The National Institutes of Health could be concealing the effect of puberty blockers, drugs that often are given to minors as part of so-called gender-affirming care, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., suggests Monday in a letter obtained by The Daily Signal.
In the letter to NIH Director Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, Rubio draws particular attention to a NIH-funded study from Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy. Despite President Barack Obama’s administration’s decisions to support Olson-Kennedy’s study more than nine years ago, the findings have yet to be released allegedly out of fear from potential political repercussions.
Rubio claims that Olson-Kennedy was part of a group of researchers who received nearly $6 million from the NIH to study the physical and mental health outcomes of children who receive hormone blocker and cross-sex hormone treatments. Olson-Kennedy outlined a little bit of her findings in a 2020 report that said approximately a quarter of the children in the study who received these 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 writes. “The American people, who funded this study, and their elected representatives.”
If the findings are being suppressed, Rubio claims that Olson-Kennedy is “masquerad[ing] political ideology under a veil of scientific legitimacy.”
In response to this potential coverup, Rubio demands that the NIH investigates Olson-Kennedy and other researchers in this group to discover if they are willfully withholding information on the damaging effects of puberty blockers, and how left-wing political biases might impact the quality of published NIH research.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
