A physician is withholding the publication of a study on the impact of puberty blockers on the mental health of young people in order to protect the Left’s narrative. The New York Times reported that the doctor does not want to make the results public “because of the charged American political environment.”  Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy began the experiment in 2015 and recruited 95 children to receive puberty blockers. According to Kennedy, the results from her study did not match the findings of an earlier Dutch study, which found that puberty blockers improved mental health. (That Dutch study has since fallen into controversy.) Olson-Kennedy told the Times that this was likely because, in her study, “the children were already doing well when the study began.” However, the Times noted that her statement contradicted her previous assertion that the adolescents were “depressed or suicidal” before treatment.  Her initial description of the children reported that their average age was 11, and that a quarter of the group had reported having symptoms of depression and anxiety. Another quarter reported having had thoughts of suicide, and 8 percent reported having attempted suicide.  The study was part of a larger multimillion-dollar federal project by the National Institute of Health. Olson-Kennedy told the Times that she did not publish the data because the findings might “fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states.” Olson-Kennedy is the medical director of the largest transgender youth clinic in the United States. She specializes in helping children struggling with gender dysphoria, and is considered a “national expert in this area.”  Research on the impact of puberty blockers can be traced back to 2011, when a Dutch study of 70 children on puberty blockers found slight improvements in their mental health. While this study was used as a catalyst to promote puberty blockers for transitioning youth, a later analysis in 2023 found this study to be “critically flawed.” The analysis found that the study only reported the “best-case scenario outcomes” and failed to examine the risks of puberty blockers.   The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in December for United States v. Skrmetti, in which the Biden administration is challenging a 2023 Tennessee law banning puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries used for the purpose of attempting to transition a child to the opposite sex. The post Physician Refuses to Publish Study on Puberty Blockers appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.