medical interventions for children,” McClain wrote to Bertagnolli.
The letter also detailed one part of Olson-Kennedy’s research, the Trans Youth Care (TYC) study, which involved 95 children averaging 11-years-old, who were given puberty blockers while their mental health data was monitored over two years.
Now, Olson-Kennedy claims the study found no mental health improvements for these children following the hormone-blocking treatment.
“They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” she told the Times, though the report noted a contradiction with her “earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suic*dal before treatment.”
McClain also pointed out in her letter that beyond gender dysphoria, “51 percent of the TYC cohort reported elevated depression symptoms and 57 percent reported clinically significant anxiety.
Two-thirds of the children reported suic*dal ideations and one-fourth of those with suic*dal ideations reported at least one past suic*de attempt.”
McClain went on to say:
“Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s apparent mischaracterization of the TYC study’s results and refusal to publish taxpayer-funded research because they contradict her pre-existing biases and could be cited by critics of ‘gender affirming’ medical interventions is an irrefutable example of politicization of scientific research to further an ideological agenda. Deliberately mischaracterizing and withholding the results of the TYC study has serious implications for the health and safety of children who are subjected to ‘gender affirming’ medical procedures, many of which are irreversible and hold lifelong implications despite lacking adequate scientific support for their efficacy or safety.”
According to the Times, Olson-Kennedy may have hoped her study would yield similar results to an older Dutch study that helped establish the “gender-affirming care” model in transgender medicine.
One source McClain referenced in her letter was “The Cass Review, Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People: Final Report.”
Led by British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, this report concluded that the evidence supporting puberty blockers and cross-s*x hormones for gender-confused children is “remarkably weak,” relying on “poor quality” studies and “misinformation” while setting “expectations of care” that depart from typical clinical practices.
In 2018, Olson-Kennedy faced backlash after a video surfaced of her remarks at a Gender Spectrum Professional Symposium, where she advocated for double mastectomies on gender-confused girls as young as 13, based on her study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Drawing conclusions from 136 surveys at her clinic, she and her team argued that “[c]hest dysphoria was high among presurgical transmasculine youth, and surgical intervention positively affected both minors and young adults.”
The video, which went viral, captured Olson-Kennedy downplaying concerns about young teens deciding on major surgery. She justified her stance by claiming:
“Adolescents actually have the capacity to make a reasoned, logical decision. And here’s the other thing about chest surgery. If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them.”
Stay tuned to Prudent Politics.
