Taxpayer-Funded Medical School Promotes ‘Reversible’ Puberty Blockers For Kids

An Illinois medical school that rakes in millions of taxpayer dollars operates a gender clinic that peddles suspect treatments to minors.

The Southern Illinois University School of Medicine has been issued nearly $3 million in federal funds this year and received another $6.4 million in 2024. The school owns and operates a the Gender Equity and Transgender Clinic, which offers “gender affirming hormone therapy” and provides referrals for the surgical removal of breasts and other genital surgeries.

“The clinic provides trauma-informed, gender-affirming health care services to transgender and gender-diverse individuals,” the clinic’s website says. “The team values each individual person and their unique needs and characteristics.”

The website also claims that puberty blockers and cross-sex homes can be reversed, but should be administered to “give a child time to decide what treatments are right for them in addressing their gender presentation moving forward.”

“Puberty blockers are not permanent. When they are stopped, puberty continues normally,” the website says. 

Dr. Jared Ross, a senior fellow with Do No Harm, told The Daily Wire that the claims about puberty blockers being reversible were “absurd.” He said that there was data showing that bone density, especially in the hip and spine, were permanently decreased because of the procedures. 

“Puberty doesn’t just continue normally,” he said. “There are only so many years of pubertal development. And if you interfere with puberty during that time, you don’t get to make it up later. 
Those are lost years of growth and development.”

The clinic also claims that putting men on estrogen and women on testosterone causes “changes in the body that would reverse upon stopping the treatment.”

Ross said that cross-sex hormones will often cause changes that don’t reverse. For example, men on estrogen will develop breasts and have body fat redistribution while females on testosterone will often have changes to their voice that can’t be undone.

Southern Illinois University School of Medicine takes millions in federal funding every year. This year, the school has taken $1.2 million in National Institutes of Health funding and $2.5 million in Health Resources and Services Administration funding. 

Sample grants awarded from 2025 include $1.6 million to fund its health center as a whole and specific funds to research topics like opioids, behavioral health, and drug abuse. 

Since 2009, the institution has taken at least $3.6 million per year in grant funding. 

USASpending.gov

The SIU Family Medicine Center, where the gender clinic is housed, is also a Federally Qualified Health Center, a designation that allows it to take money from Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. 

In January, President Donald Trump directed his cabinet to take “appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.” The administration has since pressured hospital officials across the country to stop performing transgender procedures on children. 

Southern Illinois School of Medicine did not respond to requests for comment on how many minor patients it has in the gender clinic or whether it has been impacted by the executive order.

The clinic also promote a series of radical activist organizations, including one group that distributes free “trans needles” on the basis of race. 

The organization, Trans Needle Exchange, is a “mail-based service providing free HRT needle supplies for trans folk who cannot access or afford their own.” Currently, the organization only sends needles to transgender-identifying people who are black. 

There are two separate Google request forms on the organizations’ website: one for black people, and one for everyone else. The form for black people says that it is “for BLACK TRANS FOLKS ONLY” and asks what kind of needle supplies are needed. The form also has checkbox where you can mark if you are black. 

Trans Needle Exchange

The form for white people currently doesn’t allow anything to be filled out, but says, “we are currently on hiatus and not taking new submissions.”

Point of Pride, another organization promoted by the clinic gives out free “chest binders” devices to compress the female chest to make it more masculine and distributes so-called “femme shapewear.”

A third organization promoted by the clinic is Trans Lifeline, which give grants for transgender-identifying people to pay for hair removal — 60% of which are reserved for black people.

The clinic also promotes WPATH, a radical organization that has promoted transgender procedures on kids. A review from the Department of Health and Human Services condemned the reliance of many American health care providers on WPATH.

The gender clinic also notes that it is partnered with the Transgender and Gender Diverse Wellness and Equity Program, operated by the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Public Health Institute of Metropolitan Chicago. 

A previous Daily Wire report revealed that the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine admits black and Hispanic students with lower average MCAT scores and GPAs than the average scores of white and Asian students it rejects despite the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn affirmative action.