Okay, but you said it was evidence in favor of your own hypothesis. That’s what my question was about.
I must be confused here. Sorry, I’m not deliberately evading your (good!) question.
If none of the patients had had any sort of thyroid problem, I’d have expected it to be equally bad for everyone. That would be strong evidence against ‘it’s widespread and treatable with thyroxine’, and very weak evidence against ‘CFS is thyroidy’.
A test is allowed to produce weak evidence one way and strong evidence the other. Imagine rolling a dice. If it comes out 5, you’ve not learned much. If it comes out 7, that’s a big surprise, and enough to smash the ‘six-sided’ theory into the very long grass.
If a fair number of the normal-TSH patient group had nevertheless had a thyroid problem amenable to thyroxine 100mg/day, then I’d have expected that to make a difference between healthy controls and patients. Which appears to be what happened. I think that’s actually fairly strong evidence in favour of ‘common and treatable with thyroxine’. Nowhere near proof, but it strengthens Skinner’s paper, which is already strong evidence, rather than weakening it.
I’m actually really surprised by that. That thyroxine made any difference at all.
I believed it was thyroidy just on the argument in ‘A medical mystery’. (Looks like hypothyroidism, existed in Victorian times, didn’t exist 1900-1970 when hypothyroidism was diagnosed by symptoms and treated with desiccated thyroid, which has too much T3 in it, validity of TSH test never checked)
I’ve been saying for a while that it must be to do with T4/T3 balance, because I couldn″t believe that if it was amenable to thyroxine that wouldn’t already be known. Because I literally couldn’t believe that medical science could have been that careless and stupid.
But now I’m looking at the only two papers I’ve ever been able to find on the subject, and thinking, ‘they both imply that thyroxine works’. It might not be optimal, but it seems to do something!
And sure, it’s nowhere near proof, and I wouldn’t want public health policy changed on this kind of evidence. But it’s worth a good look. And the level of carelessness implied is just staggering.
If they’d just made a terrible mistake and then ignored millions screaming for help for forty years, that would be criminal, but John Lowe and lots of medical doctors had/have been asking, perfectly clearly and sanely, for endocrinology to check its beliefs, for decades.
And they’ve been marginalised, ridiculed, and persecuted for it. “TSH tests normal, therefore it can’t be a thyroid issue.” Over and over and over again. No evidence whatsoever.
Even if CFS turns out to be caused by magic space pixies who deliberately confuse all the experiments, medical science has my utter contempt.
Six months ago I would have said: “There’s no point to alternative medicine, if they had anything that worked it would just be real medicine.”. In fact my friends (and the chiropractor I used to go and see even though I believed her treatments didn’t really help and I was allowing myself to buy a placebo) tell me I used to say that quite a lot.
Because I trusted something extravagantly publicly funded, that called itself a science, to use the scientific method.
After taking a (fairly brief) look at this one problem, I’m now thinking “How many lives have these morons fucked up through their arrogance and carelessness?”.
“How much of the random crap in Holland and Barrett actually works, and how much public money is being shoved down the drain buying chemical poisons for the ill on dodgy evidence produced by drugs companies when they could be fixed with cheap treatments that have been known for years?”
I must be confused here. Sorry, I’m not deliberately evading your (good!) question.
If none of the patients had had any sort of thyroid problem, I’d have expected it to be equally bad for everyone. That would be strong evidence against ‘it’s widespread and treatable with thyroxine’, and very weak evidence against ‘CFS is thyroidy’.
A test is allowed to produce weak evidence one way and strong evidence the other. Imagine rolling a dice. If it comes out 5, you’ve not learned much. If it comes out 7, that’s a big surprise, and enough to smash the ‘six-sided’ theory into the very long grass.
If a fair number of the normal-TSH patient group had nevertheless had a thyroid problem amenable to thyroxine 100mg/day, then I’d have expected that to make a difference between healthy controls and patients. Which appears to be what happened. I think that’s actually fairly strong evidence in favour of ‘common and treatable with thyroxine’. Nowhere near proof, but it strengthens Skinner’s paper, which is already strong evidence, rather than weakening it.
I’m actually really surprised by that. That thyroxine made any difference at all.
I believed it was thyroidy just on the argument in ‘A medical mystery’. (Looks like hypothyroidism, existed in Victorian times, didn’t exist 1900-1970 when hypothyroidism was diagnosed by symptoms and treated with desiccated thyroid, which has too much T3 in it, validity of TSH test never checked)
I’ve been saying for a while that it must be to do with T4/T3 balance, because I couldn″t believe that if it was amenable to thyroxine that wouldn’t already be known. Because I literally couldn’t believe that medical science could have been that careless and stupid.
But now I’m looking at the only two papers I’ve ever been able to find on the subject, and thinking, ‘they both imply that thyroxine works’. It might not be optimal, but it seems to do something!
And sure, it’s nowhere near proof, and I wouldn’t want public health policy changed on this kind of evidence. But it’s worth a good look. And the level of carelessness implied is just staggering.
If they’d just made a terrible mistake and then ignored millions screaming for help for forty years, that would be criminal, but John Lowe and lots of medical doctors had/have been asking, perfectly clearly and sanely, for endocrinology to check its beliefs, for decades. And they’ve been marginalised, ridiculed, and persecuted for it. “TSH tests normal, therefore it can’t be a thyroid issue.” Over and over and over again. No evidence whatsoever. Even if CFS turns out to be caused by magic space pixies who deliberately confuse all the experiments, medical science has my utter contempt. Six months ago I would have said: “There’s no point to alternative medicine, if they had anything that worked it would just be real medicine.”. In fact my friends (and the chiropractor I used to go and see even though I believed her treatments didn’t really help and I was allowing myself to buy a placebo) tell me I used to say that quite a lot. Because I trusted something extravagantly publicly funded, that called itself a science, to use the scientific method. After taking a (fairly brief) look at this one problem, I’m now thinking “How many lives have these morons fucked up through their arrogance and carelessness?”. “How much of the random crap in Holland and Barrett actually works, and how much public money is being shoved down the drain buying chemical poisons for the ill on dodgy evidence produced by drugs companies when they could be fixed with cheap treatments that have been known for years?”