The Trump administration has ordered scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the dark side of gender transition, according to a directive leaked to two news outlets.
“Two current NIH staffers, who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution,” first slipped the directive to Nature a week ago. This week NPR also got its hands on the memo.
The memo is reportedly from acting NIH Director Matthew Memoli. It “states the NIH must study the impact of ‘social transition and/or chemical and surgical mutilation’ among children who transition,” NPR reported. “Specifically, the White House wants the NIH to study ‘regret’ and ‘detransition’ among children and adults who have transitioned.”
“This is very important to the President and the Secretary,” the memo states, referring to President Trump and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It adds, “They would like us to have funding announcements within the next six months to get this moving.”
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“The research on detransition is very useful, it’s a very important area,” said Michael Biggs, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oxford, an academic not opposed to the idea. “This is an understudied population to collect systematic data on.”
The scope of the project, its design, which researchers will conduct it, and how it will be funded is not yet known but reportedly is in the planning.
The news predictably drew fire from some researchers and segments of the LGBTQ+ community. Adrian Shanker, who served as deputy assistant secretary of health policy at HHS under President Biden, criticized the proposal to NPR.
“What they’re looking for is a political answer not a scientific one,” he said. “That should be an alarm for everyone who cares about the scientific integrity of the National Institutes of Health.”
Harry Barbee, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, chimed in, blasting the language of the directive:
Chemical or surgical mutilation? These are deeply offensive terms. … This terminology has no place in serious scientific or public health discourse. The language has been historically used to stigmatize trans people. Even the phrase[s] ‘regret’ and ‘detransition’ can be weaponized.
Lindsey Dawson, who directs LGBTQ health policy at KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, argued that “regret rates” were “less than one percent,” claiming the rate was lower than common surgeries such as hip replacements, obesity procedures, and “even tattoos.”
Other researchers argue that “previous research on trans regret and related issues have been poorly done and is outdated,” NPR noted. Evgenia Abbruzzese, cofounder of the group Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, told NPR, “We are starting to see much greater numbers of young people who are seeing that they went down the wrong path for them and they’re now left with irreversible changes to their body and they no longer identify as transgender.”
“There are a lot of negative impacts of transition. And regret is definitely one of them. It’s a very important area of medicine to study,” Abbruzzese concluded.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
