Taxpayers paid $9.6 million for a gender ideologue’s puberty-blocker study. She hid it. Now we know why.

A study of puberty blockers has finally seen the light of day, despite the best efforts of the activist physician behind it.

The former medical director of what was long the nation’s biggest child sex-rejection clinic suppressed the results of a taxpayer-funded study following 95 children who were given puberty blockers, expressing fear that the results might be used against her craft and ideology.

‘Every taxpayer should be furious that this research was encouraged and funded.’

The study, which was obtained by the Oversight Project and published on Thursday by the Daily Signal, is every bit as injurious to the gender ideologue’s preferred narrative as she apparently suspected.

Suppression

Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the president of the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health, has made no secret of her radicalism.

This former medical director of the gender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles — a clinic that conducted medical procedures on minors and provided confused children with puberty blockers that could affect their future fertility — has, for instance, publicly argued against mandatory psychological assessments prior to sex-rejection mutilations; compared teen girls cutting off their healthy breasts to taking the SATs; and allegedly provided sex-rejection hormones to kids as young as 12 and referred little girls as young as 13 for double mastectomies.

A year prior to her clinic’s closure in July 2025 — the result of a crackdown by President Donald Trump and his administration — Olson-Kennedy revealed that she and her team had suppressed the results of the years-long study funded by the National Institutes of Health regarding “long-term outcomes of medical treatment for transgender youth.”

When asked why she was refusing to publish the data for which taxpayers paid at least $9.6 million, Olson-Kennedy “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,” reported the New York Times.

RELATED: ‘Our results shocked us’: HHS report confirms your darkest suspicions about trans ideology

Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images

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

The reason her findings were politically sensitive is because the study apparently showed that the so-called “gender-affirming care” promoted at the L.A. clinic and elsewhere was not all it was cracked up to be.

Amy Tishelman, a psychologist at Boston College who was one of the study’s original researchers, noted at the time, “I understand the fear about it being weaponized, but it’s really important to get the science out there.”

Tishelman acknowledged that the study had found that kids given puberty blockers — drugs that have long been used to chemically castrate sex offenders — did not see psychological improvements but suggested that “no change isn’t necessarily a negative finding.”

Despite the interest expressed by Tishelman and others in releasing the study, it remained under wraps.

Exposure

According to the newly released report of Olson-Kennedy’s study, titled “The Impact of Early Medical Treatment in Transgender Youth,” two years of puberty blockers didn’t make much of a difference for the mental health of the test subjects, one-quarter of whom went in reportedly having thoughts about suicide and 8% of whom previously attempted to kill themselves.

Activists and so-called experts previously claimed that puberty blockers amount to a “lifesaving option” and that “withholding puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria will very likely have serious adverse effects on the health and well-being of young people.” The Mayo Clinic still suggests on its website that puberty blockers might “improve mental well-being.”

Rather than “improve” the kids’ mental health, the study merely said of puberty blockers:

Over 2 years of medical intervention that started with blockers, mental health remained relatively stable and was on par with the population at large. These youth showed no worsening of their mental or emotional health and suicidality decreased from baseline to 24 months. Mean scores on mental health measures remain stable in a clinically non-significant range over two years.

In a previous progress report, Olson-Kennedy hypothesized to the National Institutes of Health that kids taking puberty blockers for two years would show “decreased symptoms of depression, anxiety, trauma symptoms, self-injury, and suicidality, and increased body esteem and quality of life over time,” reported the Times.

Neal Cornett, the Oversight Project’s director of state litigation, said in a statement to Blaze News, “The final report confirms what anyone sensible would know — treating troubled youth with puberty blockers and hormone treatments does nothing to improve their mental health. What it does do is support a medical-industrial complex that must provide lifelong medical care to those who suffered from its harmful medical interventions. Every taxpayer should be furious that this research was encouraged and funded for the decade the country lost its collective mind.”

Cornett added, “Dr. Olson-Kennedy was no doubt concerned that the final report would call into question the rationale behind her research. That isn’t weaponization. It’s justifiable scrutiny of a practice the majority of Americans rightly oppose.”

While Olson-Kennedy’s study is undoubtedly a gut-punch for gender activists, major studies released in the U.S. and the U.K. have already made clear that puberty blockers are not worth the risk.

The Cass Review, an independent investigation into sex-rejection drugs and procedures that was commissioned by NHS England and published in 2024, concluded that:

• the quality of previous studies suggesting that puberty blockers are beneficial in reducing mental distress and improving the well-being of gender-dysphoric youth is “poor”;
• the alternatively high-quality “University of York systematic review found no evidence that puberty blockers improve body image or dysphoria”;
• puberty blockers “may reduce psychological functioning”;
• most kids’ gender dysphoria appears to be “resolved by puberty”; and
• “brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by the use of puberty blockers.”

The Department of Health and Human Services’ exhaustive peer-reviewed 2025 report on pediatric treatments for “gender dysphoria” also highlighted numerous physical risks associated with puberty blockers including reduced bone mineral density, compromised skeletal development, infertility, and sexual dysfunction.

Olson-Kennedy could not immediately be reached for comment.

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