This is extremely suspicious, not to mention unprofessional. And given that most of money involved in this study was taxpayer funding, I’m not even sure how you get away with this.
The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.
The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.
This study was an attempt to replicate that Dutch study. Dr. Olson-Kennedy was very clear about the benefits she expected to see from giving puberty blockers to 11-year-olds.
In a progress report submitted to the N.I.H. at that time, Dr. Olson-Kennedy outlined her hypothesis of how the children would fare after two years on puberty blockers: that they would show “decreased symptoms of depression, anxiety, trauma symptoms, self-injury, and suicidality, and increased body esteem and quality of life over time.”
That hypothesis does not seem to have borne out.
The data appears to show no real change or improvement at all. What Dr. Olson-Kennedy claims now is that everyone was doing so well when they came into the study that they were still in roughly the same place two years later: “They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years.” Except her previous description of the kids coming in said about a quarter were depressed and/or suicidal when the study began (again, we’re talking about 11-year-olds). […]
— Read More: hotair.com
