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The National Institutes of Health could be concealing the effect of puberty blockers, drugs that often are given to minors as part of so-called gender-affirming care, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., suggests Monday in a letter to the agency’s director obtained by The Daily Signal.

In his letter to NIH Director Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, Rubio draws particular attention to an NIH-funded study by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a physician who is the medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Despite the Obama administration’s decision to support Olson-Kennedy’s study more than nine years ago, the findings have yet to be released, allegedly out of fear of the political repercussions.

Rubio claims that Olson-Kennedy was part of a group of researchers who received nearly $6 million from the NIH to study the physical and mental health outcomes for children who receive hormone blockers and cross-sex hormone treatments.

Olson-Kennedy outlined a few of her findings in a 2020 report that said approximately a quarter of the children in the study who received these medical treatments were experiencing depression or suicidal ideation.

“According to [Olson-Kennedy], she fears the findings will be used to show that puberty blockers do not improve the mental health of youth,” Rubio writes.

If the findings are being suppressed, Rubio writes, Olson-Kennedy is “masquerad[ing] political ideology under a veil of scientific legitimacy.”

In response to the potential coverup, Rubio demands that the National Institutes of Health investigate Olson-Kennedy and other researchers in this group to discover if they are willfully withholding information on the damaging effects of puberty blockers, and how left-wing political biases might impact the quality of published NIH research.