LETTERS: Testosterone is not trivial

YOUR newspaper lets itself down by publishing "Testosterone trouble: is it all balls?" (Real Life, 24 December), with a tone of "nudge-nudge" flippancy.

Instead of focusing upon recent enlightenment in the treatment of testosterone deficiency (the male equivalent of the well-accepted HRT), you overlay the report with a veneer of scientific respectability by mentioning inconclusive experiments linking artificial boosting of testosterone levels with aggression. The remainder was even less serious.

Some conditions necessitate regular therapeutic treatment with synthetic testosterone; hypo-gonadism is an example. The famous and tragic false imprisonment of Stefan Kiszko (who suffered from Kalmann's Syndrome, a particular form of this) serves to highlight the ignorance that still surrounds such cases even at the end of the 20th century. Reporting with innuendo-ridden text and titles such as yours debases the subject.

G Jacobs

Barnet, London