Doctor Refuses to Publish Results of Her Own Study on Puberty Blockers and Mental Health

"Leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care."

A striking feature of the myriad villains who infest public affairs is that they often do and say things that make them seem like parodies of themselves. They remind me of Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information, who kept proclaiming that the American invading army had been repulsed and destroyed, even as American soldiers were entering Baghdad.

The latest ridiculously mendacious weirdo along these lines is Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy. According to a recent New York Times report:

Dr. Olson-Kennedy is one of the country’s most vocal advocates of adolescent gender treatments and has served as an expert witness in many legal challenges to the state bans.

[Olson-Kennedy] she had not published a long-awaited study of puberty-blocking drugs because of the charged American political environment.

… 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.

But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.

Adding insult to injury to America’s sane taxpayers, “Dr.” Olson’s study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Again, to quote the Times:

In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court.

“I do not want our work to be weaponized,” she said. “It has to be exactly on point, clear and concise. And that takes time.”

Can you imagine scoring a bunch of federal grant money to conduct research and then refusing to publish the results of your study because you don’t want to supply ammunition to your critics?

“Livin’ in America” today is as zany as James Brown’s 1988 interview about his decision to take a shot at his wife. Though it’s been almost 37 years since the interview, I still believe it is one of the most remarkable ever conducted. Note how the news reader is so charmed by his devil may care attitude that she seems to forgot that he took a shot at his wife.

Back then, we tended to be relatively forgiving of wild and crazy creative types like Mr. Brown. Nowadays, “Livin’ In America” is a daily deluge of stories about total lunacy at the highest institutional level.