Dr. John C. Lowe
Director of Research
January 26, 2010

On behalf of everyone affiliated with FRF, I want to express our gratitude for your tax-deductible donations. To sidestep the politics and bureaucracy inherent in government funding, which often impede the progress of scientists, we depend on donations and other methods of support for our research and educational projects.

It's through donations such as yours that we're able to continue working on our current four main commitments:

First: We're determined to promulgate the evidence-based proposition—while publicizing the evidence—that too little thyroid hormone regulation (due to hypothyroidism and/or thyroid hormone resistance) is the main underlying mechanism of most patients' fibromyalgia.

Second: We'll make available to everyone we can reach (patients, their loved ones and clinicians, and the general public)  the evidence that most fibromyalgia patients are actually "fibromyalgia/thyroid patients."

Third: We pledge to make readily available the scientific evidence that T4 and T4/T3 replacement therapies are ineffective for and ergo harmful to most fibromyalgia/thyroid patients.

Fourth: We're committed to providing the evidence that fibromyalgia patients are most likely to recover their health with integrative metabolic therapies that include thyroid hormone treatments other than replacement therapies (such as TSH-lowering or suppressing desiccated thyroid, synthetic T4/T3 therapy, or T3 alone).
 

We receive and always deeply appreciate donations from those who support our work through FRF. We believe that our new commitments are in line with their experience-based beliefs about fibromyalgia. We're grateful to FRF donors for their  continuing support as we move forward with the commitments I've outlined above.

I must add that our hearts at FRF are especially warmed by memorial donations to FRF. These are donations from family members, loved ones, and friends of fibromyalgia/thyroid patients who have passed on. If you've made a memorial donation, please know that we don't forget about your deceased loved one. We have a memorial page where we give the names, relevant dates, and photos of many people on whose behalf FRF has received memorial donations.

Some donors prefer that their deceased loved one not be included in the memorial page. Nonetheless, I think of the people they've donated in memory of, and of the names and faces on our memorial page. They all cross my mind when at times I feel discouraged over Big Pharma's current calculated efforts to profit from fibromyalgia patients as a drug market. All those deceased loved ones, some of whom pass away too early, remind me of the extreme importance of pressing on, and that's what we at FRF are doing. Of course, we can't in the foreseeable future stop the juggernaut of Big Pharma and its major sales force, mainstream medicine, as it savors what it calls "the fibromyalgia market." But all of us, including fibromyalgia patients, can evade its pernicious effects. To do so, we must refuse it and turn to scientific natural medicine and thyroid hormone therapies other than T4 and T4/T3 replacement.

Before ending, I want to mention to those of you who contribute to FRF through "workplace pledges." We want to say thank you. We seldom directly communicate with or meet workplace-pledge donors. This is because we receive the donations indirectly through organizations such as Caring Connection in Denver, Colorado.

Although we don't get to meet your personally, your donations are especially encouraging to us. They suggest to us that we've lived up to our commitments through the years. That is, people we may never meet, such as you, appear to appreciate our work and judge it worthy of your support. Maybe you value our work because it has enabled you or a loved one to improve or recover. Or maybe you've considered our research and publications and found them to be logical, scientifically sound, and likely to benefit fibromyalgia/thyroid patients. Whatever the reason, we're grateful for your support, which we'll continue working to earn.

As one of FRF's supporting donors,
please accept our thanks