As credentialed health providers with a "whole person" orientation, we would like to weigh in on the escalating and long-overdue controversy regarding hypothyroidism, diagnosis, and use of Armour thyroid medicine and alternative diagnosis and treatment methods. While we will share some of our own views, we also wish to draw from the long historical perspective regarding appropriate technology in medicine versus vested entrenched financial interests, as this is a topic that must be addressed at this time.
Throughout the history of health care, the establishment patriarchy has sought to control all facets of diagnosis and treatment, often ridiculing the so - called "lay practitioners" as criminally deluding the hapless public. This goes back to the days of ancient Greece and Rome, as widespread as to encompass the Kahunas in early Hawaii. These "pillars of the establishment" were known to deride and browbeat a patient who came to them only after first utilizing "alternative" healers and their remedies.
The Popular Health movement of the 1830's and 1840's typified the interest on the part of the public in having an alternative to the standard establishment care. This health movement reflected the larger upheaval in the society stirred by the rise of feminism and working class movements.
In this country, by the early 1800's, there was a growing number of formally trained doctors who took great pains to distinguish themselves from the variety of lay practitioners. The professional distancing became particularly acute after the Civil War, as a result of industrialization. By this time, drug companies had begun to support the American Medical Association by advertising in its prestigious new journal.
This medical-industrial complex type of collusion was the forerunner of how the medical profession would eventually establish its authority to dictate practice standards by a group of self-proclaimed "experts", and to monopolize the field through governmental regulation. In reality, these "regular" doctors were far outnumbered by lay practitioners, who considered them an overpaid profession. The doctors, however, arranged to make it more and more difficult for the lay practitioners and those trained by apprenticeship to be taken seriously. (This same tendency eventually culminated in a frenzy of "witch" burning during the Middle Ages!)
A similar example of such thinking occurred in the early 1900's when Dr. Abraham Flexner, on the staff of the Carnegie Corporation, was commissioned to go on a national tour to evaluate all the medical schools, then in 1910 set standards for all of them that made them adhere to the standards of Johns Hopkins and Harvard Universities. These top schools received foundation funding, and were allowed to flourish, while other schools, including 6 of America's 8 black schools, and the majority of "irregular" schools for women, were destined to close.
Also in 1910, 50% of babies were delivered by midwives; in state after state, new licensing laws sealed the doctors monopoly on medical practice, forcing midwives and homeopaths to practice underground. This was despite the fact that a study by a Johns Hopkins professor in 1912 showed that most American doctors at that time were less competent than midwives to deliver babies. For poor and working class women, this actually meant worse obstetric care, or perhaps none at all.
Technology and drug production have advanced remarkably since the early 1900's. Nevertheless, in our own time, a century later, the old issues are still being played out. There are a minority of physicians, and a great many non-physician practitioners, who realize that the continued collusion of establishment medicine and the corporate drug companies is not always well serving of the general public. Frequently they see it as "self-serving" in terms of profits - and elimination of competition.
For instance, in Phoenix AZ, (where we lived years ago) the state board of medical quality assurance was in the basement of the AMA building. As recently as last year, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists received substantial funding - and it's members a variety of perks - from Abbott Pharmaceutical Company, makers of top-selling and high profit margin Synthroid.
It's no different now than it was one or two hundred years ago. Individuals - even sympathetic medical doctors - who reveal to the public this kind of collusion, and who provide ways for consumers to take better charge of their health, are often maligned and ostracized by the establishment. Worse yet, many physicians are harassed by their state medical boards for not practicing up the local "standard of care" set by the medical-industrial complex, and can be forced to relinquish their licensure, despite decades of successful practice with no patient complaints.
