Monday, May 28, 2007, I received an email from Afshan Ahmad, PhD, Director of Vaccine Research International, Birmingham, United Kingdom. The organization is nonprofit and the headquarters of Dr. Gordon Skinner.

Dr. Skinner is a physician and scientist who’s received honorary doctorates for his contributions in the field of virology. In addition, his brilliant mind—not compromised by conflicts of interest—observed that chronic fatigue syndrome wasn’t a viral disease at all, as formerly thought. Instead, it is for the most part simply untreated or under-treated hypothyroidism. In my view, Dr. Skinner’s current plight is an example of an all too recurrent tragedy: The earnest pursuit of truth is often rewarded with persecution by those whose self-interests and gain-through-conflicts-of-interest may be diminished by the unearthing of that truth.

Dr. Ahmad wrote to ask if I could come to the United Kingdom. The purpose would be to give evidence in Dr. Skinner’s defense against the General Medical Council (GMC). The GMC is again trying to take away a physician’s license to practice. The essential reason: because he’s refused to restrict his patients to the life-ruining imposition on humanity called "T4-replacement" and instead, helped his patients get well.

Dr. Ahmad wrote of Dr. Skinner, "He holds you in high regard and feels that you have a great deal of knowledge and experience which would be useful in his defence." I, too, hold Dr. Skinner in high regard. I do so both for his scientific accomplishments and for the praise of his clinical care that I’ve heard from many patients in the U.K. I staunchly believe that for the GMC to deprive U.K. citizens of Dr. Skinner’s safe and extraordinarily effective clinical care would be nothing short of an act of cruelty against those citizens.

The day that Dr. Ahmad’s email came, I was thoroughly tied up with clinical responsibilities. When my wife, Tammy, read the email to me, I asked her to reply at once to Dr. Ahmad. Tammy wrote: "Thank you for your email and your request for Dr. Lowe's presence in London in defense of Dr. Skinner. Dr. Lowe is honored by your request and will do everything he can to travel to the U.K. for this important purpose. We will adjust his schedule to accommodate."

When Tammy and I got home from the clinic that evening, I was crestfallen when I checked and found that my passport had expired. We knew about the huge backlog for passport renewals, so we promptly tried to expedite renewal of mine. But as of today—like millions of other U.S. citizens—we have no idea whether I’ll have the renewed passport in time to fly to England to testify on Dr. Skinner’s behalf. (I’ve said quite enough in the privacy of our home about this example of the general ineptitude of the Bush Administration. So, I’ll abstain from further comment here.)

Tammy appealed to a relative of hers who is special assistant to a senator, asking whether the senator could help us quickly get the passport renewal. The answer was, not unless my trip concerns U.S. national security. I feel that indeed the trip does involve national security; unfortunately for my passport renewal, it’s the security of a large subset of citizens of another nation, the U.K.

If I cannot travel to England because of the passport problem, I’ll testify on Dr. Skinner’s behalf in any other way I can. As a start, I’ve written the article below. It calls on certain old-guard endocrinologists and their specialty to retract one of their health- and life-destroying false beliefs—a false belief that is serving in part as a ground for the GMC to persecute Dr. Skinner and to deprive U.K. citizens of his effective care.

I will be grateful to anyone else who writes or speaks in Dr. Skinner’s defense. Those who do will, at the same time, be speaking out against a pernicious, commercially-based false belief of the endocrinology specialty. That false belief lowers the quality of medical care and forsakes the health and even the lives of hypothyroid patients not only in the U.K., but also in most other countries of the world.

On the other hand, over the last twenty years, I’ve known countless hypothyroid patients who had never had thyroid cancer. But like thyroid cancer patients, they had for years taken TSH-suppressive doses of thyroid hormone. They did so because smaller doses left them suffering from hypothyroid symptoms. They had no choice—if they wanted to be well, which most of them were, they had to violate the specialty’s treatment guideline and suppress their TSH levels with thyroid hormone. Just like thyroid cancer patients, these patients without cancer were free from any harmful effects. How do I know they were unharmed? Because I found that all the appropriate test results were normal: blood and urine biochemical tests, densitometry, cardiac assessments, and measurements of their resting metabolic rates.

Maybe the reason the specialty won’t speak out publicly about this double-standard guideline is that they really believe it’s true. Maybe its members have never witnessed the evidence that disproves their false belief because they always comply with their own double-standard practice guideline. The guideline dictates that no hypothyroid patient without cancer can use TSH-suppressive doses of thyroid hormone. By steadfastly adhering to that guideline, members of the endocrinology specialty would never be able to see, through clinical experience, that the guideline is, in fact, false.

For Toft to label a suppressed TSH level "thyrotoxic" was fine, as long as he qualified that his labeling was a hypothesis. But to state it as fact was irrational. Accumulating evidence has shown the idea to be wrong. Because of this, Toft should long ago have retracted the notion. Instead, his idea—at the time based on flimsy, tentative evidence and now scientifically refuted—has been shoved down the throats of practicing doctors as a scientific fact. The endocrinology specialty has intimidated practicing doctors into practicing only according to the refuted guideline—even if it destroys patients’ quality of life and, in some instances, causes premature death.

Obviously, anyone can take too much thyroid hormone and become thyrotoxic. But except in rare cases, doses of thyroid hormone that are effective at relieving patients’ symptoms aren’t enough to poison them. These safe and effective doses, however, are often—if not usually—enough to suppress patients’ TSH levels.

TSH-suppressive doses of thyroid hormone did not put these thyroid cancer patients into metabolic overdrive. Before long, I’ll publish a study that shows the same result for hypothyroid and thyroid hormone resistance patients who don’t have cancer. Not only does the scientific evidence show that TSH-suppression does not cause such patients to have bone loss or heart arrhythmias, as a rule, it doesn’t even cause a rapid metabolic rate.

Instead, as I sit here writing, this false belief of the endocrinology specialty is being used to persecute doctors—doctors who know the belief is wrong and who regularly relieve human suffering by violating the dictated guideline based on it. The United Kingdom’s Dr. Gordon Skinner is an eminent physician/scientist currently being persecuted. Many patients have told me that Dr. Skinner rescued them after endocrinologists had kept them suffering for years by denying them enough thyroid hormone to get well. On behalf of those patients and others who need rescuing from the specialty’s false belief, I ask that endocrinologists like Toft retract their scientifically-refuted belief, apologize for the harm the false belief has caused patients, and cease coercing other doctors to harm their patients through complying with the belief.

This appeal to Toft and his like-minded colleagues is urgent. My assessment is that millions of lives have been ruined by their false belief. And in my opinion, the horrors of terrorism pale when compared to the worldwide harm to humanity done by the endocrinology specialty’s tenacious promotion of this double standard for the treatment of hypothyroid patients.