Patient Advocate Issues Thyroid Disease Report Card; Public Citizen Fails, Dairy Queen, Docs, Drug Companies Get Mixed Results 1/14/2004
From: Mary Shomon of thyroid-info.com, 301-493-6123 or mshomon@thyroid-info.com WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 -- January is Thyroid Disease Awareness Month, and to mark this annual effort to increase public awareness about thyroid conditions, patient advocate and author Mary Shomon has issued her 2004 Thyroid Disease Report Card. The Report Card grades groups and individuals based on their impact on the health and quality of life of America's more than 27 million thyroid patients. Scoring a failing grade of F is the Ralph Nader-founded group Public Citizen. The May 2003 issue of the group's Worst Pills, Best Pills newsletter condemned Armour Thyroid, a prescription thyroid drug that has been on the market for more than 100 years. The group urged practitioners and patients not to use it, alleging that only "unscrupulous" practitioners are prescribing the natural drug. "Public Citizen is a public menace for thyroid patients," says Shomon. "Their Health Research Group, led by Sidney Wolfe, MD, is carelessly banishing a safe, inexpensive, and effective drug, one prescribed more than two million times annually. Yet, despite numerous requests, Public Citizen refuses to justify their controversial recommendation." In contrast, Shomon has awarded an A to the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA), recognizing their success at raising autoimmune disease awareness among the public, researchers, and policymakers. Thanks in large part to AARDA, the NIH created an office to study autoimmune disease and funded a number of autoimmune "Centers of Excellence" and Newsweek named autoimmunity one of 2003's top health stories. Says Shomon, "Thanks to the comprehensive and tireless efforts of AARDA, we are closer to finding ways to prevent and even potentially cure thyroid conditions, which are the most common of the more than 60 autoimmune conditions." Others graded in the 2004 Thyroid Disease Report Card include: -- Drug Companies: Abbott Laboratories, Forest Laboratories and King Pharmaceuticals: D -- Dairy Queen: C plus -- Endocrinology Researchers: C -- America's Doctors: D -- Holistic/Alternative Medicine Community: B plus -- American Academy of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE): C -- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA): D -- Larry Ladd, Perchlorate Activist: A -- Drug Companies, Attorneys for the Synthroid Class Action Lawsuit: F The full Thyroid Disease Report Card is online at http://www.thyroid-info.com/reportcard A free thyroid disease brochure, with a comprehensive symptoms list, is available for download at http://www.thyroid-info.com/freebrochure.htm or by mail by sending a SASE to Thyroid Brochure, P.O. Box 0385, Palm Harbor, FL 34682. Patient advocate Mary Shomon is author of the best-selling book, Living Well With Hypothyroidism: You're Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You...That You Need to Know, published in 2000 by HarperCollins, now in a 17th printing. She is author of a number of health books, and thyroid patient guides including the Thyroid Diet Guide, and Thyroid Guide to Fertility, Pregnancy and Breastfeeding Success. Shomon developed and runs the Internet's most popular thyroid patient websites -- http://thyroid.about.com and http://www.thyroid-info.com -- and newsletters, including Sticking Out Our Necks. |