A Message From Dr. John C. Lowe, Editor-in-Chief

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In 1901, Sir William Osler (the Father of Clinical Medicine, and one of the most prominent physicians in the world) wrote an article titled "Books and Men" for the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. For the previous ten years, thyroid hormone therapy had been hailed by prominent physicians as one of the greatest advances in the history of medicine. Despite this monumental achievement in medicine, not all physicians knew about it. Dr. Osler gave an example:

"It is astonishing with how little reading a doctor can practice medicine, but it is not astonishing how badly he may do it. Not three months ago a physician living within an hour's ride of the Surgeon-General's Library brought to me his little girl aged twelve. The diagnosis of infantile myxoedema [childhood hypothyroidism] required only a half-glance. In placid contentment he had been practicising twenty years in 'Sleepy Hollow,' and not even when his own flesh and blood was touched did he rouse from an apathy deep as Rip Van Winkle's sleep. In reply to questions: No, he had never seen anything in the journals about the thyroid gland; he had seen no pictures of cretinism or myxoedema; in fact, his mind was a blank on the whole subject. He had not been a reader, he said, but he was a practical man with very little time."[1,p.203] (Italics and bold print mine.) 1. Osler, W.: Counsels and Ideals: From the Writings of William Osler, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1921 (published posthumously).

It's in the field of thyroid research and thyroid-related clinical practice that most conventional clinicians seem least well-read. I believe the problem is worse for allopathic physicians. Friends and acquaintances of mine who are conventional allopathic physicians have told me the same story: essentially, "In medical school [some among the most prestigious of institutions], my education in thyroidology consisted of two pieces of information: (1) diagnose hypothyroidism if the patient's TSH is high, and (2) prescribe Synthroid or some other brand of T4."

It would be unreasonable to damn clinicians for not keeping up with the entire field of thyroidology. I've spent the last twenty-two years learning everything in the field that I could, but with the torrent of newly published studies, I still know only a fraction of what  there is to learn. We can thank some high profile decision-makers in the endocrinology specialty and their corporate sponsors for clinicians knowing less than the average thyroid patient about research and clinical thyroidology. When it comes to diagnosis and treatment, the specialty perpetuates the paucity of useful information that professors teach in medical schools and endocrinologists with corporation-ties reiterate  to practicing clinicians.

I have been a clinician for more thirty-one years. My experiences as a clinician make me aware of how susceptible clinicians are when their teachers give them canned, easily learned, easily applied methods for diagnosis and treatment. The torrent of new research information is simply too large to attend to more than a little. And this, I believe, has made clinicians easy victims of a scam run by what I call the Endo/Corp Cartel.

To truly help most patients who have too little thyroid hormone regulation, clinicians need far more than those two pieces of information provided at medical schools. They also need far more than what is provided at post-graduate propaganda sessions held in many hospitals. The teachers at these sessions—almost always endocrinologists who have  conflicts of interest with corporations that profit from T4-replacement—allow sales reps in the back of the room to hand out pamphlets advertising the wonders of Synthroid.

Our answer to what I've described here—which some may call the dumbing down of conventional clinicians concerning clinical thyroidology—is Thyroid Science, an open-access journal with no corrupting corporate ties. Here, we do not censor submitted papers, as do most mainstream conventional medical journals. They censor papers that contain content threaten the financial interests of drug companies whose advertisements take up 50%-to-75% of the content of each issue. In contrast, at Thyroid Science, anti-corporation beliefs and research findings, as well as any form of dissent, is welcome. And our pages are available free of charge to anyone in the world who has access to a computer.

One of our goals is to counterbalance the forty-some-odd-years of what I believe is a contrived limiting of clinicians' knowledge regarding scientific and clinical thyroidology. We intend to achieve this goal by publishing submitted papers that contribute to truth in thyroid science and thyroid-related clinical practice. Our hope is that in time, our current 6,000 subscribers will grow into 600,000 or more, and that they will agree that we've achieved our goal. For me, an inspiring fantasy is that Sir William Osler would be pleased that we at Thyroid Science have helped correct the problem of the uninformed physician he described in 1901, who, tragically for patients, is still all too prevalent today.

A Call for Papers. Thyroid Science is an open-access electronic journal. As, pro forma with new journals, we are calling for manuscript submissions. We welcome any submission, whether a paper or letter, that is earnestly intended to contribute to truth in thyroid science and thyroid clinical practice. In that we are dedicated to such truth, we consider Thyroid Science a stark contrast to most major medical journals today—especially endocrinology journals. In my judgment, most such journals have been co-opted by corporations and are used as cloaked advertising media. We conceived Thyroid Science as an alternative to those publications. We offer it as a medium of expression for those who want their views published—uncensored—despite the views being unfavorable to the financial interests of corporations.

Using the electronic format, Thyroid Science will share a benefit with other journals that are now published only electronically. That benefit is speed of publication. We can publish papers as rapidly as the authors and our editors prepare them for publication.

Before submitting a letter or paper, please see our Authors' Guidelines and How to Submit to Thyroid Science. If you would like to communicate with us, please write to us at Editor@ThyroidScience.com.