Updated May 22, 2003
In a US News & World Report article on patient-ordered blood testing
the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists’ president Hossein Gharib has again distinguished himself as being behind the times and not in tune with patients. Here’s a quote from the US News article:
Many thyroid patients…have become convinced that they need a free T3 test to detect a specific thyroid hormone. They've dumped doctors who order only a more general test for TSH, or thyroid stimulating hormone. Free T3 is available from HealthcheckUSA as part of a $75 test. Yet it may not be worth ordering, says Hossein Gharib*, a thyroid specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and president of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. "Hey, we live in a free world, but it's not a `free T3' world. TSH is the gold standard for thyroid function," he says. "T3 tests are not very reliable. And you would only try one if the TSH is abnormal." Yet patients with normal TSH who still feel lousy insist a further test can pinpoint their problem.
(*Gharib is the same person who announced earlier this year, on behalf of the entire endocrinology community that thyroid disease “is easy to diagnose and treat".)
Clearly, Gharib and his colleagues have not been talking to the millions of patients who don’t feel well when subject to, as some practitioners have referred to it, “The Tyranny of the TSH.” And they haven’t been consulting with the many thousands of enlightened practitioners who believe that Free T3 testing is an essential part of their management of thyroid disease.
If you want to live in a “Free T3 world,” there are several direct laboratories that offer various thyroid tests. You do not need a doctor’s prescription to order tests from these companies.
Biosafe
Healthcheck USA
DirectLabs
