The Pentagon’s Roid-Fueled Craze Was Cut Off After Only One Day

The Pentagon’s new testosterone screening program was rescinded in a single day, as the Department of War moves to update the program.

The initial plan involved “mandatory screening for testosterone deficiency” for any male service members over 30 years old, according to a statement from Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell on July 15. Testosterone Replacement Therapy can have serious side effects for patients, while some individuals may genuinely need the care, multiple medical experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“When I heard this plan, I said, ‘Well, what, what the fuck? What is he doing?'” Dirk Vanderschueren, an andrologist at UZ Leuven and KU Leuven in Belgium, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Of course, there’s some deficiency as such, and I’m talking as an andrologist; as you know, a lot of patients have a very rare disorder. It happens, but it’s very rare.” 

“The issue of treating men with low testosterone is that you can exacerbate infertility,” Martin Miner, co-director of the Brown University Men’s Health Center, told the DCNF. “That’s probably the most significant side effect … and that’s an issue, of course, with younger men because we want to preserve their fertility.”

One high-profile instance of this side effect is allegedly seen in online personality Braden Peters, otherwise known as Clavicular. Clavicular has publicly said his use of testosterone and anabolic steroids left him infertile, Vox reported.

However, not all experts interviewed by the DCNF were critical of the Department of War’s (DOW) proposed testosterone screening program.

“I will say that for the administration to do a screening test for men entering the military, I think this is a good thing because it’ll pick up those patients who or people who would probably need supplementation,” Wayne Hellstrom, professor of urology and chief of andrology at Tulane University School of Medicine, told DCNF. “It’s very arbitrary as you find what the threshold of what normal and abnormal is … But a lot of times you have patients who have pituitary problems or have chromosomal issues that they’ve had all their lives and they’re basically underdiagnosed, or they’re not diagnosed.”

The Defense Health Agency issued implementing guidance for the program on Sept. 2, describing the new screening and treatment pathways as effective immediately. By the following day, however, the guidance and an accompanying Pentagon statement had been removed from government websites.

The draft “Clinical Guidance for Health and Human Performance Optimization” has been temporarily rescinded to allow for updates, a U.S. official told the DCNF; however, the “Interim Guidance on Testosterone Deficiency Screenings for Active Duty and Reserve Component Personnel” remains in effect, according to the official.