ABC NEWS 20/20 "Debunks" Homeopathy

Many of you are not aware of exciting new developments in HOMEOPATHY that give it a tremendous edge in the world of benefit/risk healing of our fellow man. Because ABC's 20/20 segment wants high ratings to sell their TV ad time, they have once again permitted John Stossel, who terms anything he does not understand as "JUNK SCIENCE," to participate in a clearly fraudulent effort to invalidate homeopathy. While pretending to duplicate a research project, but deviating from it significantly, it assures failure.

The details are in these emails, which will only be relevant to those that need to know the truth. Once our enemies start painting Homeopathy as quackery, they seem to never stop in the number of things that they want to include in this category. Therefore, for those that need to know the details regarding how outrageous the "study" was that 20-/20 did to discredit homeopathy, these emails are for you.

Garry F. Gordon, MD,DO,MD(H)

The 20/20 broadcast that aired the weekend of Feb 1st 2004 contained a story that openly tried to debunk homeopathy. The story opened with John Stossel (who has all the physical attributes of a Nux Vomica personality type looking like a modern day Clark Gable)reporting that Homeopathy is used by many Hollywood personalities including Cher along with a lot of good comments that Ocsilocococcimum successfully treats the flu than moving along to the illogical nature of dilutional medicine.

Mr. Stossel pointed out that a 1C dilution is one drop in a small glass of water, a higher C dilution is one drop in a swimming pool to a higher C dilution being a drop in all of the ocean water on earth and an even higher C dilution being a drop in all the water of the oceans of several earths combined. "C'MON GIVE ME A BREAK" said Stossel.

An interview was than had with Noted Homeopathic Educator Dana Ullman valiantly trying to defend the theory that water has a "memory" of some kind to transfer the essence of the remedy being diluted so that molecules of what's being diluted aren't necessary. Mr. Stossel interpreted Memory in its classic sense and followed Dr Ullman with an inane comment of some sort that you should ask your bottle of water to remember something you might have forgotten.

STOSSEL's next guest was "The Amazing Randy" a well known Skeptic who has openly challenged anyone to come up with proof that Paranormal procedures have scientific proof behind them and his foundation will give away ONE MILLION DOLLARS for such proof. Mr. Randy is a retired Magician and "Knows" that all such procedures are simply illusions.

Somehow Dana Ullman offered an experiment of using Diluted Histamine to reduce numbers of Basophils in what appeared a repetition of the Famous Benveniste Experiments that were published in Nature Magazine in 1988. They never really explained the techniques or the actual details of the experiment they performed but got the famed Guys Hospital of London England to perform it. The techniques were "supervised" by certified London Homeopaths who stated up front that things "looked good" but later for unstated reasons that "they didn't". At the experiments end the researcher at Guys Hospital very Happily announced that Homeopathy didn't work AND THAT WAS THAT!

Dana Ullman tried to protest the results for some unshown reason but Stossel had seen all he wanted and reported to Amazing Randy that his Million Dollars was safe and the segment ended.

Here is our challenge to ABC NEWS
1.Please send us the full details of what your experiment actually was and how it was conducted so that we can review it and properly comment
2.Please review the Dr. Benveniste Story and to be fair, try and find him and report on his Amazing Scientific Story. He lives in France
3.Please Do some research into The Bystander Reaction Research by Dr Heine and allow a reasoned explanation on the air of how its Science effects cures of real living patients.

We aren't Sure whether Amazing Randy will believe what he sees or hears but would welcome a panel of non prejudiced users of Homeopathic Medicines to review the above evidence and have ABC news report on their experience. Randy can offer his rebuttals on the air so long as his statements can be counter explained WITH FULL AND HONEST REPORTING of all things said.

FROM THE EDITORS OF EXPLORE MAGAZINE

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/2020/2020/2020_email_form.html>

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