Thank you, convener. I do not know where to start, to be honest, but I might start with John Midgley. His submission goes through the letter from the Government and tears a lot of holes in it. It asks a huge number of questions, and it questions a lot of the answers that the committee has received. He talks about things like illogical arguments. Under recommendation 5, he talks about the need for more research and about studies being “fatally flawed”, going on to explain why.
Dr Midgley’s response is hugely interesting. Recommendation 9 says that
“leading US scientists Dr A Bianco and J Jonklaas of the US have publicly expressed their doubts as to appropriateness of the uniform use of thyroxine monotherapy and have questioned currently held positions against combined therapy in a significant proportion of patients.”
The petition has been going on for five years, as you know, and I think that a lot of it is about entrenched opinions in the medical profession, which is quite worrying.
On Wednesday night, I went to a meeting where an endocrinologist addressed a room that was packed with women—the condition primarily affects women. The two men in the room happened to be the endocrinologist and a man who was there with his daughter who was only well and functioning because she was getting her medicine—desiccated thyroid hormone—from Thailand. In 21st century Scotland, women should not need to go on to the internet to source medicine that is bringing them back from the dead—I am not being dramatic about it; I have been there myself. They are having to source medicine from Thailand, America or wherever, and that is unacceptable. The women who were there that night told me that they feel strongly that, because it is primarily a women’s problem, it is not getting the attention that it otherwise might get. I apologise to the men in the room, but that was the considered opinion at the meeting.
Many interesting things were said at the meeting. The endocrinologist who was there was quite open minded. He had his own views on certain things, but he was open minded about combined therapy with T3. I am not going to name names, but he does not feel that he can prescribe desiccated thyroid hormone because of its current status. One of the women in the room had been on desiccated thyroid hormone as a child. It was taken away as a treatment only in the 1980s, and she has never felt well since her treatment was changed. She remembers feeling well when she was on desiccated thyroid hormone.
There is also a submission from Professor Rudolf Hoermann, who has been an endocrinologist for more than 30 years. His submission to the committee is really interesting. At the end of it, he says:
“I would expect less lecturing from an outdated knowledge base and more awareness for the undeniable existence and magnitude of the issues. At the very least, patients and doctors alike should not be unnecessarily and unreasonably restricted in their treatment options.”
That seems to be the bottom line.
On Wednesday night, we also heard that desiccated thyroid hormone was one of the first ever medical treatments, which I did not know.
I make a plea to the committee. You have a host of information including patients’ stories that come direct from the horse’s mouth, so perhaps the Scottish Parliament information centre could pull something together. There is a lot of medical information in support of the petition, so perhaps SPICe could pull something together that looks at Dr Midgley’s response to the Government and takes out the contradictory evidence. It could be a paper for the committee that also took in some of the patients’ experiences. The committee could then decide what sort of action it wanted to take beyond that.
After all this time and given all the evidence that has unfolded over the past five years, I am extremely keen—as, I am sure, the petitioner is—for the committee to consider holding a short inquiry. I do not know what the committee’s workload is like—I am sure that it is very busy—but the petition has been really interesting for the committee and has unveiled a host of issues. I would therefore be keen on the committee holding an inquiry.
If the committee decided to take evidence again from the Minister for Public Health and Sport, perhaps you could also take evidence from Dr John Midgley if you were going to have only a one-off evidence session. However, I think that it would add to the whole process if the committee also heard directly from some of the women whose lives have been affected by the issue.
In the context of preventative medicine, we would make real savings in the NHS if we could get the treatment for thyroid disorders right. We would make savings on things such as fertility treatment and people being put on antidepressants when it is their thyroid medicine that is wrong—the list is endless. We could also bring many people back into the economy who, at the moment, just cannot function because their medicine is not right, which I think is a bit of a scandal.