Minutus

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).
Later today 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
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).

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.

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

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."

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 which is widely known to kill basophils, making the study
impossible to any homeopathic medicine or any drug to have any effects.

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 the results
should be ignored.

"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 on trial.

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


OTHER HOMEOPATHIC RESOURCES:
The National Center for Homeopathy:

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.


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)

This sounds like the re-showing of the Horizon programme which was shown on
BBC2 a couple of years ago.

Three things are worthy of note:

1- BBC2's QED programme (1991 ??) actually showed that homoeopathy worked -
That it was not based on the placebo effect and worked on animals.
Having seen that prog I got so excited that I went and studied it and here I
am.

2- The Horizon programme (In which Mr James Randi the magician was standing
to lose $1M if Homoeopathic effect could be proved) was flawed in many ways.
I did not know about the flaw that they had not repeated the established
protocols - nor did they mention that additional substances were added.
They compared the potentised histamine against potentised water.

The result (after the samples were labelled and then re-labelled) was that
half of the sample of histamine showed effectiveness against the basophiles
and so did half of the water samples.

What surprised me was that no one queried this curious thing (scientific
discovery of the century??) that potentised water should show an effect.
This was a suspicious thing. So either potentised water has some effect
(very unlikely) or that someone had somehow switched or mis-labelled the
samples.

I have a great suspicion that when James Randi was involved in checking
Jacque Beneviste's work in the late 1980's he switched the samples and so JB
was initially discredited.

The work at Belfast Uni, is almost a replication of JB's work.

By the way, (unless I have made a mistake in my mathematics) in term of
dilutions involved in Homoeopathic remedies,
6C is 1 drop in more water than the Olympic sized swimming pool,
C12 is well past Avagadro's number,
28C is equivalent to one drop in more water than the Earth itself,
35C we are taking about 1 drop in a volume greater than the SUN !!

It is no wonder that these guys cannot believe that homoeopathy works - that
is why I challenge them to take the reproving test and when they are in
agony with predicted results (based on the data we have already), we will
see whether Homoeopathy works or not.

3- If this experiment had it worked properly it would have shown that
diluted and potentised substances still have certain detectable properties.
It would not have shown any Homoeopathic effect. This is because for a
remedy to be HOMOEOPATHIC, it must be similar to the patient's symptoms. No
patient = No homoeopathic effect!!

So the prescription of a remedy made through succussion and dilution does
not make it a homoeopathic prescription - unless homoeopathic principles are
closely adhered to.

So if it is the same programme, please contact them and ask them to verify
these points.

Rgds
Soroush
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 13:03:22 -0800
From: "Dana Ullman, MPH"
Subject: 20/20 (ABC News program in the US) to attack homeopathy!
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.
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