When it comes to medical interventions for America’s gender-confused youth, the Biden administration has made its position clear: “Affirming your child’s identity is one of the most powerful things you can do to keep them safe and healthy,” President Joe Biden said in a video message speaking directly to parents.
Citing “research,” Assistant Health Secretary Admiral Rachel Levine, a male who identifies as transgender, advocated for medical interventions such as cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for children and teens. “Research demonstrates that gender-affirming care improves the mental health and overall well-being of gender diverse children and adolescents,” Levine said.
President Biden has issued executive orders charging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “to work with states to promote expanded access to gender-affirming care,” and ordered federal health insurance providers to “provide comprehensive gender-affirming care.”
Yet, internally, a new report finds the Biden administration’s own National Institutes of Health is “quietly bankrolling” research that discloses the risks of transgender medical “care,” while simultaneously pushing this “care” on America’s youth.
“The NIH Reporter database, which lists active federally funded research projects, shows 74 with ‘transgender’ in the title, totaling more than $26 million of taxpayers’ money annually,” reports The Federalist. “Several NIH-funded studies examine specific health risks of cross-sex hormone treatment — such as associated bone loss and possible increased risk of thrombosis, drug overdose, heart attack, and stroke.”
The contradiction between government policy and government-funded research could not be more glaring. For example, reports The Federalist:
One of the larger NIH-funded transgender studies, funded at $743,000 annually, is at Boston Children’s Hospital. It notes, ‘Little is known [emphasis added] about how pubertal blockade, the first step in the medical management of a young transgender adolescent, affects bone health and psychological well-being. … In an exploratory aim, we will also consider the effect of pubertal blockade on anxiety, depression, and health-related quality of life.’
Another research project, ‘Psychological consequences of medical transition in transgender youth,’ begun last year at Princeton University and anticipated to end in 2025, notes the lack of quality research in this area:
Five studies to date have longitudinally examined the relationship between one or both of these interventions [puberty suppression and hormone therapy] and mental health in transgender youth. However, these studies have had relatively small samples, none have been able to isolate the effects of endocrine interventions, none have included a cisgender [non-transgender] comparison group, and none have examined the mechanisms by which endocrine interventions might improve mental health.
The Biden administration is keen on telling Americans to “follow the science.” But when it comes to medical interventions for America’s gender-confused vulnerable youth, it appears that political correctness trumps the “science”—or in this case, the lack thereof.