A group of four Republicans on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce called for more transparency of clinical trial data funded by taxpayers after a New York Times story ran this week that said an NIH-funded study is still unpublished because of politics.
On Thursday, E&C Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Diana Harshbarger (R-TN) shared statements condemning the decision not to release the trial results.
The statements come after an article on Wednesday reported that Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a doctor and adolescent gender treatment activist, refused to release data from an NIH-funded project on transgender youth. The study data found that after two years of puberty blockers, the adolescents did not see improved mental health. Olson-Kennedy told the Times that it was likely because the children were already doing well mentally when the trial began, adding that she doesn’t want the data to be “weaponized.”
“Delaying the publication of clinical trial studies, funded in part by the federal government, for fear that its findings would be ‘weaponized’ by those who are opposed to invasive transgender procedures in juveniles is irresponsible and inappropriate,” Rep. Griffith wrote in his statement.
Harshbarger called for the NIH to release the data immediately, and added that the refusal to release the data is an “example of why NIH must be reformed with measures like those initiated by Chair Rogers to ensure transparency, standards of objectivity, and the removal of conflicts of interest in federal taxpayer-funded scientific and medical research.”
Other calls have come to expand transparency into federally funded research: In 2022, senators wrote a letter to the NIH asking why the agency couldn’t do a better job of ensuring taxpayer-funded research is published in a timely manner. That same year, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy gave executive agencies until Dec. 31, 2025 to make publications and research paid for with taxpayer dollars publicly accessible without restrictions.