Guest guest Posted January 29, 2004 Report Share Posted January 29, 2004 " Jan Jenson " Thu, 29 Jan 2004 23:02:05 -0500 [s-A] 20/20 attacks Homeopathy (this Friday?) ---------- " 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/> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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