White House Demands NIH Study Transgender Transition “Regret”
The Trump administration wants the NIH to study the effects of transitioning to justify its restrictions on gender-affirming care.
The Trump administration has ordered the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the physical and mental health effects of transitioning, both socially and medically.
In an internal NIH memo obtained by National Public Radio, Acting NIH Director Mark Memoli declared that the agency should study the impact of “social transition and/or chemical and surgical mutilation” among trans-identifying children.
Specifically, the White House wants the NIH to study “regret” and rates of so-called “detransition” among children and adults who have previously transitioned.
“This is very important to the President and the Secretary,” the memo says, referring to Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “They would like us to have funding announcements within the next six months to get this moving.”
The scope and design of the study have not yet been determined, nor has a consistent funding source for the project. It is also unclear which researchers will conduct any such study.
The LGBTQ community is criticizing the Trump administration for the move, noting that it has previously sought to defund any studies focusing on the transgender community or trans health issues.
Hypocritically, they claim, Trump is demanding that resources be spent studying the phenomenon of “detransition,” presumably to justify large-scale bans on gender-affirming care for youth and to impose further restrictions on such treatments for adults.
“What they’re looking for is a political answer not a scientific one,” Adrian Shanker, the former deputy assistant secretary for health policy at HHS under the Biden administration, told NPR. “That should be an alarm for everyone who cares about the scientific integrity of the National Institutes of Health.”
Shanker noted that even the language of the memo betrays the bias behind the study, which refers to hormonal and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria as “mutilation.”
Many researchers say there have already been studies showing that the level of regret after transition and the decision to reverse such treatments is low.
“Regret rates for gender-affirming care are about less than 1%, which is much lower than regret rates for procedures that we see as quite common and that are widely accepted,” Lindsey Dawson, who directs LGBTQ health policy at the nonprofit KFF, told NPR, referring to procedures such as hip replacements and obesity surgeries, as well as body modification procedures, such as tattoos.
Some are skeptical that research can be done in the short time period outlined in the NIH memo and whether the “results” are already predetermined, the intent being to use them to further restrict access to hormone treatments and surgical interventions used to assist a person in transitioning.
“I support rigorous, ethically grounded research into all aspects of transgender health, and that includes the experience of detransition,” Harry Barbee, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told NPR. “However, it’s imperative that such research be framed in a way that neither pathologizes transition nor undermines the overwhelming evidence showing that gender-affirming care is beneficial and even life-saving for the vast majority of trans people who desire such services.”
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