In a message dated 8/11/2001 1:03:22 AM US Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< Then why, why, why do so many Dr's rely on the TSH so heavily?  I just
don't
 understand it. >>

My theories are 1. It is easy, quick, and requires no thought or patient
listening. Rather than listening to a patient's story, getting a good picture
of their distress and thinking; many feel that a litmus test is answer.

2. It works sometimes...sort of. At extremes (in Dr. David Derry's words):
"When your Graves is so bad that your eyeballs are hanging on your cheeks, it
will probably go down. And, when you are an hour or so from Coma, it may well
go up."

3. I'm not sure who said it, but "No matter how complex, subtle, intricate a
problem; there is a simple, straight foreword, easy, and wrong answer."

4. The practice of Medicine has very little to do with Science. Remember,
this is the same group who brought you cauterizing stumps of amputees in
boiling oil (frying) from before Hippocrates until they, by chance, ran out
during the American Civil War.

Medicine is based on tradition, greed, and prejudice. Have you ever wondered
how we can condemn countries for human rights violations regarding female
circumcision while countless male infants were mutilated shortly after birth
with a routine circumcision?

In Langer's book, "Solved: The Riddle of Illness," he said that the American
College of Physicians rated over 50 tests to be of no proven value, obsolete,
or unreliable. Many of those tests are, no doubt, still money makers for
labs.

It is truly shameless how your doc is given advertising about labs, drugs and
so forth.

Doc Don

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