Trump Orders National Institutes of Health to Study “Transition Regret”
After canceling billions of dollars in funding for LGBTQ+ research, the White House is now directing the NIH to focus on researching detransition.
The National Institutes of Health may have already defunded nearly every study exploring the trans community, but now, the agency has a new directive: focus on studying “transition regret.” Specifically, agency directors have been instructed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the NIH, to direct funding to studies that explore post-surgery regret among people who have received gender-affirming care, a notably rare medical phenomenon.
In a March 2025 memo obtained by scientific journal Nature, Matthew Memoli, the then-acting NIH director, told several NIH leaders that the agency would pursue new priorities. Specifically, Memoli wrote that HHS had been directed to fund research in two specific areas: “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 mutilation.” In short, the NIH has been ordered to redirect its research funds away from studies exploring the trans community and towards studies exploring detransition.
In the same memo, Memoli wrote that such research was “very important” to President Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and that the pair hopes to see these studies funded and in progress within the next six months. Memoli has since been replaced as NIH director by controversial physician Jay Bhattacharya, who the Senate confirmed on March 25.
This change in focus comes just weeks after the White House cut NIH funding for nearly 200 studies involving gender and sexuality. Last month, Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Brittany Charlton spoke out after all of her ongoing studies—which included research into obstetrical outcomes for queer women and the impact of discriminatory laws on the mental health of LGBTQ+ teens—were stripped of funding. Also defunded were multiple studies investigating Alzheimer’s and dementia in LGBTQ+ seniors.
Related: NIH Revoked Millions Of Dollars For LGBTQ+ Research. One Doctor Is Speaking Out
At the time, NIH wrote in termination letters to the impacted researchers that their projects “do not serve the priorities” of the current administration, and that “research programs based on gender identity are often unscientific” and “ignore biological realities.” When Dr. Charlton came forward, an anonymous NIH official told ABC News that the White House had specifically directed the agency to ensure active research grants “do not contain any DEI research activities.”
The shift in NIH priorities isn’t just biased—it’s actively dangerous. According to researchers who study the health impacts of gender transitions, less than 1% of trans people who receive gender-affirming surgeries later regret their choice, far less than the 14.4% who receive surgeries they later regret. Further, a 2022 Princeton University study showed that trans youth are particularly unlikely to detransition. Of the more than 300 trans children included in the five-year study, whose ages ranged from 3-12 at the start of the research, only 2.5% had detransitioned by the end of the period; the remaining 97.5% continued to identify as trans or nonbinary.
However, the NIH directive is in line with President Trump’s ongoing attacks on the trans community. In addition to his executive orders defining gender as biological sex at birth and barring trans troops from military service, the president has made a mission of erasing trans children from public life. In January, just one week after taking office, the president signed an executive order restricting access to gender-affirming healthcare for anyone under 19. In February, he signed another order banning trans athletes from competing in women’s sports. Earlier this week, Trump declared April “National Child Abuse Prevention Month,” writing in an executive order that “one of the most prevalent forms of child abuse facing our country today is the sinister threat of gender ideology.”
Less than 1% of the United States population identifies as transgender, and of them, only about one quarter receive gender-affirming surgeries. Prior research has shown that gender-affirming healthcare is associated with reducing the risk of negative mental health outcomes for trans individuals, including depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide, while increasing overall quality of life.
