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Dr. Lowe How to Prepare Patient-to-Patient Fibromyalgia Research Foundation
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At disturbingly close intervals, a doctor or an attorney defending a doctor phones or writes to me. The story is usually the same: an endocrinologist has complained to a medical regulatory board about the doctor's practice of thyroid hormone therapy. The various complaints boil down to the same accusation: the doctor has allegedly put a patient at risk. He or she has done so by treating the patient with thyroid hormone therapy other than T4-replacement. Occasionally a specialist other than an endocrinologist filed the complaint. Even so, one or more endocrinologists are called upon to verify the professional irresponsibility of the doctor. Medical board officials appear to consider the endocrinologists' testimony scientifically based and protective of patients. However, the endocrinologists themselves might not know it, but their testimony is just the opposite—unscientific and protective not of patients but of T4-replacement, an approach to thyroid hormone therapy that's often ineffective and harmful to patients. (It is well-documented that T4-replacement is ineffective and harmful for many patients, perhaps up to 50%. See my critiques of the T4 vs T4/T3 studies and of Dr. Richard Guttler's false and potentially harmful beliefs.) As I document in Tyranny of the TSH, the endocrinologists' actions are part of a system of thuggery the purpose of which is to protect corporate profits from T4-replacement. I am not, of course, implying that any individual endocrinologist has consciously served the system in this way. As I explain in the book, some, perhaps most, of the endocrinologists are not conspiring participants; instead, I believe they are unthinking pawns in a system of greed and political tyranny. Often, the endocrinologists' complaints are against doctors who have gotten patients well with desiccated thyroid or T3 after T4-replacement had left them suffering for years. Regulatory board members ignore this and usually cooperate by suspending or revoking the doctor's medical license. This outcome serves the system well by intimidating other doctors into restricting their patients to T4-replacement. This coercive system sustains the suffering of patients and their loved ones, consigns many patients to disability rolls, and imposes gargantuan costs on society. At the root of this system is lavish funding of the endocrinology specialty and its organizations, such as the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, by corporations that profit from T4-replacement. The system constitutes the abuse of patients and their doctors in the service of profit and power. For humanitarian and scientific reasons, this system must be stopped and patients and their physicians freed from its tyranny. In the meantime, doctors need to be protected from complaints by endocrinologists. Through our collaboration, a highly-credible, committed medical physician who is an expert in thyroid science has become active in assisting doctors who are the subject of such complaints. The assistance involves neutralizing on scientific grounds the complaints of endocrinologists. It also involves providing regulatory, legal, and financial consequences for the endocrinologists' complaints and testimony against defendant doctors. If you are a doctor, or a patient of a doctor, against whom an endocrinologist or other specialist has filed a complaint, I encourage you or your attorney to contact me. Assertive action may block suspension or revocation of a defendant doctor's license. It may also lead to reprimand of the endocrinologist and, through civil legal action, a financial settlement from the endocrinologist. Moreover, successful action against endocrinologists will establish legal precedents in case law that will enable attorneys to halt this abusive and exploitative system. The physician/thyroid expert and I are resolutely committed to this humanitarian end. Doctors and attorneys can reach me at drlowe@drlowe.com or 603-391-6060.
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