Disease Mongering An Efficient Marketing Tactic
Online news, advertisements, and magazines are the first thing every person scrolls through when they wake up in the morning and it is also the last thing people read before falling asleep. This has made websites and blogs a huge market for advertising products.
Testosterone Gel
Many of these products are genuine and you get what you pay for, however, in some products, you may get cheated. Critics have recently made a similar accusation of disease-mongering advertisements for HGH and testosterone. Critics have blatantly stated that HGH and testosterone have no benefits whatsoever for the purpose of anti-aging.
Is this true? Or are critics just doing their jobs of being a critic?
To understand and make informed decisions regarding anything, you should know both sides to a story. Let us look deeper into what each side has to say about HGH and Testosterone.
The Critics
Critics have accused marketing campaigns of using disease mongering to frighten consumers to buy products they do not need, thereby making HGH and testosterone a multi-billion dollar industry.
Disease mongering essentially means using the fear of diseases on healthy people for profit.
The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society recently published an editorial criticizing the commercialization of HGH and Testosterone by making false claims regarding their benefits for anti-aging. They go on further to state that this trend has resulted in a surge in the prescription and use of testosterone and HGH in the United States making it a multibillion-dollar industry.
Thomas Perls, co-author of the editorial and geriatric medicine practitioner at Boston Medical Center is a familiar face among the critics of the burgeoning anti-aging industry.
“They’re a well-educated, wealthier group of people who, on a regular basis, are exposed to new cures saying, ‘We can stop or reverse your aging,’ or ‘We can make this go away,’ or ‘We can make your sex life better,’ ” stated Perls “They may believe it especially if it is coming from someone in a white coat with a stethoscope around their neck.”
The HGH and Testosterone supporters
Supporters of HGH and Testosterone are livid at the criticism made without any proof. According to them, testosterone and HGH have valid proven benefits.
Abraham Morgentaler, a renowned urologist and associate clinical professor of urology at Harvard Medical School as well as author of the book, “Testosterone For Life has said “The allegation of ‘disease mongering’ is highly disturbing. This type of allegation is nearly always made by individuals with no experience treating patients with the condition, and so they have never seen men suffering from testosterone deficiency, nor observed the satisfying response with treatment. This is a real condition experienced by real men.”
Mark E. Richards, a North Bethesda plastic surgeon who has treated hundreds of patients with hormone therapy has testified at the FDA committee meeting in September. He has used bioidentical testosterone pellet therapy in his practice. He said the committee member’s lack of knowledge regarding existing research and literature on testosterone was disappointing.
In regards to the editorial written by Perls, Richards has a mixed opinion.”He’s half-right in that the pharmaceutical industry has hyped it beyond the scientific reality of the situation,” Richards said. “He’s wrong in that there is a legitimate medical problem that occurs with low testosterone.”
Bruce Campbell, chairman of the executive health department at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington, Mass., said some of his patients have asked for their testosterone levels to be checked after they saw an ad or heard that a friend had taken testosterone. Campbell said he takes a conservative approach to testosterone use and proposes lifestyle modifications, like weight loss or exercise regimens, before prescribing the hormone.
“Certainly there has been some inappropriate advertising and marketing,” said Campbell, an internal medicine physician at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington, Mass. “Some of the ads out of there might be well-intentioned, but they do tend to target a man’s masculinity.”
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