The National Institutes of Health is facing scrutiny from Congressional Republicans over its oversight of research grants after a recipient said it refused to publish its findings on so-called gender-affirming care for minors in the United States on the grounds that it could be “weaponized” and constitute a false medical information. Consensus on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions for gender-confused youth.

Seven hours away, in the Acela Corridor, a lawsuit filed against a Harvard Medical School-affiliated provider of gender-affirming care for teens threatens to further undermine trust in an American medical establishment that has long told parents so. their children are at risk of suicide without immediate gender confirmation.

The House Oversight Committee opened an investigation of NIH on Monday. federally funded researcher admits encountering unintended consequences Nine years out of a two-year study on the effects of politically motivated puberty blockers on adolescent mental health.

Researcher, pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Joanna Olson-Kennedy told New York Times His team’s failure to find mental health improvements as expected could be “weaponized” against treatment, and this is difficult and sometimes impossible to reverse.

He defended the findings, saying the 95 adolescents who participated in the study were “in really good shape when they arrived.” His own statement about the band years ago.

“NIH has a duty to monitor extramural research grants and ensure that its funded research exemplifies so-called principles of scientific integrity,” said the Chairman of the Health Services Subcommittee. Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., told NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli.Tons of documents are being requested regarding NIH’s larger $9.7 million “Care for Trans Youth” project.

The agency did not respond to questions about its response to McClain or why it does not require funding recipients to release full results.

“In addition to gender dysphoria, 51 percent of the TYC group reported elevated symptoms of depression and 57 percent reported clinically significant anxiety,” McClain told Bertagnolli. “Two-thirds of children reported suicidal ideation, and a quarter of those with suicidal thoughts reported having made at least one suicide attempt in the past.”

Olson-Kennedy’s revisionist characterization of the group and her “refusal to publish taxpayer-funded studies because they contradict her preexisting biases and can be cited by critics of ‘gender-affirming’ medical interventions” is an undeniable example of the politicization of scientific research. ideological agenda,” McClain wrote.

He requested all grant applications and “summary statements” relating to TYC involving mental health work since August 1, 2015, including those that mentioned “medical ethics.”

McClain also included all progress reports related to the project, officially called “The Impact of Early Medical Treatment in Transgender Youth,” unpublished project data in the “ownership, custody, or control” section, and all documents and communications involving the National Institute of Child Health and the National Institute of Child Health. he called. Human Development, NIH, and Department of Health and Human Services.

The highest-ranking transgender person in the federal government HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine was secretly persuaded The World Professional Association for Transgender Health will lower the planned minimum age of 14 to 17 years for various hormonal and surgical procedures, including castration and mastectomy, in its 2022 guidelines known as Standards of Care 8.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has also threatened to challenge SOC 8, which gender clinics, healthcare providers and insurers rely on around the world, if WPATH does not lift age restrictions.

J. Scott Turner, director of science programs at the National Association of Scholars, said Olson-Kennedy “spoke very loudly a truth that had been held so quietly: The American scientific enterprise had become political activism and was no longer the source of the quest for objective truth.” Just News.

Regardless of funding, a scientist “has a duty to subject his results to the critical scrutiny of his colleagues,” otherwise science “is of no use to society,” he wrote in an email. Government-funded researchers have an “additional civic duty” to share their findings publicly with taxpayers.

While the NIH does not require recipients to publish, it said they are “expected to submit annual reports” to the agency for special review. “If a previously supported project has produced few or no publishable results, this will negatively impact the future grant application.”

But Olson-Kennedy’s actions are less surprising, since “the community of scientists supported by the NIH is quite incestuous, especially when major financial or political interests are involved” and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is an ardent supporter of gender-affirming care. Turner said his public defense of this was what he called “policy-based evidence-making.”

Lead author of SOC 8 on prepubescent children, Boston College psychologist Amy Tishelman said at a WPATH conference two years ago: The drafting committee modified the minimum age limits to take into account “legal and insurance contexts,” such as malpractice lawsuits based on “prohibitory standards” of care and insurance companies denying coverage for procedures deemed “non-essential.”

Tishelman’s age- and gender-based discrimination and retaliation lawsuit in Suffolk County Superior Court against Boston Children’s Hospital, which hosted one of the gender clinics, brought the treatment standards of teenagers under further scrutiny. They rushed to hide promotions for surgical and hormonal procedures for teenagers after critics denounced them.

After suffering Fake bomb threat after promos surfacedThat decision persuaded the judge to seal the allegations in Tishelman’s exhibits, investigative journalist Ben Ryan reported from the hearing; These allegations “will fuel what is already a very heated public debate… and could cause serious, irreversible harm to the hospital and its practitioners.” New York Sun.

The hospital said it fired Tishelman in 2021 for violating federal privacy laws by viewing the records of hundreds of patients he did not treat. The hospital had accused him of “chronic negligence in turning over patient reports” from the gender clinic, and the hospital said it wanted to find other psychologists who were also late but were treated differently.

His claims mirror those of the whistleblower Jamie Reed, some of these were confirmed by the University of Washington’s pediatric gender clinic when discussing his overall narrative. Boston Children’s Hospital treated nearly 300 “gender reassignment” patients over five years. Do No Harm’s new database related to insurance claims and gender dysphoria diagnoses.

Tishelman testified in Thursday’s lawsuit that when she joined as clinical research director in 2013, administrators gave her 20 hours “and sometimes longer” to evaluate patients at the lead gender clinic, including writing a lengthy report.

Talking with the child and family was used to “conduct scoring of baseline markers of mental health and neurodivergence,” assess for suicidality, and “identify family concerns about infertility,” and sometimes “consult with the patient’s outside therapist or school counselor.”

The hospital cut that evaluation time in half over several years, then in early 2018 reduced it to what Tishelman called “carelessly” two hours for the evaluation and a half hour to write the report. an aspirin.” One of the canceled screenings was for autism, which is often associated with gender dysphoria.

The hospital compromised Tishelman’s research on gender-confused children by banning him from seeing patients in 2019 and fired him two years later; This put the kibosh on a planned database that would include all patients at the gender clinic and allow him to follow them into adulthood. in question. Now “we don’t know what happened to them and what condition they are in.”

The hospital, which uses a Harvard email address, said: Just News “cannot comment on ongoing litigation,” an unnamed statement said.

Turner told Just News the case reminded him of “the craze for sterilizing idiots in the 1920s”; This craze continued into the 1960s and was fueled by eugenics.

“Sterilization candidates were then evaluated with crude mental competency tests to detect ‘morons’ and ‘imbeciles,’ and today’s ‘rush’ toward gender-affirming care is ‘disturbingly similar,’ he said. It’s a ‘form of ritual child abuse.’