A brand new article within the Guardian cautions that testosterone prescriptions for girls experiencing the menopause are spiralling “uncontrolled”, with “long-term implications” for feminine well being. Consultants even go as far as to warn concerning the affect of “testosterone evangelists” on social media who exalt the drug’s life-changing advantages.
Dr Paula Briggs, a sexual and reproductive well being advisor and chair of the British Menopause Society, advised reporters that “persons are being led to imagine that they should have this. However we do not know what long-term testosterone supplementation does to girls.” Dr Briggs drew parallels to the doubtless deadly dangers of steroid use amongst male bodybuilders, pointing to unknown dangers to the arteries and hearts of girls who could find yourself with “supra-physiological” ranges of the hormone of their our bodies.
The article enlists the experience of medical specialists with a spread of opinions on the therapy at hand, and in the end emphasises the necessity for warning within the face of identified and unknown dangers. In different phrases, it represents typical well being reporting. However the topic — testosterone use amongst females — attracts consideration to the reckless exceptionalism that defines gender drugs and which has deformed reporting on this concern. The stability of views and warning utilized right here, concerning the usage of small doses of testosterone in middle-aged girls over a brief time frame, is absent from most reporting on gender drugs, which includes the usage of excessive (one would possibly even say “supra-physiological”) doses of testosterone in adolescent and younger grownup females over lengthy durations of time.