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A top conservative watchdog is suing the federal health care bureaucracy alleging they are stonewalling results of a study started under the Obama administration looking into the effects of transgender therapy pharmaceuticals on youth.
Oversight Project president Mike Howell told Fox News Digital in a Wednesday interview that administering puberty blockers and other nascent drugs to teens is akin to ‘modern-day Tuskegee experiments’ and that the National Institutes of Health and the study’s proctor should not be allowed to keep their results secret.
In 2014, NIH awarded a grant to children’s hospitals that led to a study helmed by a Los Angeles pediatrician to discern the long-term effects of puberty blockers on pediatric transgender people, Howell explained, citing his organization’s lawsuit.
In 2024, Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., wrote to the Biden-led NIH questioning why ‘principal investigator’ Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy was ‘withholding publication’ of the $9.7 million study’s findings.
‘In light of the NIH grantee’s unwillingness to release the research project’s findings, we ask that you provide documents and information to assist the Committee’s oversight of this matter,’ McClain wrote, citing her role as chair of a House Oversight subcommittee.
One year later, Howell’s group sought the files through a public request in July, and sued this week, claiming officials ignored them.
Both McClain, in her letter, and Howell, in his interview, raised concerns over Olson-Kennedy’s remarks about critics potentially weaponizing results from the NIH-funded study.
‘NIH is responsible for overseeing its extramural research projects to ensure supported researchers practice transparency, exemplify scientific integrity, and are proper stewards of taxpayer funds,’ McClain wrote to the Biden NIH.
Howell said he wants the NIH, under the Trump administration, to make the results public, citing troubling hints from Olson-Kennedy in a New York Times article that quoted her saying about one-quarter of participants reported some type of depression.
Howell said there is an absolute connection, if allegations bear out, between the Tuskegee Experiments of the mid-20th century on African Americans and studies testing out puberty blockers on 21st century children.
‘When I first read [of the study] – I was reminded of Tuskegee Experiments on African Americans [where the uniformed U.S. Public Health Service] gave them drugs… to test out treatments there; horrific events,’ he said.
Fox News Digital also reached out to the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, which was listed as the affiliate medical center for Olson-Kennedy. A number listed for Olson-Kennedy’s California practice was disconnected.
She told the Times in October 2024 she intended then to publish the data but blamed delays on funding cuts — a claim the NIH denied, the paper reported.
