‘The walls are closing in’: Researcher who hid results of transgender study now in serious hot water

The behavior of a researcher funded by the National of Institutes of Health, in hiding the results of a long-running study on the effects of puberty blockers on children, already has been called out by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

In his recent letter to NIH Director Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, Rubio drew specific attention to an NIH-funded study by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, 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 has charged 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 warned.

Now the fact that those findings have been concealed may bring more trouble to Olson-Kennedy.

A report in Just the News explains that “the walls are closing in on perhaps the most influential youth gender-transition physician in America after she admitted hiding the results of her federally funded study that failed to find mental health improvements from so-called gender affirming care, contradicting her prior characterization of the study’s population to explain the results.”

A lawsuit with Olson-Kennedy as a defendant has been brought by UCLA student Kaya Clementine Breen, who detransitioned and reportedly can back her claims by using Olson-Kennedy’s own case notes about her.

Breen lawyer Jordan Campbell told Just the News that those notes cannot be shared yet.

But multiple Republican senators just last week joined House Oversight Committee Republicans to demand the NIH turn over information on Olson-Kennedy’s study and the results.

The report explained that decision on the study “helped create a false medical consensus on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical interventions for gender-confused youth.”

“This case is about a team of purported health care providers who collectively decided that a vulnerable girl struggling with complex mental health struggles and suffering from multiple instances of sexual abuse should be prescribed a series of life-altering” drugs at age 12 and breast removal at 14, the lawsuit by Breen charges.

The court filing charges the sexual abuse started at age six or seven and may be related to her “anxiety, depression, presumed autism, and undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The case charges, “This so-called ‘treatment’ of Clementine by her providers represents a despicable, failed medical experiment and a knowing, deliberate, and gross breach of the standard of care that was substantially certain to cause serious harm.”

Other defendants are CHLA, UC San Francisco’s St. Francis Memorial Hospital, surgeon Scott Mosser and his Gender Confirmation Center of San Francisco, and therapist Susan Landon.

Among those claims made by the medical industry representatives, the lawsuit says, is that “Breen would kill herself if subsequently denied testosterone.”

The claims by Breen charge that Olson-Kennedy, in “minutes,” diagnosed her with “gender dysphoria and recommended surgical implantation of puberty blockers” based on a “handful of platitudinal statements” – such as “I mostly have boy friends.”