Pediatric Gender Medicine Doctor Johanna Olson-Kennedy Is In The News. I Watched the Video of Her Advocating for Mastectomies For Gender Dysphoric Minors
Pediatric Gender Medicine Doctor Johanna Olson-Kennedy Is In The News. I Watched the Video of Her Advocating for Mastectomies For Gender Dysphoric Minors
The controversial pediatric gender medicine doctor has been pilloried over revelations that she withheld null research findings about puberty blockers and has a very dissatisfied former patient.
Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a major leader in pediatric gender medicine at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, is making controversial waves this week.
The New York Times just reported that Dr. Olson-Kennedy has withheld NIH-funded research findings that indicate puberty blockers were not tied to mental-health improvements in gender dysphoric children. She told the Times that she has deliberately refrained from publishing these null findings out of concern of how they would be leveraged politically.
In her interactions with Times reporter Azeen Ghorayshi, Dr. Olson-Kennedy downplayed the substantial mental health problems many of the children exhibited upon entry into the study. Instead, she claimed, contrary to evidence, they were doing well before puberty blockers—and that they continued to do well while taking them.
She also claimed that her own clinical experience, which indicated that children flourish on these drugs, was being undervalued. She made this claim despite the fact that professional opinion is considered the least valid form of scientific evidence in evidence-based medicine.
Additionally, the anti-pediatric-gender-medicine activist known as Billboard Chris published a video on Monday of his conversation with former patient of Dr. Olson-Kennedy. This young woman, who has detransitioned, said that Dr. Olson-Kennedy provided what she characterized as rushed, incautious and sloppy care that left her regretting having a double mastectomy at age 14.
The Undercover Video of Dr. Olson-Kennedy
In the undercover video above, which was posted in 2019, Dr. Olson-Kennedy was speaking to a group of mental health providers about her research on double mastectomies in minors with gender dysphoria. The main purpose of the talk was to help these providers write more effective letters supporting pediatric patients’ desire to get double mastectomies for a gender transition.
Dr. Olson-Kennedy said that her research indicates that the outcomes of these surgeries are overwhelmingly positive. There is virtually no regret among the patients, she said, and the operations are tied to many improvements in patients’ well-being and overall functioning in life.
It is now evident that at least one of Dr. Olson-Kennedy's patients had a very negative reaction to having such a surgery, given what Billboard Chris has learned.
I was particularly interested in what language Dr. Olson-Kennedy did and did not employ during her talk. She discouraged mental health providers from using the world “child” in their letters to insurance companies backing a gender-dysphoric minor’s wish for a mastectomy. She encouraged them, instead, to just use the patient's preferred name, or to say “young person.” Presumably, this was to de-emphasize how young these minor patients were.
Throughout her talk, Dr. Olson-Kennedy, was herself cautious not to say “child,” and at times would correct herself if she did, instead calling these pediatric patients ‘young people.”
She also almost entirely used the word “folks” (sometimes written as "folx") instead of “people,” which is a common preference in the trans community (although I do not know why, since there is no apparent difference between those words). And she betrayed herself as the sort of person who repeatedly uttered the phrase “have a conversation about.” Many of the audience members then parroted the phrase.
Dr. Olson-Kennedy was also very cautious to largely avoid using anatomical terms associated with womanhood, including breasts (she called it a child’s “chest contour”), breastfeeding (“chestfeeding”) and pregnancy (“carry a child”).
One point that struck me was when Dr. Olson-Kennedy was discussing the kinds of concerns that parents express about their child undergoing gender-transition treatment and surgery. She expressed a blend of derision and contempt for such concerns, in particular parents’ worries about not having grandchildren, which she appeared to dismiss as self-centered and an almost irrelevant imposition on the child’s autonomy.
Gender-transition treatment begun in adolescence can render a young person infertile.
Her dismissiveness of parents’ concerns reminded me of a similar attitude expressed by Lurie Children’s Dr. Robert Garofalo in this video.
Most famously, Dr. Olson-Kennedy dismissed concerns about potential future regret over having a mastectomy as a minor by saying: “What we do know is that adolescents actually have the capacity to make a reasonable, logical decision. And here’s the other thing about chest surgery. If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them!”
With some exceptions, minors may not legally consent to gender-transition treatment and surgeries; they can only assent, as it’s called. Their parents or guardians must consent on their behalf.
Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s assertion that minors have the capacity to consent to such intense, irreversible medical interventions is belied by the types of frank conversations members of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health had that were exposed by Michael Shellenberger in the WPATH Files. These pediatric gender medicine practitioners described children who had been unable to predict their future fertility desires.
Dr. Olson-Kennedy said that only one patient in the study had any regrets about having their breasts removed, because they wanted to “carry a child.” But she said that this patient did ultimately give birth and that things are going very well. She did not speak explicitly about this patient’s inability to breastfeed.
Overall, Dr. Olson-Kennedy presented herself as a seasoned expert and a passionate advocate for the manifold benefits of double mastectomies for natal girls who have chest dysphoria and wish to transition to being men. She spoke enthusiastically about patients having these during adolescence. She saw requiring children to wait until adulthood as a cruel imposition.
I am an independent journalist, specializing in science and health care coverage. I contribute to The New York Times, The Guardian, NBC News and The New York Sun. I have also written for the Washington Post, The Atlantic and The Nation. Follow me on Twitter: @benryanwriter. Visit my website: benryan.net
As a parent, I see this as the Tuskegee experiment of our time.
How sad that we have children suffering, and the doctors they are often referred to are the actual lunatics.