USC professor's pediatric "gender clinic" shuts down
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The End (Hopefully) of an Era
The Center for Transyouth Health and Development run by Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a professor of clinical pediatrics with the Keck School of Medicine at USC, is apparently shutting down, at least for now. From the Los Angeles Times:
The Center for Transyouth Health and Development began telling its nearly 3,000 patient families of the closure on Thursday, saying there was “no viable alternative” that would allow the safety-net hospital to continue specialized care.
Receding federal funding and tolerance for experimental surgery and puberty blockers for confused children might be to blame:
The email said the decision to close the center on July 22 “follows a lengthy and thorough assessment of the increasingly severe impacts of federal administrative actions and proposed policies” that have emerged since the hospital briefly paused the initiation of care for some patients this winter.
We’ve covered the ongoing saga of Olson-Kennedy in our newsletters already. In October, the New York Times revealed that she’d chosen not to share findings from a taxpayer-funded study on puberty blockers. In December, Olson-Kennedy was sued by a former patient of hers who received a double mastectomy at age 14 with the good doctor’s sign-off.
Results from her puberty blockers study recently came to light in pre-print form. Independent journalist Benjamin Ryan broke down the findings in detail. Essentially, they found no change in the mental health of patients enrolled in the study. There was no control group, and the study relied on self-reporting. This apparently cost the taxpayers $10 million.
Olson-Kennedy has played a key role over the years in moving our healthcare system away from a cautious approach to “gender care” for children to the much more aggressive and invasive form of “care” we now see today, says Ryan. She was rather infamously caught on video during a training for mental health providers declaring:
“What we do know is that adolescents actually have the capacity to make a reasoned, 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.”
Completely normal and sensible medical advice!
Under the Magnifying Glass
Since Trump’s demand that universities dismantle DEI, some are complying….sort of? Many, like USC, have moved DEI staff around and renamed DEI departments. This may not be enough. The University of Virginia did the same:
….the university dissolved its central DEI office. It began moving some “legally permissible” programs to other divisions.
and now they’re in the justice department’s crosshairs:
It has not, however, released details about who, or what, has moved or whether anyone has been laid off, prompting some critics of DEI to question how much has really changed. Now the dispute has caught the attention of the Department of Justice, which has pushed well beyond the changes the board had ordered. Department lawyers demanded proof by the end of the month that all vestiges of DEI at Virginia have been eliminated.
Interesting News and Research from USC
USC researchers develop low-cost blood test for early Alzheimer’s detection
USC, UCLA team up for the world’s first-in-human bladder transplant
Study reveals how protein droplets help cells master difficult DNA repair
USC launches $12 million Institute on Ethics & Trust in Computing
Can AI understand when it’s breaking the law?
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