Treatments for Autoimmune Disease?

I watch a lot of Discovery Health Channel and love medical shows in general. It's one of my favorite pasttimes. In one episode of "Mystery Diagnosis" a little boy had an autoimmune condition that severely impaired his motor skills. A treatment known as plasmapheresis was performed on him and he consequently improved each time he did it. Plasmapheresis is a procedure similar to dialysis which filters the blood to eliminate the antibodies which wreak havoc on the body and destroy the various tissues and organs depending on which autoimmune condition you happen to have. How interesting! And why wasn't this treatment ever mentioned by any of my doctors? I did some more research on the internet and apparently so far it's only used on the more serious life threatening ones like Guillain-Barre syndrome and Lupus. I didn't find any information on this as being a possible treatment for Hashimoto's. The standard treatment for Hashimoto's seems to be to just let the thyroid die and to have the antibodies keep on doing their nasty work while then having to take replacement hormones for the ones lost due to the gland being eaten alive. Lovely. Why not just nip the real problem in the bud and get rid of the antibodies which destroy the gland?! Nah too easy I guess. Ha! Gotta love beaurocracy.

In my searches I have also come across medicines which supress the immune system and even read something about low level chemo which does so. Wow. Can these be applied to Hashimoto's? Is there any more research being done to combat autoimmune diseases? Why aren't there any autoimmune doctors or specialists?

The other day I saw my Endocrinologist for blood test results. Another doctor sat down with me prior to meeting with her to document my progress and medical history. My Endocrinologist is quite busy these days. I asked the doctor about my antibody levels and if they were shown to have increased on the blood test's results. He looked dumbfounded as he was looking through my medical file and then excused himself and said he had to ask someone. It was about a good 10 minutes later when he returned and stated that this blood test didn't check for them. Way to dodge the question. Anyway, I can see that the medical community has much work to do regarding anything autoimmune related.