Mr. Michael Bass
Senior Executive Producer
The Early Show
524 W. 57th St.
New York, NY 10019-2902
Dear Mr. Bass,
Please receive my kind regards which I extend to you with this letter.
With this correspondence, I want to thank you for having given me an opportunity to provide an alternative medical view on the treatment of hypothyroidism during the CBS Early Show on September 19, 2005.
The scurrilous and dishonest attack on me by the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) which followed my appearance on CBS is typical of the way mainstream medical organizations react to those forward looking physicians who challenge the status quo and refuse to follow the herd. Their modus operandi is to attempt to intimidate anyone who challenges conventional wisdom. They act more like members of the Spanish Inquisition than scientists who are seeking the truth for the betterment of mankind. The AACE is comprised of the same sort of physicians who drove Simmelweis out of Austria in the early 19th century because he had the audacity to recommend that the obstetricians wash their hands after dissecting cadavers and before delivering babies.
Because I was trained as an orthodox and conventional physician at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, I know how people like Bill Law think. As a matter of fact I have written about it in my book, Hormones, Health, and Happiness which I am enclosing with this letter for your perusal. Most medical societies are formed to create a monopoly for their services and to drive out any competitors. The AACE is no different.
A major health problem facing our country is the millions of baby boomers who are experiencing a host of chronic health problems as they age, such as, fatigue, weight gain, decreased mental sharpness, depressed moods, insomnia, joint and muscle pain, sluggish bowel function, loss of libido, hair loss, cold sensitivity, numbness and tingling in the extremities, elevated cholesterol, and recurrent illnesses, to name a few. This dramatically decreases their quality of life. It is an indisputable scientific fact that these health problems result from the decline in the body's naturally occurring hormones, especially the thyroid and sex hormones, which happens as we age. These problems are not caused by low blood levels of prescription drugs.
The current medical paradigm for diagnosing and treating low thyroid conditions is to rely solely on blood tests, tests which in and of themselves cannot predict patient symptoms. Most women, who have all the symptoms of low thyroid, are told that their thyroid function is normal. In the recent November 8, 2005 New York Times article entitled, "For Thyroid Hormones, How Low is Too Low?" Dr. David Cooper, Director of Endocrinology at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, was quoted as saying, "I see patients all the time who are miserable and unhappy and want to blame something. There are tears and anger when you tell them that it's not their thyroid that's causing their problems."
These women with so called normal tests are then routinely sent home with prescriptions for psychiatric drugs, specifically, antidepressants, having been made to feel that they are hypochondriacs, neurotics or hysterics and that their problems have a psychosomatic origin.
My goal as a physician and as a leader in the field of alternative approaches to health care is to help women and men obtain and maintain health and wellness naturally, so they can enjoy a better quality of life.
What I relayed to your viewing audience, and what is written in my book, is that the approach of relying strictly upon blood tests to determine thyroid status is ineffective. At the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, we have successfully treated over 7,000 patients for hypothyroidism based upon their clinical presentation in conjunction with blood tests. My philosophy is very simple. If a woman or man in midlife has clinical signs and symptoms of low thyroid function, then they deserve a therapeutic trial of prescription thyroid medication. At our Center, we use Armour Thyroid, which is FDA approved and has been used safely, effectively, and inexpensively for more than 80 years. Our experience with synthetic thyroid preparations is that they do not resolve the symptoms of low thyroid, although they can normalize blood tests. The FDA threatened to remove all synthetic thyroid medication, the medication which the AACE promotes, from the marketplace in 2001 because of poor quality and substandard results. We recommend Armour Thyroid to our patient, as do thousands of physicians across the country, because it works.
