Lawmakers are demanding answers after the suicide deaths of two young people involved in a transgender hormone study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Additionally, 11 participants reported suicidal thoughts during the study, according to a January article by researchers published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
In a letter to Dr. Lawrence Tabak, acting director at NIH, 15 Republican lawmakers question why the study wasn’t halted after participants died or reported adverse effects.
“It is alarming that vulnerable young people died by suicide while participating in a taxpayer-funded study that will almost certainly inflict devastating physical harm on those who participated,” the lawmakers’ letter stated.
“Rather than shutting the study down after such serious adverse events, the researchers published their paper, concluding that the study was a success because cross-sex hormones had altered subjects’ physical appearance and improved psychosocial functioning,” lawmakers added.
The study “Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones” attempted to analyze the psychosocial state of participants.
Researchers evaluated the impact of cross-sex hormones on “transgender and nonbinary youth” between the ages of 12 and 20, according to the study.
NIH awarded $477,444 in a five-year grant to the Boston Children’s Hospital, the University of California at San Francisco, and the Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago for the study, according to a report in The Daily Signal. Dr. Diane Chen at the Lurie Children’s Hospital led the study.
Lawmakers have blasted the study for subjecting children to “radical gender ideology.” Of 315 study subjects, 240 were minors.
After the study was published, the medical watchdog group “Do No Harm,” called the research “fatally flawed and borderline unscientific” because it muddled instead of clarified questions about the medical transition of children.
Twenty-four participants in the study received cross-sex hormones after puberty suppression—when they’re “in early puberty”—and are “likely sterile as a result,” according to the lawmakers.
