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The New "T3 Treatment" Thyroid Solution or Unethical Experiment? - Page 2

© M. Sara Rosenthal

Potential Harms Of T3 Therapy and Research
T3 may indeed prove to be the best available therapy for hypothyroid patients, but to date, it is not considered standard therapy yet, and in countries like Canada, it is still considered experimental and remains unavailable. There are good reasons to be cautious about new drugs or research that may exploit vulnerable populations – especially women.

As of this writing, my concern with experimental T3 therapy is that women may find themselves harmed once more, given that the majority of thyroid patients are women. Susan Sherwin, author of Patient No Longer: Feminist Ethics and Health Care, a professor of medical ethics, writes: “In case after case we find that women receive treatments that have been falsely represented as safe...with no warnings or explanations...” (Sherwin: 168). According to the American Foundation for Thyroid Patients, anecdotes abound from female thyroid patients who experience severe side effects from T3 therapy, who state that they were never informed about risks of T3 therapy. This is of enormous concern.

According to Sherwin, “Women’s relatively powerless positions in society make it a matter of particular importance that we guard against the likelihood that their health is sacrificed to the financial interests of the [researcher]” (Sherwin: 169).

Risks of T3 Therapy
Like many new therapies, T3 therapy has not been tested on many groups of people, who in the past were abused in medical research: elderly people, minority groups, and women. For example, studies that looked at heart disease excluded women, and now we’re seeing that heart disease manifests differently in women than men. As a result of medical ignorance surrounding women’s heart disease, many women have needlessly died, sent home with their heart attack symptoms.

Therefore, serious questions remain about whether T3 works differently in men than women, particularly postmenopausal women, whose risks of heart disease increase because of estrogen loss. The published study using T3 therapy was conducted on a small sample of thyroid patients (33) who were of the average age of 46 years and were only taking T3 therapy for ten weeks. So, what we don’t know about T3 therapy are answers to the following questions:

1. What are the long term effects of T3 therapy?
2. How does T3 affect people 65 years and older?
3. How does T3 affect women past menopause who are not taking hormone replacement therapy?
4. How does T3 affect women past menopause who ARE taking

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