This month we published an especially important paper in Thyroid Science, "The linguistic etiologies of thyroxine-resistant hypothyroidism." The paper addresses a grave mistake that doctors and researchers made in developing the concepts of hypothyroidism and thyroid hormone therapy.

Something that makes the paper especially important is that the discipline of the author, Eric Pritchard, is not medicine. Instead, he has two other disciplines: theoretical mathematics and engineering.

Eric and I began writing to one another several months ago. Immediately, something was clear to me: Here is a man whose brilliant mind quickly grasped (from a single family experience with thyroid hormone therapy) what most conventional doctors—including endocrinologists—do not understand: (1) failed thyroid gland function is not the only reason someone can need thyroid hormone therapy; (2) dysfunctions outside the thyroid gland (for example, in the cells of other body tissues) can cause many patients to direly need thyroid hormone therapy; and (3) the therapy that enables most of these patients to recover their health is T3—not T4.

These false beliefs of conventional doctors may have caused more human suffering and dysfunction than any other blunder in the history of medicine. The beliefs are a monstrous disservice to humanity. Knowing the relevant history, Eric explains how this disservice came about. That, to me, is perhaps the major contribution of Eric’s paper to the thyroidology literature.

For those of you who most often read papers written by physicians, keep this in mind: Eric comes from an intellectual discipline that, compared to medicine, demands far greater intellectual precision, exactitude, and accountability. Partly because of that, his style of written expression requires some of us to stop here-and-there and think about what we just read. The time, however, is well invested. Patients who already know the points Eric makes will likely find his style an interesting variation of casting the light of truth on the topic. However, conventional doctors, especially endocrinologists, and researchers who open mindedly consider his arguments may realize something else: that in his message is enlightenment that can show the way to redemption for the moral debt they owe humanity—a debt due for the incalculable suffering they have caused humans by imposing T4-replacement on them.

Fundamental to the advancement of scientific knowledge is criticism and debate. In this spirit, Eric, as we at Thyroid Science, invites criticisms of the propositions that make up the arguments in his paper. We have included his email address on the abstract and pdf version of his paper. If you would like for your criticism to be published in Thyroid Science, send a copy to us at Editor@ThyroidScience.com. We will publish it along with Eric’s response, as long as it conforms to our requirements for criticisms and debate.