These days, you never know what you might find in your mail.

On a normal day, my federally protected mailbox contains all manner of political flyers, “WE WANT TO BUY YOUR HOUSE FOR CASH” solicitations, fundraising letters, and occasionally an ad for a new dentist in the neighborhood. So imagine my surprise last week when I opened up the box to find something new — a postcard from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) inviting me to enroll my 7- or 8-year-old healthy child in a study on puberty and brain development.

The fact is, none of my kids currently fall within that age range, but the happy image on the flyer looked so appealing that I decided to read all of what the federally funded NIMH had to offer.

NIMH was seeking a “HEALTHY CHILD,” which they specify as someone who “must not have any chronic medical or psychiatric illnesses, nor be on any long-term medication.” The invitation is to “participate in a study that examines how puberty affects brain development.” Details beyond that are scant, but these points were provided on the postcard:

Participation includes 1-3 outpatient visits to the NIH Clinical Center every 8-10 months until age 17 for:

• Physical examination and body measurements
• Questionnaires
• MRI scans and x-rays
• Blood draws and urine collection

Evaluations and research procedures are free of cost. Compensation is provided.

Let’s just break this down, beginning with the time this study would take. A 7-year-old will have to visit the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland every 8-10 months for 10 years! That’s a total of 12-15 visits. No clue on how long the visits might be, but let’s be conservative and say 90 minutes per visit. Add to that the crazy amount of time involved in commuting in the D.C. Metro area, so add another hour to each visit to and from. That’s a total of up to 52.5 hours, or over two full days dedicated to this project.

But the time investment is small potatoes compared with the other commitments. Your child — who is not sick — must be brought to this laboratory on an ongoing basis to be examined, measured, put into an MRI tube, subjected to radiation (x-rays), have blood removed, and they must pee on demand.

My first thoughts upon seeing this quickly devolved into judgment: What parent in their right mind would put their child through this? I imagined a scenario going something like this:

“Hey little Johnny, I know you wanted to go to the park to throw the football, but instead, we’re going to a great big lab where you’ll be poked, prodded, and shoved into a tube where you can’t move at all but can listen to classical music while giant magnets swirl around you and make scary noises for a half-hour. After that, a nice phlebotomist is going to stick a needle in your arm and draw some blood.

And I know your mom and I have always told you to only use the toilet, but at the big giant lab you’ll get to pee in a cup, whether or not you need to go. But that’s not all — you’ll get to answer all kinds of questions about how your body is changing and how your brain is changing along with it. If you’re good, we’ll stop by 7-Eleven on the way back and get a slushie. How does that sound? We can play catch any day.”

Our kids’ desires shouldn’t dictate every action a parent makes, but I can’t see any scenario where a child would volunteer for this kind of treatment. From the study’s website:

Reproductive endocrine, metabolic, and physical measures will be employed to characterize the stage and duration of pubertal development. Outcome measures will be derived via multimodal neuroimaging techniques, cognitive/behavioral assessments, metabolic measurements, and evaluations of HPA axis function.

More punishment than party, cleaning their room would be a more likely choice for a child than joining this study.

Which brings us to the provided compensation. Setting aside for a moment the looming ethical question, if the kids aren’t going to volunteer for such a test, there’s little chance parents will go through all of the trouble to involve their kids without something in return. The amount was not listed on the postcard, nor on the website, so I called the lab and asked how much compensation was for these child studies. NIMH told me that compensation was generally measured in something called “units of inconvenience,” and that each unit of inconvenience generally garnered around $500. Transportation was a separate topic, and it sounded from my conversation like that could be an additional benefit. So, if 15 visits each equaled a unit of inconvenience, that’s $7,500 for 10 years of inconvenience.

Is the reward worth the cost?

The economy is tough these days, and a family in need might see an extra $500 as a welcome bonus, especially if they’re raising a child. However well-intentioned the parents may be, it’s not worth turning your child over to tests like this. I understand the need for longitudinal studies. The NIMH undoubtedly does good work, and I don’t think there’s necessarily any evil intent behind what they’re doing. There’s certainly great benefit for scientific advancement in observing change in healthy children over time.

But a parent’s job in raising a child isn’t to benefit science. Scripture tells us to bring our children up “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” As Jesus taught:

“…which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11, ESV)

I asked my colleague Meg Kilgannon, a senior fellow at Family Research Council who previously worked within the labyrinth of federal agencies, what she thought of this program. Herself a parent, Meg told me that “Government sponsored studies of healthy children may on the whole help sick children by developing baseline statistical references or processes — we can hope that is their intent. But too often studies are politicized, leading to government contracts being awarded to people motivated by ideologies rather than the scientific method. And these politicized results can be used to advance claims like ‘puberty blockers are an appropriate treatment for gender dysphoria.’”

Trust in federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health — if it ever existed — has eroded in recent years following the back and forth of COVID recommendations. Once popular government doctors like Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins have flipped positions so many times that their recommendations are now mere caricatures. Can a federal entity like NIMH handle your child (or any child) in a safe manner that’s productive toward their future? Perhaps, but who’s willing to roll the dice?

A “unit of inconvenience” isn’t a good gift to a child. Neither is an unnecessary MRI or blood draw. The federal government — and parents — should stay out of the business of testing healthy kids.