If hormone-replacement therapy for andropause becomes as common as such therapies have been for menopause—and this seems to be the ambition of some drug companies—the consequences, both medical and financial, could be dramatic. Given the popular desire to reverse human aging with a simple nostrum and the growing intimacy between commercial and clinical concerns, the trend may prove to be irresistible. The pharmaceutical industry is, of course, in the business of inventing treatments. Some people wonder whether it may help invent diseases, too.
To be treated for andropause, you first need physicians who can confidently make the diagnosis. One of them is Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, the director of Men's Health Boston. He is forty-six years old, with thick black hair and deep-set eyes.
Trained as a urologist, he specializes in male sexual dysfunction and infertility. He views testosterone deficiency in older men as a silent epidemic, and worries that, of the perhaps five million American men who suffer from it, ninety-five per cent go undiagnosed. Replacing missing testosterone, he believes, will help restore youthful muscle tone, bone strength, potency, and general vigor.
He recently put an ad in the Boston Globe urging men who were experiencing "low sex drive" or "low energy" to have their testosterone level tested at his clinic. The costs of both the ad and the tests were underwritten by a Unimed educational grant.
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