The Mutilation of Our Children: Are Taxpayers Footing the Bill to Fuel the Righteous Ego of Leading Trans Doctor?

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By Tracy Beanz & Michelle Edwards

Johanna Olson-Kennedy, MD—the medical director of the most prominent transgender youth clinic in the United States—is considered a national expert in trans youth health. For the past sixteen years, she has made a career out of helping gender non-conforming and transgender kids “emerge into themselves” using puberty suppression and cross-sex hormones. Despite her relentless efforts, a growing body of scientific evidence steadily suggests that, instead of benefiting children, transgender hormone treatments may indeed harm them. This may explain why Olson-Kennedy intentionally delayed and withheld the release of a $9.7 million tax-payer-funded multi-year study revealing that puberty blockers did not improve the mental health of children with gender dysphoria. With nearly a decade of experimenting on and enabling children to transition under her care, Olson-Kennedy told The New York Times she had not published the research because it might be used as evidence to ban specific treatments for transgender children, adding:

“I do not want our work to be weaponized. It has to be exactly on point, clear, and concise. And that takes time.”

Who is Pediatrician Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy? Serving as Medical Director of The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles, Olson-Kennedy—whose husband is a transgender man and mental health provider—experienced her “highest-profile” public appearance in 2015 when she was featured on 20/20 as an expert supporting Caitlyn Jenner after the former male Olympic medalist came out on the show as a woman. Staying in the spotlight, in 2016, in an article titled “Demand surges for clinicians serving transgender youth – and for early treatment,” PBS featured Olson-Kennedy, noting that she “uses a stethoscope and otoscope, of course,” but added that running a clinic for transgender kids means her practice also includes a selection of “silicone penises and chest flattening binders.” What?! Highlighting that Olson-Kennedy’s youngest transgender patient is just 3 years old (one can’t help but wonder—was this toddler exposed to silicone penises and chest flattening binders), the article’s author shared:

“Thanks to the openness of Caitlyn Jenner and others, public awareness of transgenderism — and demand for trans-specific medical care like counseling, hormone treatments, and genital surgery — is exploding, even for the youngest of patients. At the 30-plus clinics for transgender youth across the U.S., doctors like Olson-Kennedy can barely keep up with the demand.”

Again, the article shared that these entrusted doctors are presenting kids, the majority of which are experiencing typical growing pains, with silicone penises and chest-flattening binders, and they can barely keep up with the demand to forever mutilate their young bodies. Wow! The reality of the abuse inflicted on our nation’s children is criminal. PBS reported that, despite Olson-Kennedy’s concerns about maintaining “access to the health care they need to transition,” she also saw signs of hope. Specifically, the article highlighted that Olson-Kennedy was excited to help lead the first National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for research on transgender youth. “And she and others hope that data will help win out over discrimination,” the article added.

On August 14, 2015, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announced the initial $5.7 million in funding from the NIH to study the mental health of transgender youth in the United States, to be spread out over several years. With one of the more corrupt, wasteful, and unrestrained taxpayer-funded agencies financing their gender exploitation experiments on children, since 2015, Olson-Kennedy and her team, consisting of Yee-Ming Chan, Robert Garofalo, and Stephen M. Rosenthal, have received NIH funding for the study, titled “The Impact of Early Medical Treatment in Transgender Youth” nine times totaling nearly $10 million (they have also conducted numerous other studies experimenting with the gender of children). Specifically, Olson-Kennedy and her crew explained that the groundbreaking research would “evaluate the impact of treatment on mental health, psychological well-being, physiologic parameters, and bone health, and document the safety of hormone blockers.”

The study included youth from two groups: 95 younger children in early puberty who received hormone blockers called GnRH agonists to suspend the process of puberty, thus preventing the development of undesired secondary sex characteristics, and 316 older adolescents who began using masculinizing or feminizing cross-sex hormones that allowed them to go through the ‘right’ puberty—consistent with the gender they identified with. Undoubtedly—despite Olson-Kennedy declaring otherwise—it then becomes impossible for these kids to detransition completely unharmed and return to a pre-transition state of health.

At the end of the 2015 leg of the study, the authors wrote that the initial findings pointed to “possible benefits of accessing gender-affirming treatment early in life”—in other words, as young as three years old. The authors added that “findings from the TYC (Trans Youth Care) study have the potential to significantly advance evidence-based practice for TNB (transgender and non-binary) youth and justify the need for gender-affirming care.” Translation—they aim to continue to spend taxpayer money to tinker with kids’ gender as well as their mental and physical well-being. So, like clockwork, and with no mention of any analysis focused on the underlying psychological causes of youth gender dysphoria, the NIH threw another $1.2 million to keep the study going in 2016. And again, the NIH granted additional millions in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and the latest round in 2024, which Olson-Kennedy refused to publish after completing because the results proved, again, that puberty blockers do not improve mental health.

As highlighted in a 2019 article in Transgender Trend, physicians like Olson-Kennedy are fueling the destruction of our children. Olson-Kennedy has repeatedly made the unevidenced claim that underlying mental health diagnoses are not the cause of gender dysphoria. Moreover, Olson-Kennedy has repeatedly side-stepped the issue of children’s malleability, vulnerability to adult suggestion, and capacity to consent by simply making no distinction at all between adults and children, instead referencing children as “people.” Olson-Kennedy insists, “It’s absurd, we really have to understand that people know their gender—they’re not making a decision about their gender, they’re making a decision about what to do with it if it doesn’t match their assigned sex at birth.” That statement alone should initiate a pause with NIH funding. Indeed, Olson-Kennedy has grossly failed to recognize the status of childhood, with her peers quoting her as saying:

 “People come in, they already know their gender…I think it’s weird that a stranger would know your gender better than you. I think that’s just odd.”

When disclosing Olson-Kennedy’s decision not to release the 2024 study, The New York Times headline announced: “U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says.” Is it politics or job security for Olson-Kennedy? After all, Olson-Kennedy has made a career, indeed a lucrative one, out of pushing doctors to provide transgender puberty-blocking drugs to kids as if they were candy. And this is not the first time healthcare professionals have suppressed information about the dangers of puberty blockers. In 2021, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH, of which both Johanna Olson-Kennedy and her husband are members) altered proposed age-based guidelines for transgender drugs and surgeries for minors after facing arm-twisting from the current administration. WPATH removed its recommended age minimums for every procedure based on concerns that the guidance would fuel criticism of the use of puberty blockers for kids.

With the prior deceit in mind, The Times noted that Olson Kennedy tried to explain the lack of mental health improvements in the most recent leg of the study by saying the children were “in really good shape [regarding mental health] when they came in, and they’re in really good shape” after receiving puberty blockers. But her statement is not valid. The study authors had previously reported that nearly 30 percent of the children suffered from depression going into the study, close to one-fourth of them had suicidal thoughts, and around 8 percent had attempted suicide. When asked by the Times about the disparity, Olson-Kennedy insisted she was referring to data averages and was still analyzing the data.

The questions persist. Why is Olson-Kennedy, who insists that mastectomies for healthy girls are no big deal, so determined to damage and alter children permanently? Would publishing a years-long study on 95 kids confirming that puberty blockers did not improve the state of their mental health “weaponize” her work, as she suggests? Erica Li, a reflective pediatrician who almost joined Olson-Kennedy’s team of gender doctors a decade ago, wrote last year that Olson-Kennedy insisted to her there was no perceived social benefit of coming out as transgender. Instead, Olson-Kennedy effectively explained to Li that the “handicap principle,” also known as Zahavian signaling—often encapsulated in the adage “a costly signal must be honest”—assures that those who declare a different gender should be honored and taken at face value.

Li explained that Olson-Kennedy asserted that if someone is willing to risk social ostracization, parental rejection, and increased exposure to violence to live as their authentic self, they must be honest. Therefore, we must honor and support them. Li shared that, at the time, Olson-Kennedy’s perspective on the Zahavian signal resonated with her. However, Li has since reconsidered Olson-Kennedy’s invocation of the Zahavian signal, writing that “given that gender ideology is essentially an anti-reality cult ideology, the costly signal of committing to dramatically and permanently altering one’s body through puberty suppression, cross-sex hormones, and surgery may be a type of initiation ritual—a large, non-refundable deposit used to signal loyalty.” Insightful indeed.

Hmmm. Are these mutilations intended to signal loyalty to righteous doctors like Olson-Kennedy, who are well-versed in coercing parents to “affirm” their child’s gender identity? Firmly, Li shared that “As a fledgling doctor uncertain about my career path, I was invited to join the gender ideology cult by a charismatic recruiter [Olson-Kennedy] with a message about victimhood and a gift for invoking moral sympathy.” She added, “But ultimately, my commitment to truth and responsibility steered me away from practicing non-evidence-based, postmodern gender medicine.” Li’s points are significantly relevant and thought-provoking, illuminating perhaps why Olson-Kennedy refuses to release her study results. Stating what resonates with all of us desperate to protect our children from predators like Olson-Kennedy, Li expressed that, unlike them, “she’s fortunate not to have her empathy and capacity to reason parasitized by a destructive ideology disguised as righteousness.”

As previously mentioned, Transgender Trend, a well-established UK organization advocating for an evidence-based social and clinical approach toward children who self-identify as transgender, shares the same sentiment. The blog insists that Olson-Kennedy’s approach, which uses language to persuade children that they are transgender, is nothing short of criminal and utterly heartbreaking. You can read a detailed example here. In 2019, the blog shared a glimpse into Olson-Kennedy’s disregard for children, specifically girls in this instance, and the mutilation she encourages upon them, remarking:

“The overarching impression from listening to Olson-Kennedy talk is that the belief in a disconnected gendered soul enables contempt for the physical body and its limitations, that the protection of an idea replaces protection for the body. The callous disregard for children’s bodies, especially female bodies, is quite breathtaking. Would this contempt for the human body be acceptable in any other area of healthcare? The spread of gender as a new religion seems to be blinding people to what is really going on here: the sexual mutilation of young girls’ [and boys’] bodies.”

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Tracy Beanz & Michelle Edwards

Tracy Beanz is an investigative journalist with a focus on corruption. She is known for her unbiased, in-depth coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. She hosts the Dark to Light podcast, found on all major video and podcasting platforms. She is a bi-weekly guest on the Joe Pags Radio Show, has been on Steve Bannon’s WarRoom and is a frequent guest on Emerald Robinson’s show. Tracy is Editor-in-chief at UncoverDC.com.