The Battle of science or politics?

A doctor’s refusal to release a study showing no benefit of so-called “gender-affirming care” for children proves, once again, that the push to sterilize and mutilate minors is about following an agenda, not science.

Following the “science" can be about leveraging authoritative positions to bully people into preordained outcomes, even as actual science pointed elsewhere.

Today sees “science” justifying the barbaric medical procedures dubbed “gender-affirming care,” which is liberal speak for pumping kids with puberty blockers and hormones under the guise of boosting their emotional happiness.

But when a taxpayer-funded study set out to validate the ideology’s core premise, it backfired spectacularly — leaving the lead researcher desperate to bury the damning results.

Wrong Hypothesis

Enter Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, one of the loudest proponents of so-called gender-affirming care. Olson-Kennedy herself spearheads the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. Back in 2015, she launched a “multimillion-dollar federal project” to measure whether puberty blockers improved the “mental health” of transgender minors. Her “hypothesis” was that blockers would ease depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. She enrolled 95 kids around age 11, handed them the drugs, and tracked them for two years.

But nine years later, her findings are still missing in action.

Why? Because, as The New York Times put it, her “hypothesis does not seem to have borne out.” Olson-Kennedy has buried the results, arguing that the data would be “weaponized” in today’s political debates.

Translation: “The science” didn’t back her preferred outcome, so she suppressed it, even though taxpayers have already coughed up nearly $10 million to bankroll this study through the National Institutes of Health.

Some of Olson-Kennedy’s allies have called her out for this academic deceit, noting that her study should be released no matter how inconvenient it is for the pro-trans crowd.

For example, Amy Tishelman, a clinical psychologist at Boston College, told The New York Times that while she understands concerns about the data being “weaponized,” it’s “essential to get the science out there.”

In other words, science is meant to follow evidence, not politics. Olson-Kennedy’s cover-up, however, shows she’s an activist in a lab coat, not a healthcare professional. And that activism is coming back to haunt her.

Reality Bites

Olson-Kennedy is currently facing a lawsuit from Clementine Breen, a former patient who alleges she was the victim of “medical negligence.” Breen claims that Olson-Kennedy diagnosed her with gender dysphoria at 12 years old, hurried her onto puberty blockers, and approved a double mastectomy when she was 14 — all with minimal psychological evaluation into the underlying factors driving her identity questions, which were later revealed to include a childhood sexual assault.

The lawsuit also contends that Olson-Kennedy falsely documented Breen as suicidal to guilt-trip her parents into acting. Breen, now 20, is grappling with permanent changes to her body, including a deepened voice and a high likelihood of infertility. She is in the process of detransitioning and hopes her lawsuit will help expose what she describes as a poorly regulated industry.

These stories are why countries like the U.K. are reevaluating and dialling back such procedures. The landmark Cass review, for example, concluded that the support for “gender-affirming care” is “remarkably weak.” Dr. Hilary Cass, the lead author, specifically rebuked the pediatric medical community for “misleading the public” and “doubling down” on shoddy research.

Case in Point

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito recently invoked the Cass review during oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, a case in which the Biden administration seeks to overturn Tennessee’s ban on gender transition procedures for minors. The White House had asserted in its legal filing that “overwhelming evidence” proves that puberty blockers and hormones improve “the physical, psychological well-being of transgender adolescents with gender dysphoria.”

Alito dismantled that nonsense by citing findings from Sweden and Britain, both of which have paused these “treatments” because, as the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare outlined, “the risks of puberty blockers and gender-affirming treatment are likely to outweigh the expected benefits of these treatments.”

Alito then asked the government’s lawyer if she wanted to reconsider the “overwhelming evidence” assertion, given that the evidence was anything but overwhelming. Predictably, she didn’t budge. After all, this is the same administration that just embraced “Pansexual and Panromantic Pride Day.”

This fanatical adherence to gender ideology defines the progressive left, no matter how devastating the consequences for children. They show no regard for the fallout, from suppressing inconvenient research to making blatantly dishonest statements before the Supreme Court. For them, “follow the science” is a slogan — a flexible excuse to prop up whatever crackpot theory serves their agenda.

If progressives genuinely followed the science, they’d arrive at an undeniable fact: Men and women are biologically distinct, complementary, and not interchangeable. But that truth clashes with their postmodern worldview, where the notion of truth itself is dismissed as an oppressive illusion.

And that’s the crux of the issue — it’s not a battle over science but over reality itself.

Jason Mattera is a New York Times bestselling author and Emmy-nominated journalist. Follow him on X, Facebook, or Instagram.