Pro-Trans Doctors Lied To Keep Federal Money Flowing For Puberty Blockers

Was federally funded research on “trans” kids stopped by the Trump administration, only to be revived a year later because researchers “rebranded” their research to hide the trans focus? California endocrinologist Dr. Michael Laidlaw may have uncovered such skullduggery in connection with a multimillion-dollar NIH-funded study examining the effects of puberty blockers on children’s brains and mental health. The result is that taxpayers are being duped about what’s being done with their money — and gender-confused children may pay the price. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has lavishly funded studies seemingly designed to reach a particular conclusion: that transgender-identifying patients, even minors, should be offered irreversible medical interventions to help them imitate the opposite sex. This includes chemical suppression of natural puberty with puberty blockers (PBs, for short). In January 2025, the Trump administration called a halt to these politicized “studies,” directing the NIH to end $780 million in grants broadly termed diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”). Litigation ensued. As the legal battle continues, some panicky trans-industry researchers have scrambled to modify their grant proposals to avoid the ax. Study of Puberty Blockers Enter Laidlaw, who has long fought trans mania in the medical profession. Laidlaw has recently focused on an NIH-funded study begun in 2021, which the researchers described as “an essential step to addressing health disparities that currently exist for transgender youth.” The researchers aimed to determine if administering PBs led to improved mental health for trans-identifying children. The study would employ brain scans and other techniques to compare the brain development and mental-health outcomes of 66 trans-identifying children who were given PBs with that of 66 trans-identifying children allowed to develop normally. The applicants hypothesized that PBs (though possibly interfering with brain development in some ways) would reduce anxiety, depression, and substance abuse among so-called trans kids. The explicit point of the study was thus to examine the effect of PBs on these kids’ mental health. Funding the Skewed Study Troubled by the prominent involvement of several researchers nationally known for advancing the agenda of the trans industry, Laidlaw anticipated they would skew the study toward a preordained conclusion: that PBs are good for trans-identifying children’s mental health. He thus sought information from the NIH via a Freedom of Information Act request to see what mischief might be afoot. When Laidlaw finally received the study documents he had requested more than 18 months earlier, he noticed some interesting developments. Significant NIH funding was paid annually (roughly $725,000 per year for 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2026). Note the gap for 2025 — the year the Trump administration tightened the screws — and the resumption of funding in 2026. Laidlaw theorized that 2025 funding was paused because of the Trump restrictions, but how to explain the resumed cash flow in 2026? Whitewashing the Study He discovered from the documents that in March 2025 the researchers wrote to a federal grants supervisor admitting that the study “may generate concerns for the priorities of the current administration.” But they argued that their study was critical to determining the effect of PBs not on “trans kids,” but on a broader array of patients who might be administered these drugs for other medical conditions. Only two “minor changes,” they assured the feds, could convert the study from trans focus to something else entirely: First, we will remove all references to gender identity from this project. … All analyses will be based on sex, sex hormones, and age [not gender identity]. Our discussion of gender dysphoria will be limited to characterization of the sample and will not serve as an analytic factor. In other words, the researchers now claimed that gender dysphoria was only one of several areas they would study, even asserting that “gender identity was not a major factor in our group comparisons or design of this study.” Ignore everything we said before, this isn’t a trans study, so give us our money. Scrubbed Language Laidlaw also discovered that the original grant application had been “thoroughly whitewashed, bit-bleached, and rainbow-scrubbed to exclude the majority of the troublesome language” in the application. For example: The original project summary proposed to examine the effects of PBs on “the mental health of transgender adolescents over time.” The revised summary changed “transgender adolescents” to simply “adolescents.” The original summary suggested that PBs may benefit mental health of “transgender youth.” The revised version: Puberty blockers “are used in a number of pediatric populations and are an effective means of suppressing puberty.” No mention of the mental health of trans-identifying kids, the whole point of the study. The original documentation referred to the “focus on high risk symptoms prevalent among transgender youth.” The revised version scrubbed that reference, changing “transgender youth” to “adolescents.” The point of the study was no longer the point. Continuing the whitewash, the intention to “compare 132 early pubertal transgender youth” became only “132 early pubertal youth.” Laidlaw also noted that researchers had scrubbed all mention of the so-called “standard of care” invented by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and what he calls “their lackey, the Endocrine Society.” WPATH focuses only on medical treatment of trans-identifying individuals, not broader “pediatric populations,” so all references to the organization disappeared entirely. Laidlaw can’t swear that these revisions triggered resumed NIH funding for 2026. But “what is not disputable,” he says, “is that the grantees submitted a progress report in 2025 … with very significant changes to the study’s summary and aims. Those changes, in my opinion, alter the intent and purpose of the entire study.” Concerns about Deception Could this all be camouflage to conceal the continuing purpose of the study — to justify inflicting PBs on trans-identifying children — while evading scrutiny based on new anti-DEI policies? If so, the maneuver raises two concerns. One is that the agenda seems so laughably transparent that an NIH professional, acting in good faith, couldn’t possibly have been fooled. Only a bureaucrat who shared the researchers’ political goals would have played along and restored funding. Deep State, anyone? The second problem is that such deception, if that’s true here, skates perilously close to lying to a federal agency (and to taxpayers) to obtain a grant. This is not a minor offense. Penalties can range from NIH sanctions regarding funding, to civil and criminal liability for fraudulent submissions. At the very least, the evidence demands an investigation. Laidlaw argues for penalties to be imposed on any grant recipient found to have defrauded taxpayers. And given the demonstrable harm of inflicting PBs on healthy children, he suggests the only ethical solution to the puberty-blocker quandary: “[S]top all of the harmful research on [puberty blockers] for gender dysphoria immediately.” Jane Robbins is an attorney and a retired senior fellow with the American Principles Project in Washington, D.C. In that position she crafted federal and state legislation designed to restore the constitutional autonomy of states and parents in education policy and to protect the rights of religious freedom and conscience. She is a graduate of Clemson University and the Harvard Law School. cross-sex hormonesDEIdoctorsfederal fundinggrantsMichael LaidlawNIHpubertal suppressionpuberty blockerstransgenderismWorld Professional Association for Transgender Health