Pete Hegseth’s Plan for ‘High T’ Troops Is a Junk Science Fever Dream

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made nary concealed of his tendency for a manlier military.

He consistently argues that the US Armed Forces lowered their combat standards successful bid to see women. He’s staged assorted photograph ops successful which helium exercises and pumps robust with work members. In his speeches, Hegseth says that the Trump medication is restoring a “warrior ethos” to its legions of “warfighters.”

Now helium has a alternatively dubious program to warrant that the troops are arsenic macho arsenic possible: testosterone screenings and, successful cases wherever an individual’s testosterone is judged to beryllium deficient, voluntary hormone therapy.

“Under the supervision of our world-class aesculapian professionals, warfighters aged 30 and older are going to beryllium tested annually arsenic portion of their periodic wellness assessment,” Hegseth said successful a abbreviated video posted to his authoritative X relationship connected Wednesday. Those younger than 30 volition beryllium capable to opt successful to these evaluations arsenic well, helium explained.

“If attraction is recommended, it's wholly your prime to person testosterone replacement therapy,” Hegseth added.

Addressing work members directly, Hegseth said without offering grounds that the programme would payment “your performance, your resilience, and your semipermanent health.” He besides declared that the inaugural was “not astir artificial enhancement,” but alternatively “restoring and optimizing your earthy capabilities, protecting your longevity, and ensuring you person the biologic instauration required to prolong the fight.”

Adrian Dobs, who researches endocrine gonadal relation astatine Johns Hopkins University, tells WIRED that she was “quite amazed that this is what they’re reasoning about,” and that “it's a precise analyzable contented to marque the diagnosis of antheral hypogonadism,” the aesculapian word for erstwhile the testicles aren’t producing capable testosterone.

Dobs says that Hegseth seems to beryllium radically oversimplifying the analyzable issues astir making a diagnosis of debased testosterone—including the variability of testosterone levels depending connected the benignant of assay (or analysis) performed and adjacent the clip of time the trial is conducted.

Because of circadian rhythms, she points out, the hormone is typically seen astatine “higher [levels] successful the greeting and little passim the day.” Another logistical problem, Dobs says, lies successful idiosyncratic circumstances. It’s 1 happening to test, for example, “a steadfast idiosyncratic who sits astatine a desk” and rather different to trial a idiosyncratic who is returning “from basal grooming oregon overseas and whitethorn person mislaid value and was nether a large woody of carnal accent astatine the time,” arsenic chronic accent tin inhibit testosterone production.

Hegseth’s presumption connected testosterone itself is “misinformed,” according to Dobs. “Testosterone is simply a precise important hormone,” she says, and it plays a cardinal relation successful puberty and masculinization. “But it is not thing that's going to marque you smarter. It's not thing that's going to marque you unrecorded longer—we simply don't person immoderate information to suggest that.” The longevity claim, she adds, would beryllium incredibly hard to beryllium successful immoderate case.

The Pentagon declined to remark beyond Hegseth’s statement of the screening and attraction process, truthful it’s unclear what circumstantial results the Defense Department expects to execute by administering testosterone to untold numbers of progressive work work members, oregon whether women successful the Armed Forces volition besides acquisition hormone assessments. Neither has the Defense Department made nationalist what technological probe and which aesculapian experts, if any, informed this decision.

Aside from the problems with trying to specify “normal” amounts of testosterone and standardizing the screening process, Dobs says, utilizing testosterone replacement arsenic an casual hole for deficiency ignores modular diagnostic practice, which is to place and dainty immoderate underlying information first. The imaginable basal causes—from kidney oregon liver illness to diabetes—should beryllium dealt with “before you motorboat into immoderate hormonal intervention,” she says.