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.

ABC News' 20/20 program with their reporter John Stossel is presently
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.

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."

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.

Ironically, 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 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 on trial.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS 20/20 SEGMENT AND ON HOMEOPATHY, go to:
<http://www.homeopathic.com>

OTHER HOMEOPATHIC RESOURCES:
The National Center for Homeopathy:
<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/..._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/abc...m=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

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 in the US only)
(510)649-1955 (fax)
dullman@igc.org OR mail@homeopathic.com
http://www.homeopathic.com

__________________
Sometimes on Earth, you can find something that resembles a little piece of Heaven. And sometimes on Earth, a little piece of Heaven can find you.

I just sent this off. Don't know if it will help. Don't know if its accurate.


I've already heard what your 20/20 program on jan 30 regarding homeopathy is going to come up with. I will not have any respect for your future programs if this is aired...Homeopathy is so much more complex and beyond trying to measure it with standard scientific methods. Its basis is so geared to the peculiarities of an ill individual and not on the common signs of any disease..that any protocol to measure its effectiveness is bound to fail and your program will give the wrong idea to many people. There are so many people all over the world who practice homeopathy and so many patients who use it as their primary source of health care...and you will just be making fools of yourself if they should be watching your program.

Does your program mention that during the flu of l917 or thereabouts nearly all of the people who saw homeopaths when they had the flu survived. The other million or so who died saw regular allopathic practioners. No...I'm sure you're not going to mention that. Cause you think you're exposing some fake alternative medicine and really what you are doing is exposing that your program is a fake.

carol orr

I mailed Dana asking whether credit card donations can be made on-line and also if our contributions are tax deductible, i.e., are our donations to a non-profit organization. Here is his response:


"Our non-profit organization is not set up to receive credit card payments, but my company, HES, can do that. Any money given to HES will be deposited in the Foundation's bank account."


Couldn't be much simpler than that to support this effort.

Many thanks to gpm and Dana Ullman for alerting us to this. I just mailed Dana promising my financial support for his efforts as well as support for any forthcoming lawsuit, boycott of ABC, its parent Disney Company, the program's sponsors, etc. I also asked that he keep us abreast of any such efforts via this BB.

In addition to protesting to ABC, I also suggest that we send protest letters to the FCC after ABC airs this libel. We, the public, are the putative owners of our public airwaves.

Libel is illegal and subject to actual and punitive damages in a courtroom. See http://injury-law.freeadvice.com/libel_and_slander/ for a brief overview of who can sue the perpetrators. I would hope that all homeopathic practitioners, NASH, AIH and CHC members join together to pursue legal remedies for financial damages.

There can no longer be any doubt that attacking and discrediting homeopathy and its practitioners is now the number one priority of the quackbuster shills and their financial backers. The members of the homeopathic community, being gentle souls at heart, have been supine too long. It's time we got together and kicked some ass.

did they use a nosode? I'm just wondering why this particular experiment should work in the 1st place, we know so little really about how homeopathy works, how then can we challange it effectively? I like they way he harped on the water has memory thing though -real professional; like a gloating kid in a school yard, I wish he would "give ME a break"!
On another note, do you guys know what -42 degrees celcius feels like? pray you never find out, trust me!

Krista, the "experiment" featured on the show was the same "experiment that the "amazing
Randi" supposedly recreated on the BBC last year.

Trouble is, the original experiment was done by a team of scientists headed by a Doctor who used to be a skeptic of Homeopathy, based in the UK. Her experiment had been meticulously recorded as to method--and it was reproduced in 4 other universities, including the Netherlands. She figured it didn't work on TV because the method had been changed...turns out the Randi and his gang changed the chemicals used in the experiment on TV. So they did not perform the experiment as it was to be performed, then they yammered on about how homeopathy doesn't work and they proved it.

Of course, when the original scientist realised what had been done with her team's work, she wrote in protest to the BBC...who, of course, didn't care as the big controversy sells the ad time on the show anyway! So: the amazing Con ARtist Randi contaminates the experiment then profits when it doesn't "work", predictably.

And then ABC "news" runs out and makes their own discrediting segment based on the same con to run on their show.

Bottom Line: the experiment is one that is similar to Jacques Benveniste's work regarding the memory of water. Benveniste was discredited by the amazing Con Artist Randi once before, and had all his funding taken away from his work...but he's since been able to have it restored by having to undo the smear campaign against homeopathy which hurt him directly. Now that Benveniste's funders don't believe Randi anymore, Randi's targetting all other scientists who can prove homeopathy's scientific bases can be explored and explained. Looks like he's got his latest victims in sight.

__________________
...and deliverance has many faces<br />but grace<br />is an aquaintance of mine

As Dana Ullman and others warned pre-airing, this was obviously an orchestrated smear job. Any student of Journalism 101, much less a network "investigative reporter,", would have asked several obvious questions:

1. Who put up the purported $1 million prize that Randi is offering?

2. Why should anyone believe that a "test" devised by a magician whose stock-in-trade is sleight of hand would be on the level?

3. What credentials does the smarmy Randi have, i.e., knowledge of homeopathic principles, history, cases, material medica, etc., to portray him, a magician, as one qualified to critique any system of medicine?

i am wondering if it was the same experiment from the Horizon special ---and just edited and replayed for ABC

or

was it the same experiment conducted all over again -- fresh.

Friends,
The email below is FULL of useful links, but this site doesn't seem to allow them. You can access this email and its links by going to:
http://www.homeopathic.com/articles/media/
--Dana Ullman, MPH

For further background and more documentation on the issues surrounding 20/20's program on homeopathy and for all types of information on homeopathy.

For transcripts of this 20/20 program.



John Stossel and 20/20's Program on Homeopathy:
Junk Science Creates Junk Journalism
--When TV Science Creates Science Fiction

In these days of reality TV, the integration of good scientific experimentation with television could have turned the trivial nature of most reality television programs into something more meaningful and educational. However, "when John Stossel recently got involved in a TV science experiment, he created 'junk science' and 'junk journalism,'" says Dana Ullman, who was interviewed by Stossel for a segment on homeopathic medicine that was aired on 20/20.

On January 30, 2004, ABC News' 20/20 program aired an eight-minute segment on homeopathic medicine. The program began by giving a list of numerous celebrities and British royalty who are advocates of homeopathy. They then showed part of a promotion for a homeopathic medicine for the flu, to which Dana Ullman noted that there have been three large clinical studies verifying its effectiveness (see references below).

The program also noted that there have been numerous other studies that have shown homeopathy's efficacy, but others that have shown that it didn't work.

After giving a short explanation for homeopathy, 20/20 then sought to test homeopathic medicine using a laboratory experiment conducted at a London hospital. This study was originally supposed to be a replication of earlier studies that have consistently shown statistically significant positive results for homeopathy, that had been conducted at four different laboratories and universities, and that have been published in several peer-reviewed scientific journals.

However, the experiment that Stossel's program created was significantly differentand not just different, it was seriously flawed. This new experiment used a chemical, ammonium chloride, that is known to destroy the cells that the experiment was supposed to count. The inclusion of this chemical was but one of numerous serious problems with this "made for TV" experiment.

ABC News and 20/20 have not given any reason why the experimenter in the London hospital chose to change the experiment at all, let alone changing it so substantially. What is particularly surprising and disturbing is that this experimenter wrote an email to Dana Ullman asserting, "consensus between all parties is essential when performing this experiment." Yet, when he sought to get consensus from Professor M. Ennis (one of the scientists who had previously and successfully conducted this experiment and who was the person that Stossel's producer and Dana Ullman agreed would be a consultant to the study), the 20/20 experimenter was denied consensus based on his failure to follow the experimental protocol as previously designed.

It is not hard to see a serious problem when an experiment was changed, when approval for it was denied, and yet, the experiment was conducted as though it was a valid test.

It should be noted that on February 4, 2000, John Stossel produced a controversial program called "The Food You Eat" where he claimed that "buying organic could kill you." The program asserted that organic food had been contaminated with E. coli (this is a true but misleading assertion because most E. coli is harmless) and, according to a study that ABC had supposedly conducted, pesticide residue had not been found on either organic or conventional produce. And yet, Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group in Washington offered hard evidence to ABC that showed that the Stossel said existed were actually never conducted.

Afterwards, ABC announced that Stossel would give a public apology, and he did so live on 20/20 saying, "I said our tests found no pesticide residues on either conventional or organic produce. That was just wrong. I apologize for the error [and] am deeply sorry I misled you. All we have in this business is our credibility--your trust that we get it right--I will make every effort to see that it never happens again."

For a detailed analysis of John Stossel's reporting with an explanation for why his reporting tends to be supportive of major corporations, go to this article from The Nation.

Ironically, ABCs 20/20 allowed John Stossel to air this segment on his "Give Me a Break" series. Needless to say, we need to tell John Stossel (the show's co-anchor) to "give me a break!"


What Stossel got right:

** ABC's 20/20 accurately showed Dana Ullman saying "there is a body of evidence that shows homeopathy is effective," and they showed on-screen copies of the numerous studies that have been published in leading medical journals. To be fair, it is also truthful to say (as the 20/20 program did) that there have been numerous studies that have not shown homeopathic medicines to be successful. However, when scientists have reviewed the entire body of clinical research and have published this research in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, they concluded that patients given a homeopathic medicine had a 2.45 times greater chance of experiencing improvement in their health as compared with patients given a placebo (see the reference by K. Linde and others below).

** ABC's 20/20 accurately showed Dana Ullman referring to three large studies showing homeopathy is effective in treating influenza. Because people are experiencing the flu in greater numbers this year than in the recent past and because some people are even dying from it, the evidence that homeopathic medicines can effectively treat this common condition with such safe remedies should not be ignored.

** ABC's 20/20 accurately acknowledged that Dana Ullman objected to the study that they had developed even BEFORE it was started because they created their own different study that was poorly designed due to its use of specific chemicals that are known to kill the type of white blood cells that this experiment was supposed to count.

** ABC's 20/20 accurately acknowledged that one of the three British homeopaths who observed the making of the homeopathic medicine objected to the sloppiness of the laboratory procedures BEFORE the study's results were announced. Please note that these three homeopaths only observed the making of the medicine. They were not in attendance during the experiment itself, and none of them nor ANY homeopathic researcher agreed to the mis-guided protocol that was ultimately used in the 20/20 experiment.


What Stossel got wrong:

** ABC's 20/20 provided misinformation about the small doses used in homeopathy. Stossel asserted on air that the "6C" potency of a homeopathic medicine is equivalent to one drop in 50 swimming pools, that the 12C potency is like one drop in the entire Atlantic Ocean, and that the 16C potency is like one drop in a million earths. In actual fact, the total amount of water used to make a 6C potency is around six test tubes (or around 6 ounces of water). A 12C potency requires around 12 ounces of water. Because 20/20 had a London hospital make up the16C of Histamine, they knew that this pharmaceutical process only required less than a quart of water (16 test tubes worth!). 20/20 seemingly and incorrectly assumed that each dilution required "exponential" (100-fold) increases the size, when, in fact, it only required repeated dilutions in a small test tube. (It seems that 20/20 is already so embarrassed by the statistics they gave, they have already omitted reference in their transcripts of the 20/20 show to the 16C potency.)

** The 20/20 experiment used a chemical, Ammonium chloride, that is known to destroy basophils, the type of white blood cell that was under study. The experiment was designed to fail even before any homeopathic medicine was administered. Because this chemical was not used in any of the previous studies that have been published in peer-review scientific journals, Dana Ullman was absolutely correct in asserting that this study was "junk science," that the study should not have been conducted in this unscientific manner, and that any results from this study are of no value.

** The 20/20 experiment also used a chemical called "foetal calf serum" (the blood from a calf foetus). According to experts in basophils and experts who had previously conducted this experiment successfully, this chemical complex is not a "recognized medium" for laboratory experiments of this sort, and its effects on basophils are presently unknown. It should also be noted that the experiment produced by 20/20 was created by an employee at a London hospital who didn't know the answers to some simple questions about basophils when asked by Professor Ennis. Also, to be done correctly, this experiment requires "clean" basophils, and the use of foetal calf serum alters the binding reactions of the basophils.

** The 20/20 experimenter left the blood containing basophils to be collected to sit and sediment for 4 hours. It is known that basophils are extremely fragile, thus, leaving them to sit for 4 hours disturbed their viability and rendered them useless for scientific experimental purposes.


What Stossel didn't say:

** The original experiment that 20/20 had planned to conduct was previously conducted in four separate laboratories in Europe, including a laboratory at the Queen's University of Belfast by a professor of biochemistry who was previously a skeptic of homeopathy. These laboratories conducted 3,674 tests (!), and they found a substantial difference in the effects of potentized histamine as compared with a placebo. To read this study, see: Belon M, Cumps J, Ennis M, Mannaioni PF, Sainte-Laudy J, Roberfroid M, Wiegant FAC. Inhibition of human basophil degranulation by successive histamine dilutions: results of a European multi-centre trial. Inflammation Research 1999; 48: s17-s18.

** After 20/20 acknowledged that Dana Ullman questioned the protocol as considerably different, 20/20 said that their experts described the experiment as "technically sound" and "meticulously conducted." 20/20 has yet to come forward with the names of these experts. Dana Ullman seriously doubts that these "experts" are knowledgeable about experiments with basophils. Just because 20/20 used so-called "experts" does not mean that they are experts on this subject.

** Although 20/20 asserted that the National Institutes of Health considers some principles of homeopathy to run counter to the apparent laws of physics and chemistry, there are many things in nature that do not initially make rational sense but later prove to be true. 20/20 was given specific reference to two studies recently written about in the respected scientific magazine, The New Scientist, which discussed new research in major physics and chemistry journals testing homeopathic doses (to obtain these articles, go to www.newscientist.com and search under the word "homeopathy"). Further, although the "nano-doses" used in homeopathy may not be adequately understood and explained using Newtonian physics, the new or quantum Einsteinian physics is better able to help us comprehend, describe, and predict extremely small (or extremely large) systems.

** 20/20 didn't acknowledge that although we don't know precisely how homeopathic medicines work, we also do not presently know how many common drugs work, including many used for anesthesia in surgery. Certainly, no one suggests that these valuable drugs be avoided just because we do not adequately understand how they work.

** According to the World Health Organization, the most serious public health problem in the world is childhood diarrhea, which leads to millions of death as a result of dehydration. A leading pediatric journal recently published a review of three double-blind and placebo-controlled studies that have confirmed the efficacy of homeopathic medicines in treating childhood diarrhea. Information about this good clinical research might have been a lot more useful than a seriously flawed laboratory study.


References:

K. Linde, N. Clausius, G. Ramirez, et al., "Are the Clinical Effects of Homoeopathy Placebo Effects? A Meta-analysis of Placebo-Controlled Trials," Lancet, September 20, 1997, 350:834-843. Even critics have called this meta-analysis "completely state of the art." It reviews 186 studies, 89 of which fit pre-defined criteria for its meta-analysis. Homeopathic medicines had a 2.45 times greater effect than placebo.

J. Jacobs, WB Jonas, M Jimenez-Perez, D Crothers, Homeopathy for Childhood Diarrhea: Combined Results and Metaanalysis from Three Randomized, Controlled Clinical Trials, Pediatr Infect Dis J, 2003;22:229-34. This metaanalysis of 242 children showed a highly significant result in the duration of childhood diarrhea (P=0.008). It should be noted that the World Health Organization consider childhood diarrhea to be the number one public health problem today because of the millions of children who die every year from dehydration from diarrhea.

R. Papp, G. Schuback, E. Beck, et al., "Oscilloccinum in Patients with Influenza-like Syndromes: A Placebo-Controlled Double-Blind Evaluation," British Homeopathic Journal, 87(April, 1998):69-76. This study of 372 patients replicated an earlier trial of 487 patients. Both trials found statistically significant results with "Oscillococcinum" in the treatment of patients with influenza-like syndromes. Earlier trial: JP Ferley, et al., A Controlled Evaluation of a Homeopathic Preparation in the Treatment of Influenza-like Syndrome," British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, March, 1989,27:329-35.


For references to other research, see:

** "Homeopathic Family Medicine" eBook: Homeopathic Family Medicine (an ebook available at www.homeopathic.com) by Dana Ullman, MPH (this ebook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of clinical research in homeopathy)

** Paolo Bellavite, MD, and Andrea Signorini, MD, The Emerging Science of Homeopathy, Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2002 (this book provides an excellent overview of homeopathy in the light of various clinical and laboratory studies and in light of recent understanding in the medical and natural sciences.


Newest study: The highly respected journal, RHEUMATOLOGY, published by the British Society of Rheumatology, just published the below article on the homeopathic treatment of fibromyalgia. Not only did these researchers find efficacy from homeopathic medicines, they found significant changes in EEG readings from those patients who were given the homeopathic medicines as compared to those given a placebo.

Improved clinical status in fibromyalgia patients treated with individualized homeopathic remedies versus placebo
Bell IR, Lewis II DA, Brooks AJ, Schwartz GE, Lewis SE, Walsh BT, Baldwin CM.


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