Nike Allegedly Funded A Study That Gave Boys Puberty Blockers To Test If They “Fix” Male Athletic Advantage

According to recent revelations, Nike reportedly funded a five-year study conducted by researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School that examines how puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones affect the athletic performance of transgender-identified youth.

Read that again: They’re studying the long-term athletic impact of pausing puberty in children. And while Nike has thus far refused to make a public statement or take responsibility for this involvement, the facts are stacking up, and they don’t look good.

Serious Ethical Questions

The information first surfaced in a New York Times article profiling Blaire Fleming, a male athlete identifying as a transgender woman at San Jose State University. In the article, researcher Joanna Harper casually mentions that the ongoing study was funded by Nike, suggesting the real problem wasn’t money (thanks, Nike!) but rather "political challenges" facing "trans care."

Soon after, Jennifer Sey, a female sports advocate and founder of XX-XY Athletics, sounded the alarm. “This is human experimentation on children,” she told Fox News. Sey also pointed out that puberty blockers are known to have serious side effects: bone density loss, cognitive development issues, infertility, and psychological impacts. Why on earth would a sports apparel company be backing inflicting those issues on children?

We Don’t Need a Study to Tell Us This Is Unfair

The fact that a study like this is even necessary tells you everything you need to know about how detached we’ve become from common sense. We’ve already seen what happens when males, even after taking hormones, compete against women. Just ask Riley Gaines, who tied with Lia Thomas, another male-born athlete who underwent hormone treatment but still retained the male physiological advantages of height, lung capacity, and skeletal structure. Or look at MMA fighter Fallon Fox, who severely injured female opponents despite undergoing transition-related care.

No amount of corporate-sponsored research can erase the fundamental truth that sex matters in sports. The entire foundation of “gender-affirming care” as settled science has begun to crumble under scrutiny, with multiple countries reversing course on the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in minors. Declaring that men can become women, and insisting we restructure society accordingly, has already proven disastrous for actual women and violations of fairness, privacy, and safety.​

Nike’s Track Record Isn’t Exactly Gold

This isn’t the first time Nike has chosen virtue signaling over actual virtue. Remember when they dropped female athletes like Allyson Felix when she got pregnant, slashing her sponsorship deal for daring to prioritize motherhood? Or when they used Dylan Mulvaney, an adult male TikToker known for mocking girlhood, to model women’s sports bras?

Nike seems far more interested in appeasing activist circles than protecting the integrity of women’s sports. And now, their reported funding of this controversial study moves them out of the “tone-deaf branding” category and into something much darker: complicity in an unethical medical experiment on vulnerable children.

So far, Nike’s only public statement has been vague and evasive: a company executive told OutKick that “the study was never initialized” and “is not moving forward.” But that raises more questions than it answers. Was it ever funded? If not, why was the researcher at Harvard under the impression that Nike had no budgetary concerns? And why won't Nike publicly explain their position on children receiving hormone interventions for the sake of sports performance research?

When a shoe company thinks it’s appropriate to bankroll research into chemically suppressing puberty in children for athletic performance metrics, something is deeply wrong.

Subscribe today to get unlimited access to all of Evie’s premium content.