How a ‘toilet paper quiz’ ended up as a serious threat to the lives of men

Doesn’t anyone at the FDA watch television?

Because for quite a while now, we’ve been seeing all these drug ads telling guys to “turn it up” and get that Rx for Low T from their doctors ASAP.

Those commercials sure don’t make it sound like the meds are for a “rare” condition, but something any man who wants a little extra “tiger in his tank” should take.

So why is the FDA only now realizing that some men are taking these risky drugs who don’t really need them?

And how did this normal effect of aging become a “disease” with a drug putting healthy men in serious danger?

Smoke and mirrors

For over 15 years the FDA allowed Big Pharma to run a carnival game marketing the non-existent condition it dubbed “Low T.”

Finally, after billions were made selling risky testosterone drugs, ones like AndroGel, Androderm and Aveed, the agency issued a “safety announcement” at the beginning of March.

It declared that these Low T drugs are actually dangerous and can cause heart attacks and stroke.

And that they’re only to be used by men who have a rare condition called hypogonadism – a lack of testosterone caused by illness or treatments such as chemotherapy.

So how did this carnival start?

Enter Dr. John Morley.

Morely, a geriatric specialist, was there when they started spinning the cotton candy – and he recently let us in on the whole thing.

He was originally asked to create a ten-question “quiz,” something not too complicated and even a bit “sexy” that would help get millions of men to start up on these low T drugs.

And he did — during a trip to the bathroom! He scribbled it down on toilet paper and gave the sheets (I hope they were at least three-ply!) to his secretary to transcribe the next day.

This “official” quiz even got a fancy, long name: Androgen Deficiency in the Aging Male, or ADAM for short, but was later renamed “Is It Low T?”

It contains highly technical diagnostic tools in the form of questions such as: “Are you sad or grumpy?” and “Do you fall asleep after dinner?”

This “toilet paper quiz” is still widely used as a screening tool for men, even being mentioned in prestigious journals.

But that was just the beginning.

Big Pharma got all its magicians together and managed to pull a hat trick, one that fooled doctors into thinking that 40 percent of men suffered from hypogonadism and needed to take these meds.

A bunch of unscrupulous doctors (who were called “thought leaders”) got paid to lend their names to company-authored studies and give talks to colleagues parroting what the drug makers wrote down.

Two drugmakers are said to have given over $1 million to fund doctor “education” at the University of Wisconsin. The money was used to sponsor dinner meetings and produce newsletters to make it seem that real research was going on about testosterone deficiencies. Not just a doctor sitting in the bathroom making up quizzes on toilet paper.

The whole sordid story is now being told in a 341-page complaint by Medical Mutual of Ohio. The oldest insurer in the state wants damages for all the money it paid for these deadly and unnecessary drugs.

And the insurer is suing some of the biggest names in the business — like Abbvie, Abbott Laboratories and Eli Lilly.

And here’s where it gets ironic: the lawsuit was filed under the RICO act. The full name for that is the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act – a federal law used to go after organized crime.

Kind of fitting, don’t you think!

Source:

“Testosterone replacement products boost heart attack, stroke risk, FDA says” Melissa Healy, March 3, 2015, The Los Angeles Times, latimes.com