White House Reportedly Directs NIH To Study ‘Detransition,’ Trans ‘Regret’

The Trump administration directed its main biomedical research agency in mid-March to study the physical and psychological effects of gender transitioning among children, incensing some critics, according to reports.

Matthew Memoli, Acting Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at the time, emailed several NIH directors saying that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “has been directed to fund research on a few specific areas” regarding “chemical and surgical mutilation” of children and adults, the scientific journal Nature reported. The HHS is the NIH’s parent agency.

Two specific areas of government interest were “regret and detransition following social transition as well as chemical and surgical mutilation of children and adults” and “outcomes from children who have undergone social transition and/or chemical and surgical mutilation,” according to the emailed memo, which Nature said it had obtained.

Several NIH employees confirmed the directive to Nature and NPR, both outlets reported.

“This is very important to the President and the Secretary [of the HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.],” the email read, according to the outlets.

“They would like us to have funding announcements within the next six months to get this moving,” the email continued, NPR reported.

The reported directive comes on the heels of an avalanche of cancelations of grants for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) research. The Trump administration canceled more than 270 such grants collectively worth at least $125 million, NBC News reported. (RELATED: Youngkin Board Ends ‘Gender Affirming Care’ At Major University Hospital)

White House orders NIH to research trans “regret” and “detransition.”https://t.co/vLTGiNuhjW

— Rob Stein (@robsteinnews) April 11, 2025

“What they’re looking for is a political answer not a scientific one,” Adrian Shanker, a former deputy assistant secretary for health policy at HHS under President Joe Biden, told NPR. “That should be an alarm for everyone who cares about the scientific integrity of the National Institutes of Health.”

Harry Barbee, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told NPR that the term “chemical or surgical mutilation” was “deeply offensive.”

“This terminology has no place in serious scientific or public health discourse. The language has been historically used to stigmatize trans people. Even the phrase[s] ‘regret’ and ‘detransition’ can be weaponized,” Barbee added.

Barbee indicated support for “rigorous, ethically grounded research into all aspects of transgender health, and that includes the experience of detransition” but added that such research must be one that “neither pathologizes transition nor undermines the overwhelming evidence showing that gender-affirming care is beneficial and even life-saving for the vast majority of trans people who desire such services.”

Barbee, who identifies as non-binary and queer, told Nature that the proposed studies would seek to narrow the view of transgender people as people who only sought medical transition and then regretted it. “When ideology is prioritized over scientific merit, that threatens the entire scientific enterprise.”

Some studies have indicated that many who undergo medical gender transition do not appear to regret it. However, the studies do not include control groups, and their conclusions are further complicated by the absence of long-term studies and the health risks that could follow medical transition.

“The research on detransition is very useful, it’s a very important area,” Michael Biggs, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oxford, told NPR. “This is an understudied population to collect systematic data on.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Jan. 20 declaring the official recognition of only two sexes, male and female, and decrying the replacement of “immutable biological reality” with the “identity-based, inchoate social concept” of gender fluidity.