Treatment of Men with Paraphilia

People convicted of sexually abusing children are usually incarcerated, a strategy that has not been successful but for which the costs have been staggering ($2,055,528,000 in the United States in 19901). In this issue of the Journal, Rösler and Witztum describe the results of a study of the treatment of men with pedophilia and other paraphilias with triptorelin, an agonist analogue of gonadotropin-releasing hormone.2 They found that the drug reduced abnormal sexual thoughts and behaviors substantially, presumably as a result of its ability to reduce the secretion of gonadotropin and, therefore, of testosterone. Unfortunately, this was not a randomized, . . .