Advocates of the bogus Wilson's syndrome are around in the UK as I discovered last year when I was asked to review the case notes of a 39 year old female who presented to her GP with weight gain, general malaise, fluid retention and dry skin. She was considered euthyroid and her TSH was 2.5 IU/L. Being a keen Net surfer she diagnosed herself as having Wilson's syndrome and several of these lengthy articles were in her notes. The claimed problem of this condition is the inability to adequately convert T4 to T3 and the treatment is to give substantial doses of T3 ( upto 200 - 300 ug/d)! The patient failed to convince her GP or Consultant to treat her this way so she tracked down through the Net a private doctor in Surrey, who prescribed T3 , prednisolone and fludrocortisone.We have since heard that not only have her symptoms not improved but she now suffers from palpitations. The fact that she had her ovaries removed 5 years ago and gave up taking oestrogens 3 years later and switched to a natural progestagen instead seems to have been overlooked.

Like others I came across the Quackwatch web site run by Dr Stephen Barrett which is dedicated to exposing medical myths and bogus practitioners. It is well worth visiting to see the details on the latest 'Fad' Diagnoses which are either legitimate conditions that unscientific practitioners overdiagnose (eg chronic fatigue syndrome) or figments of pseudoscientific imagination (eg Wilson's and mercury amalgam toxicity).