Here is the thyroid guru I most trust:

http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/weekly/aa072500a.htm

Part of article pasted below:


A series of exclusive interviews with innovative practitioners
who are on the cutting edge of thyroid disease diagnosis
and treatment. Click HERE for the entire series of
groundbreaking interviews.

Rethinking the TSH Test: An Interview with David Derry, M.D., Ph.D.
The History of Thyroid Testing, Why the TSH Test Needs to Be Abandoned, and
the Return to Symptoms-Based Thyroid Diagnosis and Treatment
by Mary J. Shomon


Almost every conventional discussion of thyroid disease focuses on the use
of the Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) as the diagnostic "gold standard"
for thyroid disease. The TSH is used almost exclusively by most conventional
physicians as the means of diagnosing thyroid disease, irrespective of
symptoms. Typically, if the TSH level is above the normal range, a patient
is diagnosed as hypothyroid, and TSH levels below normal range are
interpreted as hyperthyroidism. But is the TSH test and the reference
"normal range" accurate? Should thyroid disease diagnosis be based primarily
on this one test? Some experts say no.

Dr. A P Weetman, professor of medicine, wrote in the article "Fortnightly
review: Hypothyroidism: screening and subclinical disease," which appeared
in the 19 April 1997 issue of the British Medical Journal, the following
groundbreaking statement:
". . . even within the reference range of around 0.5-4.5 mU/l, a high
thyroid stimulating hormone concentration (>2 mU/l) was associated with an
increased risk of future hypothyroidism. The simplest explanation is that
thyroid disease is so common that many people predisposed to thyroid failure
are included in a laboratory's reference population, which raises the
question whether thyroxine replacement is adequate in patients with thyroid
stimulating hormone levels above 2 mU/l."
In response to Dr. Weetman, David Derry M.D., Ph.D., a thyroid expert and
researcher, based in Victoria, British Columbia, responded, saying:
"Why are we following a test which has no correlation with clinical
presentation? The thyroidologists by consensus have decided that this test
is the most useful for following treatment when in fact it is unrelated to
how the patient feels. The consequences of this have been horrendous. Six
years after their consensus decision Chronic fatigue and Fibromyalgia
appeared. These are both hypothyroid conditions. But because their TSH was
normal they have not been treated. The TSH needs to be scrapped and medical
students taught again how to clinically recognize low thyroid conditions."
This provocative response was how Dr. Derry came to the attention of many
thyroid patients, and interviewer Mary Shomon, About's thyroid guide. In
this interview, Dr. Derry shares his fascinating and innovative ideas about
why he believes the TSH test needs to be abandoned. This interview was
conducted in July of 2000.

Mary Shomon: First, Dr. Derry, can you tell us a little bit about your
medical background, and interest in thyroid testing and treatment?

David Derry: I have always been interested in Medical research. I graduated
with a Medical Degree from the University of British Columbia, Canada in
Vancouver in 1962. I interned at the Toronto General Hospital. From there I
went to McGill University and went into a four year program to get my PhD in
biochemistry and more specifically in Neurochemistry at the institute set up
by Wilder Penfield called the Montreal Neurological Institute in Montreal.
In 1967 I graduated with a PhD in biochemistry from McGill. I was hired by
the department of Pharmacology at the University of Toronto Medical School
as an assistant professor. For five years I did basic biochemical research
and taught medical students, dentistry students and pharmacy students. Not
long after I arrived in Toronto I was became a Scholar of the Medical
Research Council of Canada. That is to say, my salary was paid by The
Medical Research Council of Canada to do pure research for five years. At
the same time I worked week-ends in charge and the only physician in a large
900 bed psychiatric hospital called the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital.
Meanwhile about then (1970 ) I had a rearrangement of my domestic status. I
ended up marrying my present wife and by this gained three more children. I
had two of my own. All children were between 4 and 9 years old. There was no
way that the salary of an assistant professor in Pharmacology at the
University of Toronto was going to be able to pay to raise five small
children. After the legal aspects had been settled my wife and I, the five
children and a large Labrador retriever boarded a 747 for Victoria British
Columbia. Within two weeks I started a general practice.

When I came back into General Practice I had in mind a saying I attribute to
Dr. Wilder Penfield which was (paraphrasing) "If you listen to a patient
carefully the patient will tell you the diagnosis and if you listen even
more carefully they will tell you the most appropriate treatment". Before I
went back into practice I had taken courses in interpersonal relationships
and how to communicate and listen better. Since I entered General Practice I
have taken more courses in personal development. My idea was to learn more
and more how to listen carefully and how to get my personality (ego) out of
the way of the conversation with the patient. Because I was armed with this
approach I developed, I have been able to learn much in the last 28 years in
practice.

After about 3-4 years in practice I thought I would start to do my own
research. I started with Vitamins. Amongst many other topics, I taught
Vitamins at the University of Toronto and when Dr. Linus Pauling's book on
Vitamin C and Cancer came out in 1970 I was asked by the Faculty of Medicine
to present the essential material of the book to about 300 faculty members
and students. Therefore, vitamins, their prophylactic and therapeutic use
was a good place for me to start to investigate. So I investigated the use
of vitamins for all manner of disease. Eventually after about 10 years I had
fairly well exhausted every aspect of the therapeutic use of vitamins I
could think of. By then I knew what you could do and couldn't do with
vitamins. Most of the patients were only too glad to help me with this and
the ones who got better were very grateful. Since then I have slowly over
the last 15-20 years developed an interest in thyroid problems. There are
reasons for my interest in thyroid that are too long to tell. Gradually I
obtained copies of all the relevant thyroid literature back to the 1883
Committee on Myxedema. I have a huge library on the thyroid literature
consisting of about 5000 reprints and books. All of the old textbooks I
copied and have them in my library for my use. All of this is computerized
of course. There are other aspects of my medical and biological training in
my CV. (See Dr. Derry's Biographical Information and Chronological
Curriculum Vitae

The consensus of thyroidologists decided in 1973 that the TSH was the blood
test they had been looking for all through the years. This was about two
years after I started practice. Having been taught how to diagnose
hypothyroid conditions clinically I was in a position to watch to see what
the relation of the TSH was to the onset of hypothyroidism. What I found was
many people would develop classic signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism but
the TSH was ever so slow to become abnormal, rise and confirm the clinical
diagnosis. Sometimes it never did. Finally I began treat patients with
thyroid in the normal manner I was taught. I could not see why I had to wait
for the TSH to rise for me to be able to treat them.

The main ingredient of thyroid hormone, which distinguishes it from other
molecules of similar size (molecular size), was the element which made
thyroid hormone namely iodine. So I did a thorough search of the literature
on iodine. This review led me to try to use iodine and thyroid
therapeutically. The TSH had caused all research on the therapeutic use of
both of these substances to stop dead. My biochemical and pharmacological
background has allowed me to search in areas of the literature that are
impossible for a normal physician or even a specialist to explore.

If you remember it was a long time before the medical profession admitted
that there were two new diseases to appear in the world that were not there
before. Chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia were non-existent before 1980. This
is seven years after the 1973 consensus meeting. So where did these two new
diseases come from? The symptoms and signs of chronic fatigue and
fibromyalgia were described in the literature in the 1930's as one way that
low thyroid could be expressed. Treated early it was easily fixed with
thyroid in adequate doses. But even then the clinicians had noticed that if
a patient has low thyroid (chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia) for too long
then it became more difficult to reverse all signs and symptoms regardless
of what they were.

Mary Shomon: Why do you think that thyroidologists have decided that the TSH
test is the most useful -- or in many cases - the only test for thyroid
problems, versus a patient's clinical symptoms? How do you think this has
come to be considered the "gold standard" for thyroid diagnosis and
management?

Article continued at site -
http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/weekly/aa072500a.htm