Pentagon rescinds new testosterone screening policy without explanation
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
So my theory—based mostly on conjecture—is that these tests selected people they didn’t expect and the treatments would do more harm than good.
Not sure there has been a less capable Secretary of Defence in my lifetime than who they currently have in the role.
Note: not saying less objectionable, I'd put Rumsfeld right alongside for that but as much as I didn't like the man, it was hard to argue he was incapable.
"Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
https://archive.org/details/simplesabotagefi26184gut/page/n1...
It helped the allies win WWII. It contains lots of good advice (and the white collar chapter should be required reading in corporate training).
end of the day, his experience as a private meant nothing towards the job. perhaps he was slightly more able to relate to the needs of the troops.
now we have a reserve captain. who was pushed out of the service for extremest views and body art. his experience means he hates the army, and his selection to the post means his political views have been vindicated.
a master of strategy? leader of men in battle? CEO of the worlds biggest institution? nope. he doesn't even understand those roles.
The current head of DoD is basically a manosphere influencer that bumbled into this job.
Now, I'm not an endocrinologist, just an aging guy, but from my current vantage point it appears that over the course of my life, many stupid decisions have been made that I have lived to tell about. I can't help but feel that my "wisdom of age" might just be testosterone getting out of the way.
This is all to say that our current "situation" just kinda looks like one insecure guys roid rage when you take a big step back.
and does not take no for an answer.
Please don’t ask how I know.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/addr...
I was thinking the same recently, analyzing my life choices then and now. We can't do a double-blinds study with these things, but I believe you might be right.
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
Rumsfeld is more like the Big Lebowski in parroting whatever to make him look smart. Never for a moment he stopped to think about the amount of damage that would haunt the veterans that served there.
He wrote a book about leadership but he lacked balls to do anything about Abu Ghraib for example, nor he did anything to stop the war. IMO he is just another corporate coward.
In his most stunning display of 'leadership', he used autopen to stamp his signature on condolence letters sent to the families of soldiers killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Imagine that!
I get what you're saying, but I would take this over our current administration any day of the week.
takes notes. love this!
Once you're on it it's very hard to come off it, and the side effects are significant.
To put it mildly, no matter how pumped up with hormones one is, one cannot outrun an explosion (much less a thermobaric one), a sniper firing from hundreds of meters away or, for that matter, a drone swarm. For those kinds of challenge other traits are needed.
And these required traits are dismissed as unimportant, just witness all the extremely competent military personal, including medal recipients, who were dismissed or made to "voluntarily" resign due to stuff that had no bearing whatsoever on whether they were good soldiers or not.
Note: I'm not American and, from the perspective of my country's own national interests, which tend to be at odds with the US's more often than not, it's a good thing the US is doing all of this, since it's making itself weaker. But from a personal perspective, that I find it quite sad, I do. I have too many American friends for me not to worry about what this will cause them on the long run.
In the UK, the things valued and required of their soldiers are far less focused on "breaking them down and building them up again", there's an order of magnitude less yelling, there's more liberty, and there's less of an "ethos to kill".
Yet the Royal Marines, having gone through this kind of training, can still regularly mog our own special forces troops and has proven that in the Fakland wars, a war they may very well be having a rd 2 in soon.
For context, US Marine basic training
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjDHoNcH5o4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9gnRQaXH38
Compare this to Royal Marine (officer) basic training:
If there was some way to ensure the military had a higher end level of testosterone it would almost certainly be a very good idea. But the problem is that testosterone can't be supplemented like other things. When supplemented, your own body's production of t simply shuts down and doesn't necessarily return once the supplements end. So it creates a life-long dependency on testosterone injections, that are fairly expensive, at least in the US.
I think that aspect of it is why they most likely rolled this back. Not only do you have the issue of an army that's now dependent upon supplements for basic functioning, but you're going to have military retirees, who are already often left in a shit situation, now also dependent upon a relatively expensive treatment, forever.
An army that would fall to pieces without a constant supply of testosterone supplements is probably not going to be the most effective fighting force.
It will make you stronger. Perhaps not at certain therapeutic ranges, but there is a reason this would get you kicked out of the Olympic Games.
Fuck the US medical system and specifically fuck medical ethics researchers who make the american medical system so morally bankrupt.
There must be a graveyard of athletes who tried doping and it made them worse lol.
There are side effects, problems, long-term consequences...
But testosteron blood levels absolutely do regulate muscle growth.
but if you're working well within your ability to recover and you add t and change nothing else, how do you get stronger?
It may have other negative effects, but it does influence muscle mass.
Read the literature, e.g. Bhasin 1996 (and other follow-up studies that reproduced the effects) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199607043350101
oh, no i'm not. *you're* telling me what i'm saying because you don't have the attention span to read, but have unlimited patience for hearing yourself talk.
> i assume it works by improving recovery, if not someone will need to explain what it's supposed to do to make you stronger
>> RESULTS Among the men in the no-exercise groups, those given testosterone had greater increases than those given placebo in muscle size in their arms (mean [±SE] change in triceps area, 424±104 vs. -81±109 mm2; P<0.05) and legs (change in quadriceps area, 607±123 vs. -131±111 mm2; P<0.05) and greater increases in strength in the bench-press (9±4 vs. -1±1 kg, P<0.05) and squatting exercises (16±4 vs. 3±1 kg, P<0.05).
Do you also brag about using ChatGPT to cheat on your homework too?
The fact that people think there's anything even worthy of discussion on this is alarming to me.
I guess your theory does make sense.
Real athletes never touch the stuff for good reason, and sport organizers tend to test the 40lb overweight dude keeping pace as obviously more suspicious. =3
Hormone therapies are often popular with wealthy geriatric men naively hoping to preserve their physical prowess after their prime. A test is unnecessary, as anyone can look at just their age to know with a fair degree of certainty what is happening biologically. The gamble is the long term side effects won't bring up their expiration date sooner.
"Testing" under these contexts is often just a euphemism for ethically dubious medical interventions. Could also just get outside for a brisk walk everyday, eat healthy, and enjoy a fun life. =3
That is not true. People routinely do things that are likely to shorten their life because they decide the upside is worth it.
'the Pentagon said that the document, titled “Clinical Guidance for Health and Human Performance Optimization,” had been temporarily rescinded on September 3 to allow for updates.'
It is perfectly safe for US children according to the FDA, and illegal in most other developed countries. =3
It’s hard to imagine it was actually an ill conceived measure aimed at supporting healthy testosterone levels, but I guess it isn’t impossible.
I feel like maybe it was a cartoon inspired measure to create a super army of aggressive super soldiers? It’s got what plants crave? SMH
Probably both.
I mean, sure, it would probably be embarrassing to have to say "because this was extremely stupid and nonsensical and entirely due to the weird hangups of the present guy in charge."
It seems to edge us closer to the dystopian ‘super soldier gone wrong’ trope.
Why have horror movies when real life is all I need? Unironically!