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Fwd: [S-A] 20/20 attacks Homeopathy (this Friday?)

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" Jan Jenson "

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 23:02:05 -0500

[s-A] 20/20 attacks Homeopathy (this Friday?)

 

 

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" Citizens for Healthcare Freedom " <CHF

" Citizens for Healthcare Freedom " <CHF

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 22:37:40 -0500

20/20 attacks Homeopathy (this Friday?)

 

-

Homeopathic Educational Services (and Dana Ullman, MPH)

<mail

 

 

Friends,

Anyone who has been in touch with me during the past 2 months may

have heard me express concern that 20/20 and their reporter John Stossel

might do a hit piece of homeopathy. It looks like they will air it on

Friday January 30th.

Please know that Stossel has had serious credibility issues in the

past. He previously did a hit piece on the organics industry and was forced

to do an on-air apology because he interviewed a " representative " of the

organics industry who was really a rep for the chemical industry (whooops).

Sometime shortly I will be hiring a pr person to help us respond to

this report. If you can help in any way financially, please send your

tax-deductible contributions to:

The Foundation for Homeopathic Education and Research (FHER)

2124 Kittredge St.

Berkeley, CA. 94704

This Foundation is not set-up to accept credit card contributions,

but HES could do so and forward all funds to the Foundation.

And please give 20/20 and ABC News the feedback that they deserve

(links to do this are below!).

For further information about homeopathy and this media drama, see

my website (www.homeopathic.com <http://www.homeopathic.com/> ).

 

bsp; And yes, you are encouraged to spread this email around.

 

--Dana Ullman

 

 

 

ABC News’ 20/20, Junk Science, and Homeopathy

 

 

In these days of reality television, bringing science to TV

sounds like a great idea. However, if TV lowers the standards that are

commonly used in scientific inquiry, such reality television becomes junk

science and junk television.

 

ABC News’ 20/20 program with their reporter John Stossel is

presently scheduled to air a segment on homeopathy on Friday January 30.

This report will include a seemingly legitimate laboratory experiment that

seeks to prove or disprove the effects of homeopathic medicines. However,

it was recently discovered that the experiment that was conducted had no

chance of being successful.

 

Dana Ullman, MPH, author of 8 books on homeopathy, was interviewed

for this segment and asserts, “John Stossel has previously popularized the

term ‘junk science’ in his reporting on 20/20. It is therefore more than a

tad ironic that this journalist will now stand behind a study that ABC News

has sponsored that itself is a classic example of real junk science.”

sp;

The experiment that 20/20 produced was supposed to be a replication

of an experiment that had been conducted numerous times in the past and had

been published in scientific journals. This study used extremely small

doses of histamine to reduce the number of basophils, a type of white blood

cell that increases in numbers during allergy symptoms. This study was even

conducted successfully several times by Dr. Madeleine Ennis who is a

professor of biochemistry and a former skeptic of homeopathy. The last time

this study was published was in 1999 when it was replicated in FOUR

laboratories, including the Department of Clinical Biochemistry at Queen’s

University in Belfast and the Department of Molecular Biology at the

University of Utrecht (The Netherlands).

 

Dana Ullman, MPH agreed to be interviewed by 20/20 as long as they

agreed to use Professor Ennis as a consultant to make certain that the study

was properly conducted. Wayne Turnbull, the experimenter at Guys Hospital

in London who 20/20 hired, agreed to consult with Professor Ennis, but when

she alerted him that his protocol was completely different than hers or any

other study ever performed in homeopathy, he refused to change the

experiment. Shockingly, Turnbull used a chemical, Ammonium chloride, in this

experiment that is widely known to kill basophils, making the study

impossible to any homeopathic medicine or any drug to have any effects.

 

Ironi cally, Wayne Turnbull has gone on record asserting that

“consensus between all parties is essential when performing this

experiment,” and yet, when he sought to get Ennis’ support for this

protocol, he was flatly turned down. Turnbull has further asserted, the

“protocol that we use was never portrayed as a replication of Dr Ennis's

methodology.”

It should be noted that the 20/20 producer for this segment, Mark Golden,

did not initially know that there was a difference in the TV experiment and

the real one until the experiment had already begun. But before the

experiment was completed, he was informed that there were serious flaws in

their experiment, that it should be stopped immediately, and that the

results should be ignored.

 

;This is a story of science friction, and it is a story of ABC News

using “junk science” to discredit homeopathic medicine. Although ABC News

is trying to put homeopathy on trial, this segment may instead be an

opportunity to put ABC News and TV science on trial.

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS 20/20 SEGMENT AND ON HOMEOPATHY, go to:

http://www.homeopathic.com <http://www.homeopathic.com/>

 

OTHER HOMEOPATHIC RESOURCES:

The National Center for Homeopathy:

http://www.homeopathic.org <http://www.homeopathic.org/>

 

 

 

SEND YOUR COMMENTS TO 20/20!

This link below seemingly gives viewers an opportunity to express themselves

to the staff at 20/20. Your comments are not aired online, as is true with

the above link.

http:// abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/2020_email_form.html

<http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/2020_email_form.html>

 

To express your opinion about anything that is aired on 20/20, go to this

link (it is, however, unclear if any producers read this; it seems to be

mostly an opportunity for people to talk with each other about 20/20

segments)

http://boards.abcnews.go.com/cgi/abcnews/request.dll?LIST & roo m=abcnews_2020

<http://boards.abcnews.go.com/cgi/abcnews/request.dll?LIST & amp;room=abcnews_

2020>

 

 

 

BELOW IS INFORMATION ABOUT THE BBC’S PREVIOUS BROADCAST ABOUT A SIMILAR

PROBLEMATIC EXPERIMENT ON HOMEOPATHY:

 

 

 

The BBC’s Homeopathy Experiment:

New Information Verifies Significant Flaws in the Study

 

p;

On November 26, 2002, the BBC aired a program on Horizon (a TV

program on issues in science) that focused on homeopathic medicine. New

evidence has just been uncovered that has verified that the BBC unwittingly

provided misinformation in the scientific study that prepared for the

program. (The producer from 20/20 got his idea for this experiment on

homeopathy from this TV program, though at the time, he had no idea that

there was any problem with the experiment or the experimenter.)

 

; Horizon attempted to portray a scientific study of homeopathy to

satisfy the proof required by a stage magician, James Randi. The producer of

the BBC program, Nathan Williams, sought to repeat a previous study

conducted by Professor Madeleine Ennis (Professor of Clinical Biochemistry

at Queens University in Belfast) and several other scientists who had

successfully shown significant effects from attenuated doses of histamine.

 

From some investigative work conducted by Dana Ullman, MPH (author of

numerous homeopathy books and owner of Homeopathic Educational Services of

Berkeley CA), it has just been discovered that the experimenter who

conducted the research, Wayne Turnbull of Guys Hospital, London, made

several significant changes in the experiment without communicating this

information to anyone else, including Dr. John Enderby, Vice President of

the Royal Society, who supervised this study. The suspicions arose during an

experiment carried out at Guys for an American TV program for the ABC

network.

 

Shockingly, Turnbull now asserts that his experiment was never

portrayed as a replication of Dr. Ennis methodology. And yet, the BBC

program made reference to this experiment as a repeat of Professor Ennis

work on two separate occasions.

 

Turnbull also asserted that a consensus between all parties is

essential when performing this experiment, and yet, he never received

consensus. In fact, when he sought it from Professor Ennis, she was quite

adamant in stating that his experiment was significantly different than

hers.

 

In efforts to defend the BBC program, its producer, Nathan Williams,

asserted the experiments were perfectly in keeping with standard scientific

practice. However, it was curious to note that Williams is a journalist, not

a scientist, and at the time of writing he has not quoted any scientists to

stand behind this statement.

 

Dana Ullman asserts, “Bringing science to the public is a new

frontier in this day and age of reality television. However, it is important

that television science not become junk science or cowboy research. And it

is important that television science be honest and upfront so that the

results are authentic and not create science friction as what has occurred

in this BBC so called 'study of homeopathic medicine.”

 

 

 

Dana Ullman, MPH

Homeopathic Educational Services

2124 Kittredge St.

Berkeley, CA. 94704

(510)649-0294

(800)359-9051 (orders only in the U.S.)

(510)649-1955 (fax)

mail

http://www.homeopathic.com

<http://www.homeopathic.com/>

 

 

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