I was delighted to read Dr. DeGroot's erudite letter; he is quite right in almost every respect. Voltaire also said that "history is no more than the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes," a view to which neither I nor, I suspect, Dr. DeGroot would subscribe. I lean toward Francis Bacon ("histories make men wise") or Abraham Lincoln ("we cannot escape history").

My editorial was a brief overview of the idea of failure to respond well to hormones and was aimed at putting the concept of resistance to thyroid hormone in context. The details of the specific story of thyroid hormone resistance had already been alluded to in the lead article [1] in the same issue of Annals in which my editorial appeared and in the excellent historical overview (reference 12 in the editorial) by Dr. DeGroot's colleague, Dr. Samuel Refetoff [2]. This review contains all the references noted by Dr. DeGroot. The curious reader would seem to be well served by this.

My apologies to Dr. DeGroot and any others who thought the editorial claimed a specific sequence of events after the recognition that specific genes encoded thyroid hormone receptors. My intention was to define a context of thought and not a priority. To precisely define who thought of something first is usually impossible—the human mind is too nimble. In any case, the story is not yet complete (we still cannot explain the varying phenotypes), and good history is itself provisional.

Voltaire's contemporary, Edward Gibbon, whose The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains a widely read classic 200 years after he wrote it, thought that "the life of the historian must be short and precarious." It seems even more so when the players are still alive; being alive, however, they can talk back, which is all to the good. Others with a view of this topic should consider telling me their tale (in writing, with references), for which I will be most grateful.