UC San Francisco Doctors Gave Puberty Blockers to Children as Young as Nine

Newly uncovered records reveal a troubling trend in the medical establishment, raising serious concerns about the care provided to children at the University of California San Francisco.

We received 2,491 pages of records in a California Public Records Act lawsuit on behalf of The Daily Caller News Foundation that show top doctors in the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) gave puberty blockers to children as young as age nine.

We obtained the records as the result of a 2023 lawsuit for information about UCSF’s transgender program’s targeting of children (Daily Caller News Foundation v. The Regents of the University of California (No. 23-518397)).

There is something rotten in the state of California: UCSF and LA Children’s Hospital were conducting transgender drug and surgical experiments on little children – and trying to cover it up.

The records include many emails from which participants’ names are redacted and withheld from the public.

An October 12, 2022, email chain between The New York Times reporters, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), and National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials with the subject line “Final Qs on Trans Youth Care study” details discussion regarding “the big N.I.H. multi-site study” of “the use of puberty blockers on transgender adolescents” and whether an eight-year-old developed “significant osteopenia:” Osteopenia is the medical term for bone density loss.

Dear NIH team, Dr. [Redacted] and Ms. [Redacted],

Christina Jewett and Megan Twohey here, from The New York Times. We are preparing to publish a story on the use of puberty blockers on transgender adolescents that we have been working on for many months.

The story includes some information related to the big N.I.H. multi-site study on blockers and hormone treatment:

• In a 2014 funding proposal to the National Institutes of Health, four prominent American gender clinics pointed out that the United States had never produced data on the physiological and mental health impact, safety and tolerability of the drugs, particularly among transgender patients under 12, leaving a “gap in evidence for this practice.”
• Awarded nearly $8 million to examine the effects of blockers and sex hormones, the investigators have yet to report on key outcomes of treatment.
• A child in the N.I.H. study who started blockers at age 8, developed “significant osteopenia,” and switched to hormone treatment at 11 “to support bone health,” according to investigator reports submitted to the N.I.H.Please let us know any of the information is inaccurate.

Also, we know that the N.I.H investigators have produced some reports out of their study — such as baseline measures, telehealth dynamics and height velocity. But why have they yet to report on key outcomes of treatment, such as the effects of blockers on mental health and bones (Aim 1)?

Do you have any comment on the case of the 8-year-old study participant who was put on CSH as a result of developing osteopenia, per the 2019 study update?

These questions are forwarded to Stephen M. Rosenthal, M.D, Medical Director, Child and Adolescent Gender Center, University of California San Francisco. A Children’s Hospital Los Angeles official writes: “Steve, you need to correct the information about your participant.”

Rosenthal writes to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, requesting a copy of the “2019 study update,” and later writes:

OK, [redacted] and I have now reviewed all UCSF participants in both cohorts

First, with respect to the blocker cohort, we did not start a blocker on anyone age 8 years. The youngest participant in the blocker cohort from our site was 9 years, 3 months, and this individual did not develop osteopenia. Second, with respect to the GAH cohort, we had 7 participants who entered into the study having been previously treated with a blocker. None of these 7 participants started a blocker at 8 years of age, but were significantly older.

***

Here is the relevant text from the 2019 study update:

“Within the CSH cohort, 311 participants have been enrolled across all study sites. Participants range in age from 11 to 20 years old, with a mean age of 16 +/- 1.9 years. Participants aged 13 and older made up 98% of the CSH cohort. The single 11-year-old who enrolled in the study was receiving cross-sex hormones in order to support bone health due to significant osteopenia.”

This participant was not previously treated with a blocker at age 8, so the information described by the NYT reporters is incorrect. [Redacted]

In terms of the 24 month f/u bone paper, they can be told (as previously communicated to them through our email to the NIH) that the data analysis and related manuscript preparation are underway, and we are targeting December for manuscript submission.

On October 14, 2022, an official at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles emails The New York Times:

Here’s clarification on the following statement you provided:

A child in the N.I.H. study who started blockers at age 8, developed “significant osteopenia,” and switched to hormone treatment at 11 “to support bone health,” according to investigator reports submitted to the N.I.H

This statement is incorrect. There is no such participant in our study.

On October 19, 2022, Jewett from the Times emails the university, “Thanks for patiently answering our questions so far. This one is quick and hopefully easy. What's the Z-score where one considers that a young person (14) has osteopenia? Wasn't sure if it was -1.5 and below or -2 and below.”

An Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and of Medicine from the University of California San Francisco responds to the inquiry:

We do not use the terminology “osteopenia” or “osteoporosis” in children and pre-menopausal individuals solely based on DXA. Rather, the definition of “low bone density for age” is a BMD Z-score less than or equal to -2. The diagnosis of “osteoporosis” in pre-menopausal individuals requires some evidence of skeletal fragility, as detailed in the references above.

On November 14, 2022, a clinical research manager from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles emails Rosenthal, university and Children’s Hospital officials, sending them the link to The New York Times article:

The NYT article has been published. Here’s the link, and I’ve attached a PDF.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/health/puberty-blockers-transgender.html

The link in the article to our study takes readers to the JMIR protocol paper.

Steve, you were quoted in the article around not prescribing stand-alone blockers to anyone over 14, and there’s a link to your statement against the Alabama ban on medical treatment for trans youth.

Dr. Spack and Boston Children’s Hospital are mentioned as leading the US adoption of blocker treatment.

In an October 2, 2022, email Dr. Madeline Deutsch, director of University of California San Francisco’s gender affirming health program, states that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care Version 8 (WPATH SOC8) no longer requires a letter from a mental health professional to perform transgender surgical procedures:

WPATH SOC8 is out and no longer requires a mental health “letter”. So we can now focus on patient-centered assessments. A single “letter” is provided by any qualified provider to attest to the patient's need for and appropriateness for surgery. In general, this letter should be able to come from the treating surgeon. Our new social worker, [redacted] focus will be on perioperative assessment and support, rather than formal gender dysphoria assessments and letter writing.

Please change your workflows accordingly. It remains to be seen how insurance companies will respond to these changes, but we should begin following SOC8 and then sort out insurance issues as they arise.

Please begin referring all of your surgical patients (once they have decided to pursue surgery here) to REF452 Transgender Care Social Work, so that [redacted] can and assess for needs. Also, [redacted] and I have been working on 2 initiatives:

1. We would like [redacted] work directly with discharge planning, when appropriate, to assist with postop needs, for example, finding a trans-affirming SNF, making sure IHSS workers are trans-inclusive, making sure social supports actually show up etc.... Can you please each provide the contact for your discharge planning teams? Ideally, [redacted] will be able to shadow these teams to better understand their flow.

2. [Redacted] would like to observe surgical cases, to become more familiar with the procedures and after-care needs. Are any of you able to host her for OR cases? Ideally, she will follow the patient from pre-op to PACU, and to the floor if an inpatient case.

3. Once up and running, [redacted] will round on inpatients with high psychosocial needs. We will work out a mechanism for this.

On October 4, 2022, a university official writes to Deutsch: “Thanks for the update Maddie. Sounds good. I will let the facial plastics team know about the change in workflow.”

In a November 10, 2022, email Daily Caller News Foundation reporter Rachel Page in an interview request states:

I am producing a documentary on the journey of adults who underwent the gender affirmation process. Many of our interviewees underwent both HRT and gender affirming surgeries. Several of our interviewees “detransitioned” from their transgender identity.

We're going to be in the SF-area on Nov. 16 and we were hoping to sit down with you to discuss the importance of supporting the LGBT agenda as well as rebut misconceptions about trans rights (i.e. transgender women are a threat to women's sports).

Shortly thereafter, an assistant professor in the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry writes to Rosenthal and Deutsch at the University of California, San Francisco: “FYI looks like journalists from the conservative Daily Caller will be in SF. I’m obviously ignoring this email, but not sure if they’d tried to ambush any of our providers? I’m cc’ing Steve and Maddie as well, so they’re aware.”

A senior public information representative then states: “It's good to be aware that they are in town. I'll alert [redacted] in Strat Comms to see if other steps should be taken.”

Rosenthal responds: “Thanks for letting me know and for your insights about these journalists.”

On September 21, 2022, a producer from Fox News’ The Tucker Carlson Show writes to UCSF’s Transgender Care Navigation Program:

Ahead of imminent coverage, please let me know how many genital surgeries you have performed on minors in the past year. Your published guidelines say these operations on minors are appropriate on a ‘case by case basis.’ How many? Also, are you worried about being sued into the ground like Tavistock? Deadline in 3 hours. Thanks.

The email is forwarded to Deutsch, Rosenthal, Vice Chancellor in the Office of Communications Won Ha, the office of Risk Management, and others.

Ha writes:

The Tucker Carlson show does not follow ethical journalistic standards nor is it a news program, but an opinion program. Whether we respond or not, this will be a negative story based on falsehoods and misleading claims. They will use any response from us in any way that suits their preconceived, false narrative, and will likely generate more attention to their partisan cause.

Rosenthal responds: “Thanks for the update, [redacted] Maybe at some point they can be sued.”

Deutsch responds to all: “An unfortunate segment. I am assuming they focused on Vanderbilt because it is located where their base is located. I've taken down our peds content in the guidelines for now and instead direct people to the SOC8 [WPATH SOC8]. The content they referenced is 6 years old anyway and slated for updating next year. I've also made a few light edits to the rest of our website to minimize any ability for the content to be weaponized.” 

Rosenthal writes: “Maddie, I’m so glad you removed the pediatric content from the UCSF guidelines.”

A September 22, 2022, email from someone in pediatrics at the University of Chicago to Rosenthal states:

A report on top surgery in transgender and nonbinary adolescents and a related editorial caught my eye. I thought this was not standard of care until the age of legal majority because of issues of regret and potential physician legal liability, and that puberty blocking therapy to prevent this sort of thing was the standard of care. Am I mistaken?

(The email apparently references two articles included in the UCSF production which ran in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Pediatrics titled “Top Surgery and Chest Dysphoria Among Transmasculine and Nonbinary Adolescents and Young Adults” and “Top Surgery in Adolescents and Young Adults—Effective and Medically Necessary.”)

The records include a December 22, 2022, letter from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), then-ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Labor to Rosenthal which asks whether UCSF “ever delivered medical interventions for a minor diagnosed with gender dysphoria whose parents have objected to such interventions?”

In an October 4, 2022, email, Rosenthal forwards a Washington Post article entitled “Okla. GOP ties hospital’s covid funds to end of gender-affirming care,” which he calls “a new low.”

“Normal people know that introducing permanent sex changes for nine-year-olds is sick. Neil Patel, chairman of the Daily Caller News Foundation, said. “That’s why these people tried so hard to hide the information. Thanks to our partners at Judicial Watch, Americans can finally see what they were up to. People deserve the truth.”

Judicial Watch Sues African Development Foundation to Expose Finances 

Alongside the Trump administration, we’re digging into the apparent misuse of your tax dollars by federal bureaucrats.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) for records regarding its expenditures and deposits, as well as its attempt to block Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) audits (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. African Development Foundation (No. 1:25-cv-02623)).

Congress created the African Development Foundation in 1980 to invest in small businesses in Africa.

We sued the African Development Foundation after it failed to respond to a July 7, 2025, FOIA request for communications, contracts and grants “involving Ganiam Ltd. (Nairobi, Kenya) and Ganiam LLC (Fairfax, Virginia).” According to its website, Ganiam “specializes in environmental engineering services, commissioning, construction management services, real estate due diligence support services (appraisal, title work, historical consultations, survey work, etc.) and facility maintenance support.”

We also ask for the communications of African Development Foundation President Travis Adkins and Chief Financial Officer Mathieu Zahui, as well as records related to deposits into a bank account in Ghana in February 2023, as referenced in Sen. James Risch’s (R-ID) November 2023 letter to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Inspector General.

We are also requesting conflict-of-interest disclosures and ethics pledges, as well as payments or grants to Root Capital of Cambridge, MA, and records regarding Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. of Los Angeles, CA. Other requested records pertain to whistleblower retaliation investigations and the denial of entry to DOGE.

In March 2024, the Office of Inspector General for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced it was “initiating an inspection of the United States African Development Foundation.” In August 2024, the Office of Inspector General issued a management advisory, in which it reported: “USADF officials knew of suspected misuse of foundation funds and equipment purchased through foundation grants but failed to report this to the OIG as required.”

In February 2025, President Trump issued an executive order calling for the African Development Foundation to be scaled back to the minimum presence required by law. Trump also fired the agency’s board members.

In March 2025, the African Development Foundation headquarters in DC reportedly blocked DOGE workers from entrance.

In September 2025, the Government Accountability Office published a report examining fraud risk management at the African Development Foundation, which states that the foundation “had some policies and procedures to mitigate fraud, waste, and abuse, but no strategic approach, from fiscal year 2020 through 2024.”

For a small agency, there appears to be a very large number of questions to which American taxpayers deserve answers.

Liberal Outrage over Antifa Terrorist Designation Omits its Violent History

So, what exactly is this “Antifa,” which is all over the news? We’ve been following this violent group for years and nailing down the truth. Our Corruption Chronicles blog offers insights.

With liberals and their staunch mainstream media allies outraged over President Trump’s designation of Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, Judicial Watch is in a good position to provide history that supports the recently issued executive order because we have for years closely tracked the violent leftist movement and successfully gone after one of its most powerful leaders. The president’s order accurately identifies Antifa as a “militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.” Antifa uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism that involves coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of federal laws through armed standoffs with police, organized riots, violent assaults on law enforcement officers and threats against political figures and activists, the new order further states. This is not fabricated or embellished information; it is reality.

For years it has been well documented that Antifa protests are notoriously violent and can cause lots of damage in the cities targeted by the movement. During Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, Antifa militants broke store windows, set a limousine on fire and caused thousands of dollars in damage to businesses in downtown Washington D.C. Hundreds were charged with felony rioting. For years counterterrorism experts at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have expressed concern about violence perpetrated by Antifa supporters at public rallies where they confront their ideological opponents, the Congressional Research Service writes in a 2018 report. In Congressional testimony nearly a decade ago, then FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed that the agency was pursuing a number of anarchist extremist investigations in which the subjects were motivated to commit violent criminal activity based on Antifa ideology. Former President Joe Biden famously dismissed Antifa as an idea, not an organization.

That was after a Judicial Watch investigation helped expose the criminal acts of one of the movement’s most popular figures, a national organizer for a radical leftist group called By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) which was founded by the Marxist Revolutionary Workers League and uses raucous militant tactics to disrupt conservative speaking engagements. Among its prominent figures is a California public school teacher, Yvette Felarca, well known for her violent Antifa activism. In 2016 the educator and two of her radical friends were arrested and charged with several crimes, including felony assault, for inciting a riot in Sacramento. Felarca was captured on video calling a man a Nazi and punching him in the stomach repeatedly while shouting obscenities at him. More than a dozen people were injured in the riot, at least 10 with stab wounds, and the capitol grounds suffered thousands of dollars in property damage. In 2017 Judicial Watch filed a California Public Records Act request seeking records about Felarca’s Antifa activism and its effect on the Berkeley Unified School District that employs her. She sued to stop the school district from furnishing the records and a federal judge determined that it was an entirely frivolous lawsuit and ordered her to pay Judicial Watch’s legal fees.

About a year later hundreds of radical leftists, including masked Antifa militants, confronted police and conservatives in downtown Portland, Oregon. Rowdy demonstrators used pepper spray against police and threw fireworks, bottles, rocks and ball bearings, according to a local news report. Videos of police in riot gear are embedded in the story, which says that protestors were armed with knives, traded blows, and drew blood. Among the rioters was a 31-year-old Antifa leader named James Mathew Mattox who praises cop killers on social media. Mattox was dressed in black bloc and a mask during the event and carried a shield with an anarchist symbol. Mattox provoked officers when they tried to disperse rioters by flipping them off, waving his shield and arms in the air, and yelling profanities. Using the alias of a prominent Communist Party member (Jack Johnstone), Mattox’s social media outbursts express support for terrorist attacks on law enforcement. He specifically names three renowned cop killers— Christopher Jordan Dorner, Micah Xavier Johnson, and Gavin Eugene Long—as his “personal heroes.”

These are just some examples that justify Antifa’s domestic terrorist designation. Not surprisingly, liberals are indignant, and the media is downplaying the seriousness of the violent left. One news report dismisses Antifa as a “loose network of people, groups and ideas united by opposition to fascism, white supremacy and authoritarian politics” that focuses on “nonviolent tactics” such as research and online exposure to extremist groups. Another news story describes Antifa as “primarily a movement and an ideology” while another claims Antifa is a “loose affiliation of mostly left-leaning activists” that is not highly organized. The reality is quite different. “Antifa recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans to engage in this violence and suppression of political activity, then employs elaborate means and mechanisms to shield the identities of its operatives, conceal its funding sources and operations in an effort to frustrate law enforcement, and recruit additional members,” according to the president’s executive order. “Individuals associated with and acting on behalf of Antifa further coordinate with other organizations and entities for the purpose of spreading, fomenting, and advancing political violence and suppressing lawful political speech.” This organized effort using coercion and intimidation to achieve policy objectives is domestic terrorism, the executive order confirms.

Until next week,