As the United States and Iran traded deadly strikes last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a war-time order to the troops: Service members 30 and over would have their testosterone levels checked.
Those found lacking would be offered hormone replacement therapy — Hegseth’s way of “ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight,” as he put it.
The prospect of free testosterone no doubt came as a great relief to those in harm’s way. It promised to be the most important contribution to public health since 2022, when Tucker Carlson, then Hegseth’s Fox News colleague, proposed that men should raise their testosterone levels by exposing their male parts to red lights in a process he called “testicle tanning.”