The Trump administration has ordered the NIH to study the physical and mental effects of the sex transition. Treatments may include hormone taking such as testosterone as well as surgeries.
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The Trump administration ordered the National Institutes of Health to study the physical and mental effects of gender transition, according to an internal NIH note obtained by NPR.
The directive was shared with NPR by two current NIH staff who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals. It comes from the director of interim NIH, Mark Memoli, and says that the NIH must study the impact of the “social transition and / or chemical and surgical mutilation” in children who make the transition. More specifically, the White House wants the NIH to study “regrets” and “detransition” in children and adults who have made the transition.
“This is very important for the president and the secretary,” said the memo, referring to President Trump and the secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that adds: “They would like us to have funding announcements in the next six months to make this move.”
The NIH must now decide on the scope and design of the project, how it will be funded and which researchers will lead it.
The plan arouses a deep concern among many researchers and in the LGBTQ +community. NPR discussed the note with some researchers and defenders.
“What they are looking for is a political and non -scientific response,” said Adrian ShankerWho was deputy assistant secretary to the health policy in HHS under President Biden. “This should be an alarm for all those who care about the scientific integrity of the National Institutes of Health.”
Among the red flags of the directive is the language, say Shanker and others.
“Chemical or surgical mutilation? These are deeply offensive terms,” said Harry Barbee, Deputy professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“This terminology has no place in a great discourse of scientific or public health,” explains Barbee. “The language has been historically used to stigmatize trans people. Even the” regret “and” detransition “sentences can be armed.”
Many researchers say there is already a solid evidence That the level of regret after the transition and the decision to reverse the transition are very low.
“The rates of regret for the care affirmed by the sexes are approximately 1%, which is much lower than the regret rates of the procedures that we consider to be quite common and which are widely accepted,” explains Lindsey Dawson, who directs the LGBTQ health policy in Kff, a non -partisan health research group.
Dawson and others say that they are not surprised by the directive, given the rhetoric on trans people that Trump used during the campaign and other stages that the administration has taken since its entry into office. But some researchers and defenders consider the request of this research as cynical, since the administration has recently reduced the financing of hundreds of studies on important physical and mental health problems facing people in the LGBTQ community, including trans people.
“This is particularly worrying given the recent funding of hundreds of studies probably supported by the NIH which focused on trans health,” said Brittany CharltonWho directs the Center of Excellence of LGBTQ Health at the Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health and followed the funding endings. “The fact that the NIH changes its focus really hinders our ability to really understand the complete image.”
Neither the NIH ni HHS, his parental agency, responded to requests for NPR comments.
But some people argue that previous research on trans regrets and related issues has been poorly done and are overwhelmed.
“We are starting to see a much larger number of young people who find that they have taken the wrong way for them and they now end up with irreversible changes in their bodies and that they no longer identify themselves as transgender,” explains Evgenia Abbrruzese, co -founder of the group Society for gender medicine based on evidence. “But they end up with these permanent effects.”
She adds: “There are a lot of negative transition impacts. And regret is certainly one of them,” she said. “It is a very important field of medicine to study.”
Others agree.
“Research on detransition is very useful, this is a very important area,” said Michael BiggsAssociate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford. “It is a sub-studied population to collect systematic data.”
However, Barbee by Johns Hopkins is concerned about whether high quality research can be done in the short period described in the note and how research will be used. One concern is that the results could be used to justify the laws of states restricting access to trans care.
“I support rigorous and ethical research on all aspects of transgender health, which includes experience of detransions,” explains Barbee. “However, it is imperative that such research is supervised in a way that does not pathological or undergoing overwhelming evidence that the care affirmed by the sexes are beneficial and even saving the vast majority of trans people who wish such services.”