Worst Pills, Best Pills Warns Against Using Armour Thyroid

If they'd done any research, they would have also discovered the groundbreaking results of the Colorado Thyroid Prevalence Study. Reported on in the February 2000 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, the study found that among patients taking thyroid medication (the vast majority taking levothyroxine), only 60% were within the normal range of TSH. he fact that forty percent of patients, a number that translates to millions of Americans, are taking thyroid hormone - the overwhelming majority taking levothyroxine -- and are still not in TSH range indicates that either vast numbers of doctors do not know how to properly prescribe levothyroxine, or it may not be as effective as its manufacturers and supporters claim.

The Worst Pills, Best Pills article goes on to argue against Armour Thyroid, saying:

The American Thyroid Association clearly states on its Web site: "There is no evidence that desiccated thyroid, a biological preparation, has any advantage over synthetic thyroxine."

Presenting as factual evidence the opinion of a professional organization that is heavily funded by synthetic thyroxine drug manufacturers, and for that opinion to be that the competitors product has no advantage, is simply inexcusable.

There's a fundamental issue of basic accuracy. The American Thyroid Association's statement should actually read that:

there is no evidence in the form of published, peer-reviewed, double-blind studies that desiccated thyroid, a biological preparation, has any advantage over synthetic thyroxine.

Because if you ask the hundreds of thousands of patients who switched from synthetic thyroxine to Armour Thyroid and find it the optimal thyroid drug for them -- along with the doctors who prescribed the Armour for them -- they can provide volumes of "evidence" of superiority in terms of quality of life and improved health.

It's also important to note that, for accuracy's sake, the opposite of this statement can also be said.

There is no evidence that synthetic thyroxine has any advantage over desiccated thyroid.

What Worst Pills, Best Pills also failed to share is that the American Thyroid Association (ATA), the organization making this declaration, as well as many of its members, have long enjoyed a close financial relationship with the manufacturers of Synthroid, the top-selling levothyroxine drug, and one of the top-selling drugs in the U.S. Abbott Labs, the current manufacturer of Synthroid, has, for example, been a major sponsor of the American Thyroid Association's glitzy annual meeting, and according to their website, was a sponsor of the event in 2001, 2002, and the upcoming ATA meeting in Palm Beach in September, 2003. Synthroid's manufacturer is also the key funding source for many endocrinologists who receive hefty financial support for everything from their patient literature to attendance at meetings in resort locations and funding for research projects.