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CISNEO March and April
Newsletter
[click here for the June newsletter]
Tuesday,
March 14, at Christ United Methodist Church. Regular
Meeting begins at 7:30pm. Our program will feature a “PBS
“Frontline” video on intelligence gathering regarding
terrorism in Europe. The show reveals the marked
similarities in recruitment patterns for Islamic
fundamentalists and jihadists groups, and cults in the US.
Jon Ruth will present additional information from his
research on this subject.
Note: For those with good
reading comprehension, you will remember that the
aforementioned program is identical to the program listed
for last month. Due to technical difficulties the above
program was replaced with a video of a presentation given by
Dr. Paul Martin and Michael Langone on the long-term
psychological damage caused by cult involvement.
Dues for
2006
Our Dues
for the year 2006 are now due. Cost is $20 for an
individual, $30 for families. Please bring to the meeting
or send to the address above. Please make checks payable to
CISNEO.
CISNEO
Website
Previous reports in this newsletter have indicated that the
CISENEO website at
www.cisneonet.org was
fully functional. These reports have proved to been false.
However, corrections and additions have been made so that we
can now accurately report that the website is indeed up and
running. Thanks to Ann Lloyd for documenting some
inaccuracies we had on the site. If you have any
suggestions for additions or corrections to the website,
please direct them to
ron@printingconcepts.com
Can
Terrorists be 'Reprogrammed'?
CNSNews, March 10,
2006 By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
(CNSNews.com)
- Australia is mulling the possibility of trying to
"reprogram" captured terrorists by getting clerics or other
influential figures to challenge their interpretations of
Islamic teachings. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said
the tactic, being used in several countries, was an attempt
"to persuade extremists and terrorists who have been held in
prison to change their point of view and to understand that
it's not the Islamic way to kill, it's not the Islamic way
to murder." Downer said the effort was reported to have
been successful in some cases. Federal police commissioner
Mick Keelty first raised the idea after returning from a
regional counter-terrorism conference in Indonesia. He told
Australian television "deprogramming" was being practiced in
various forms in countries including Indonesia, Singapore,
Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Britain. He cited a case of a
former senior operative in Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a Southeast
Asian affiliate of al Qaeda, who had been "turned" and was
now used by Indonesian law enforcement authorities in a bid
to re-educate jailed terrorists.
Indonesia has captured and convicted several hundred
terrorists since JI bombed the resort island of Bali in
2002, killing more than 200 people. Nasir bin Abbas, a top
terrorist and brother-in-law of the man who oversaw the Bali
attack, was one of those arrested during a sweep in 2003. He
spent 10 months in prison but is now a free man, working
full time with an Indonesian anti-terrorist unit called
Detachment 88. In interviews, Abbas has described JI
terrorists as being driven by a misguided or deviant
ideology. "I want to tell them that they misunderstand
about Islamic struggle and they also misunderstand about the
meaning of jihad," he told Australian radio Friday. Abbas'
case was discussed during the recent counter-terror
conference in Jakarta.
Keelty said the process could work in different ways. "In
some places they will use a cleric who has a good reputation
with the community and who will be respected and listened to
by the people in custody." Suicide bombers' behavior was
not rational, he said. "If they're acting and thinking
irrationally, then how do we convert that behavior and bring
it back to rational behavior?" Keelty compared the
situation to treating a drug addict, but noted that the
Australian legal system did not allow authorities to force
addicts to undergo treatment for their problem. Similarly,
there would need to be a change of policy to enable "some
sort of deprogramming or deradicalization" of terrorists.
Australia, a close ally of the U.S., has not suffered an
Islamist terrorist attack on its soil, although 88
Australians were among the victims of a JI bombing in Bali.
Canberra introduced tough new anti-terrorism law following
last July's bombings in London, and several dozen Australian
Muslims are in custody facing terror-related charges.
Brainwashing: Keelty's remarks brought mixed reactions from Muslim groups,
with some representatives saying the idea could work if it
took the form of voluntary counseling. But civil
libertarians described the proposal as bizarre and a form of
"brainwashing." Daniel Scot, an Australian-based Christian
pastor and scholar of Islam who fled his native Pakistan
under threat of death under blasphemy laws, said Friday the
reprogramming idea was "naive and futile." Scot said any
cleric coming into a prison cell hoping to challenge a
terrorist's views on violence and Islam would need to
explain away some of Mohammed's teachings and actions during
his lifetime. Violence is "deep rooted" in the Koran and
the Hadith, the traditional writings on Mohammed's deeds and
sayings, he said, citing a number of references.
Furthermore, extremists' interpretations of concepts like
jihad tended to be based on the teachings of some of the
most revered scholars in Islam, men like the Pakistani
theologian Maulana Maududi. Maududi, who authored a book
called Jihad in Islam in 1930, has been called one of the
fathers of the revival of fundamentalist Islam.
In Britain, where the government is more focused on
countering radical teaching since the London bombings, Home
Secretary Charles Clarke was quoted last October as saying
techniques used to deprogram brainwashed members of cults
should be used in the struggle. "What we know about other
religious cults may offer some insight into how these men
ended up behaving in this appalling way," the Sunday
Telegraph quoted him as saying. Authorities in Saudi Arabia
was reported in 2003 to be bringing clerics and copies of
the Koran into interviews with captured al Qaeda terrorists,
in a bid to wean them off violence. (The Saudi government is
itself accused of fomenting extremist views through its
fundamentalist Wahhabi ideology.)
How successful "deprogramming" techniques may be remains to
be seen. Setting free ostensibly reformed terrorists can be
risky, however. Of the more than 200 suspects released or
transferred from U.S. military custody at Guantanamo Bay
after signing pledges renouncing violence, at least 10 went
on to return to terrorism, according to the Pentagon. They
include Rasul Kudayev, one of seven Russian detainees handed
over to Moscow in February 2004 and released by the Russians
four months later. Last October the Russian government said
he took part in a deadly attack in the southern town of
Nalchik, during which some 12 civilians, several dozen
police officials and scores of terrorists were killed. The
most notorious example is that of Abdullah Mehsud, a
one-legged Pashtun terrorist who, after his release from
Guantanamo, was involved in the kidnapping of two Chinese
engineers working on a dam project, one of whom was later
killed. Pakistan media reports say Mehsud subsequently
became a folk hero and leader among anti-American terrorists
holed up in the lawless tribal regions bordering
Afghanistan, where he survived a number of armed offensives
by the Pakistani military. The latest such offensive was
launched just days ago, and there have been unconfirmed
reports that Mehsud has been killed. Last year, however,
Mehsud was declared by his followers to have been killed by
Pakistani forces, only to re-emerge months later, once the
heat was off. Each time detainees at Guantanamo Bay are
released, the Pentagon issues a statement cautioning that
the decision is based on the evidence available at the time,
adding that "many of the detainees are highly skilled in
concealing the truth." Some statements have also added:
"The process of evaluation and detention is not free of
risk," noting that several former detainees had since "gone
back to the fight." As of last month, the Pentagon said it
had released or transferred to other governments a total of
267 detainees, leaving approximately 490 still at Guantanamo
Bay.
Scholars of Islam say Muslims are permitted to lie or
deceive under certain circumstances. Known as "taqiyya,"
the term is defined in one Islamic encyclopedia as
"concealing or disguising one's beliefs, convictions, ideas,
feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of eminent
danger, whether now or later in time, to save oneself from
physical and/or mental injury."
Scientology Examined in March Rolling Stone Magazine
In a
lengthy article entitled, “Inside Scientology: Unlocking
the complex code of America's most mysterious religion”
, the March 2006 issue of Rolling Stone magazine devotes
nearly 14,000 words to an expose of the beliefs and
practices of the Church of Scientology.
The
article is one of few in a major publication to address one
of the most sensitive and perhaps secretive aspects of
Scientology practices, The Rehabilitation Project Force, or
RPF. Author Janet Rettman describes the RPF:
Former Sea
Org members who've been through the program charge that it
is a form of re-indoctrination, in which hard physical labor
and intense ideological study are used to break a subject's
will. Chuck Beatty, a former Sea Org member, spent seven
years in the RPF facilities in Southern California, from
1996 to 2003, after expressing a desire to speak out against
the church. For this, he was accused of "disloyalty," a
condition calling for rehabilitation. "My idea was to go to
the RPF for six or eight months and then route out," says
Beatty. "I thought that was the honorable thing to do." In
the RPF he was given a "twin," or auditing partner, who was
responsible for making sure he didn't escape. "It's a prison
system," he says, explaining that all RPFers are watched
twenty-four hours per day and prevented from having contact
with the outside world. "It's a mind-bending situation where
you feel like you're betraying the group if you try to
leave."
Similarly,
few articles about Scientology have addressed the plight of
children and young adults who have grown up the group. The
young people express their misgivings about the group in the
article but later become worried regarding the consequences
of their disclosures:
During the
time I was researching this piece, I received a number of
e-mails from several of the Scientologists I had
interviewed. Most were still technically members of the
church in good standing; privately they had grown
disillusioned and have spoken about their feelings for the
first time in this article. All of the young people
mentioned in this story, save Natalie, are considered by the
church hierarchy to be Potential Trouble Sources. But many
have begun to worry they will be declared Suppressive
Persons.
Their
e-mails expressed their second thoughts and their fears.
"PLEASE, let me know what you will be writing in the story,"
wrote one young woman. "I just want to make sure that people
won't be able to read it and figure out who I am. I know my
mom will be reading."
"The
church is a big, scary deal," wrote another. "My [initial]
attitude was if this information could save just one person
the money, heartache and mind-bending control, then all
would be worth it. [But] I'm frightened of what could
happen."
"I'm about
two seconds away from losing my whole family, and if that
story comes out with my stuff in it, I will," wrote a third.
"I'm terrified. Please, please, please . . . if it's not too
late . . . help me keep my family."
One
particularly frantic e-mail arrived shortly before this
story was published. It came from a young Scientologist with
whom I had corresponded several times in the course of three
or four months. When we first met, she spoke passionately
and angrily about the impact of the church on herself and
those close to her.
"Please
forgive me," she wrote. "The huge majority of things I told
you were lies. Perhaps I don't like Scientology. True. But
what I do know is that I was born with the family I was born
with, and I love them. Don't ask me to tear down the
foundation of their lives." Like almost every young person
mentioned in this piece, this woman was given a pseudonym to
protect her identity, and her family's. But it wasn't
enough, she decided. "This is my life . . . Accept what I
tell you now for fact: I will not corroborate or back up a
single thing I said.
"I'm so
sorry," she concluded. "I hope you understand that everyone
I love is terribly important to me, and I am willing to look
beyond their beliefs in order to keep them around. I will
explain in further detail, perhaps, some other day."
The full
text of the article can be seen at:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/9363363/inside_scientology
When Maharishi threw Beatles out
Times of India,
February 15, 2006
NEW DELHI:
This is a true story of love and bitterness, recrimination
and reconciliation. It’s a story of glamour and
spirituality, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s about four men
whom the world worshipped, and the mentor they first adored,
then abhorred. It’s a story that has never before been told
in its entirety, though gossip and rumours have swirled
around it for years. Why exactly did relations between the
Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi sour? Was there any truth
to the allegations that the Maharishi had propositioned a
friend of the Beatles? As an erstwhile disciple of the
Maharishi, and a close friend of the Beatles, spiritual
master Deepak Chopra is probably one of the few people who
knew the real story.
He said after some prodding: "The Beatles — along with their
entourage, which included Mia Farrow — were doing drugs,
taking LSD, at Maharishi’s ashram, and he lost his temper
with them. He asked them to leave, and they did in a huff.
But when they went to the US, John Lennon gave an interview
on the Johnny Carson show, accusing Maharishi of being a
dirty old man. Later, Lennon also wrote a satirical song
about Maharishi, which went: Sexy Sadie, what have you
done/you made a fool of everyone." "But I’m sure there was
never any truth to Lennon’s allegations," added Chopra.
"In fact, the rumour was that Maharishi had misbehaved with
Mia Farrow, but I met Mia years later at the airport while
taking a flight to India, and she asked me to tell Maharishi
that she still loved him."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1415230.cms
Memories fail, and innocents can go to jail
Birmingham News,
April 1, 2006 By Carol Robinson, Staff Writer
Elizabeth
Loftus has studied the minds of scores of people, and
learned that things aren't always as they appear.
Especially memories. The California college professor has
spent a quarter-century studying how easily memories can be
planted and molded. "It's something that happens to us all
the time," Loftus said. "Little false memories don't matter
that much, but when it implicates a person in a crime, it
becomes a problem. One of the major reasons people get
convicted of crimes they didn't do is faulty memory."
The
renowned expert in memory and eyewitness testimony will be
speaking at UAB next week, where she will receive the 2006
Ireland Distinguished Visiting Scholar Prize. She will give
her free open lecture, "Illusions of Memory," at 5:30 p.m.
Wednesday at the Alys Stephens Center's Jemison Concert
Hall. Loftus, recently named one of the 100 most eminent
psychologists of the 20th century, is a professor at the
University of California-Irvine. She has testified or been a
consultant in a number of high-profile cases, including
those involving Martha Stewart, Oliver North, Michael
Jackson, Ted Bundy and O.J. Simpson. She also has worked on
cases involving allegations of sexual abuse based on
memories recovered in therapy. Loftus says people's
memories can be changed by what they are told. That's what
happened last year in Missouri, she said, when 21-year-old
student Ryan Ferguson was convicted of murder. One of his
friends, Charles Erickson, implicated him in the 2001
slaying of a newspaper sports editor. "Basically he said,
'I had a dream and this happened, and I think Ryan did it
with me," Loftus said.
Erickson
claimed he had repressed his memory of the killing for two
years until news accounts triggered his recollections and
snapshot images of the crime began to haunt him. Erickson
talked to other people about his "memories" and eventually
was arrested. Loftus said police interviews with Erickson
on the day of his arrest showed detectives offering
information about the slaying that she believes was later
adopted into Erickson's memory. She testified as an expert
witness in the case, but "it wasn't enough to overcome the
power of this confessor," she said.
Loftus
will talk about some of her many studies, including one in
which she and other researchers were able to persuade study
subjects they had been lost in a shopping mall as children.
With help of their relatives, Loftus talked with them about
real events that had happened in their childhood, then
talked with them about being lost. At the end of the
two-week study period, 20 percent had accepted the false
memories as their own. "I think understanding the nature of
memory and the way we're all prone to memory distortions is
important for us to know," she said. "Just because somebody
says something, it doesn't mean it really happened. That is
the bottom line, take-home message of my work."
Doomsday dream
believer
San Francisco Bay
Guardian, April 4, 2006 By Cheryl Eddy
"We didn't
commit suicide," Jim Jones gravely intones in an audiotape
capturing the final moments of Jonestown. "We committed an
act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an
inhumane world." Nearly 30 years after the deaths of more
than 900 people in the Guyanese jungle, Stanley Nelson's
deeply affecting Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples
Temple replays Jones's final, twisted address, setting
in motion what the doc tabs "the largest mass 'suicide' in
modern history." Using a remarkable cache of vintage
footage, as well as candid interviews with Peoples Temple
survivors, relatives, and other eyewitnesses, Nelson
examines the massacre with a journalist's eye. Why the
tragedy happened may never be explained, but seldom before
has the how of Jonestown been so clearly delineated.
Long
before "drinking the Kool-Aid" filtered into the popular
lexicon, young Jim Jones was an ambitious preacher whose
ideas about racial equality proved too radical for
small-town Indiana. Jones and his wife, Marceline, adopted
several children from different ethnic backgrounds; one the
few still alive — Jim Jones Jr., who says he was the first
African American child to be adopted by white parents in
Indiana — appears in Jonestown, as do early church
members who followed Jones to Northern California (so chosen
because he believed the region would be safe in the event of
a nuclear attack). The racially diverse commune was "like a
paradise," a former resident recalls; recordings of Jones's
uplifting sermons and the jubilant Peoples Temple choir, as
well as images of happy farmers, seem to bear this out.
Of course,
illusion played a big part in Jones's metier. One of
Nelson's coups is footage of a faith healing paired with an
interview that exposes the "patient" as one of Jones's
(perfectly healthy) secretaries. Various ex-followers
corroborate each other's horror stories; one memorable
sequence features overlapping testimony about how devotion
was measured by sleep deprivation. Jones's sexual
proclivities, which contradicted what he preached and
involved sleeping with both male and female disciples
(whether or not they were willing), are discussed, as is the
general feeling of fear and paranoia that increased as Jones
gained more control. A "loyalty test" involving a vat of
untainted punch is also detailed; a woman who was there
surmises that Jones wondered if he was "potent enough to get
people to do it."
Jones's
ability to manipulate his followers demonstrates the kind of
power later echoed by other self-destructive cults. But
while Heaven's Gate seemed a little loony from the start,
what with the space aliens and all, the Peoples Temple
represented itself beautifully to outsiders. The San
Francisco political community was especially taken with the
energetic, racially diverse congregation; as Jonestown
points out, the church could instantly supply masses of
well-behaved protestors, as well as influence key elections
by voting as a single bloc. On a television talk show,
then–California assemblyman Willie Brown deems the Peoples
Temple "the kind of religious thing I get excited about."
Even the
Guardian was taken in by the Peoples Temple,
reporting on its progressive humanitarian efforts in a March
31, 1977, article titled "Peoples Temple: Where Activist
Politics Meets Old-Fashioned Charity." Read with the benefit
of hindsight, the piece is often chilling, as when Jones
arrives late to a church service because he had to stop and
console a woman "who was talking suicide." Jones's distrust
of government is already in full force ("I have a lot of
guilt to know my taxes go to the shah of Iran and Chile");
his hatred of the press (as the film explains, inflammatory
coverage hastened his expatriation) less so.
A good
chunk of Jonestown is devoted to November 18, 1978,
aided with startling footage of doomed congressman Leo
Ryan's Guyana visit and the chaos that erupted in its wake.
Two of the men who lived through "White Night" but saw
family members (including young children) die before their
eyes share their stories, and the emotional impact is
undeniable. And then there's that audiotape, which is even
more frightening when replayed. As Jonestown reveals,
the line between suicide and murder could not be more
distorted: Deceived by promises of paradise, hundreds of
people joined a church that championed equal rights — then
found themselves living in an isolated world where even the
most basic rights were denied.
Religious bias may have spurred demise of child medicating
bill
Miami Herald, March
29, 2006 By Marc Caputo
Lawmakers killed a bill that would have told parents about
the risks of mental-health drugs for kids, amid concerns of
a Scientology influence.
TALLAHASSEE - An effort to warn parents of the dangers of
mental-health drugs on children was defeated unexpectedly
Tuesday by lawmakers, feeding speculation that it was killed
in part because of its link to the Church of Scientology,
which opposes the use of the drugs. The bill was touted last
month by prominent Scientologists and actresses Kelly
Preston and Kirstie Alley. It would have required parents
to read and sign a long and ominous-sounding statement
detailing the dangers of the drugs once their children are
referred in public school for evaluations of learning
disabilities or emotional, behavioral or mental disorders.
A similar measure passed the full Legislature last year, but
was vetoed by Gov. Jeb Bush, who thought the bill went too
far.
Miami
Beach Republican Rep. Gus Barreiro, a kids' rights crusader
worried about the ''epidemic'' of over-drugging, drafted the
new legislation to quell the governor's concerns and give
parents the right to know the risks of drugs such as Ritalin
and Strattera. ''This is bigger than tobacco,'' Barreiro
said, citing a state report showing a 425 percent increase
over the past five years in diagnoses of attention-deficit
disorder. "What's happening to our kids and what we're doing
to our kids, it's really, truly inexcusable.''
But on a
6-4 vote, the House Health Care Regulation Committee heeded
the warnings of mental-health specialists and killed the
legislation, saying it would have presented parents an
overly biased view against mental-health treatments, thereby
erecting barriers to treatment. ''It's misleading,'' said
Rep. Eleanor Sobel, a Hollywood Democrat. To illustrate her
point, she read off the side-effects of one popular
medication that sounded dangerous before noting its name:
Penicillin. Sobel, like the others who voted against the
bill, said she opposed it because of its contents, not its
supporters -- the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a
Scientology-funded organization dedicated to "investigating
and exposing psychiatric human rights abuse.''
The
Clearwater-based executive director of the commission's
Florida chapter, Helyn Dunn, said it will continue to push
the legislation in the Senate and build on what it says is a
coalition of nearly 30 groups worried about drugging kids.
Concerns about Scientology have ''been a problem all
along,'' Dunn said. "But this isn't about Scientology or
Scientologists. The overdrugging of children should concern
everybody.''
The
disclosure letter the legislation called for would have
furthered the commission's battle against psychiatrists by
telling parents that the diagnosis of mental disorders such
as depression and attention-deficit disorder are "based on .
. . observation and subjective interpretation.''
SCIENTOLOGIST SUPPORT The commission's lobbyist, Bob
Reynolds, said that ''a number'' of lawmakers -- he wouldn't
say who -- inquired about the Scientology angle. 'It was
said with some frequency: 'This is who you represent.' And
that's sad. This is a participatory democracy,'' Reynolds
said.
Barreiro
said he, too, was aware of some colleagues' discomfort with
Scientology and said it ''could have played a role'' in the
defeat of the legislation. He and Reynolds said the
opposition by mental-health professionals played a big part
as well.
Among the
opponents was Wayne K. Goodman, a University of Florida
psychiatry professor and chair of the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration's psycho-pharmacology advisory panel.
Goodman said the letter to parents could have been a
''barrier'' to treatment because it stressed the ''black
box'' warnings about mental health drugs, but did nothing to
inform parents of their effectiveness.
Science accuses BBC of medical quackery
Sunday Times (UK),
March 26, 2006 By Lois Rogers, Social Affairs Editor
SOME of
Britain’s leading scientists have accused the BBC of
“quackery” by misleading viewers in an attempt to exaggerate
the power of alternative medicine. The criticisms centre
on Alternative Medicine, a series broadcast on BBC2 in
January, in which some of the most memorable scenes included
open-heart surgery apparently carried out using acupuncture
as an anaesthetic.
In another
episode, brain images of patients undergoing acupuncture
were claimed to show that the procedure had an effect on the
parts of the brain that experience pain. This weekend
scientists turned on the programme’s producers, accusing
them of distorting science in an attempt to present an
unjustifiably positive image of complementary therapies.
“They are peddling quack science,” said David Colquhoun,
professor of pharmacology at University College London. The
most serious accusation concerns the BBC’s presentation of
the anaesthetic powers of acupuncture. A heart patient
underwent surgery in a Chinese hospital with a number of
acupuncture needles stuck into her body. Critics say that
the needles could be credited with little real effect
because the patient was also receiving three powerful
conventional sedatives — midazolam, droperidol and fentanyl
— along with large volumes of local anaesthetic injected
into her chest.
Simon
Singh, a scientist who has produced BBC Tomorrow’s World and
Horizon programmes, condemned the exercise as a memorable
bit of television which was “emotionally powerful but
scientifically meaningless”. The series was viewed by 3.8m
people and presented by Kathy Sykes, professor of public
understanding of science at Bristol University. During the
acupuncture episode, Sykes said: “We’ve got to be scientific
and rigorous and plan it really carefully,” adding later:
“The bit of the brain that helps us decide whether something
is painful, we think perhaps is being affected by
acupuncture.”
The key
critics include two scientific advisers to the series:
Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Exeter
University; and George Lewith, director of the centre for
the study of complementary medicine at Southampton
University. Lewith, an expert on the effects of
acupuncture, said in an interview yesterday: “The experiment
was not groundbreaking; its results were sensationalised. It
was oversold and over-interpreted. Proper scientific
qualifications that might suggest alternative
interpretations of the data appear to have been edited out
of the programme.”
It was
made in conjunction with an Open University alternative
medicine course, prompting scientists to complain that a
wave of “anti-science” is affecting not only the BBC but
many universities as well.
Ernst
yesterday released the contents of a letter that he has
written to Martin Wilson, the series producer, criticising
him for promoting “US-style anti-science”. He said he felt
“abused” by the programme makers: “It was as if they had
instructions from higher up that this had to be a happy
story about complementary medicine without any complexity,
and they used me to give a veneer of respectability.”
Ernst also
said: “The BBC decided to do disturbingly simple story lines
with disturbingly happy endings.” Two other programmes in
the series — discussing faith healing and herbalism — were
also criticised. “It was the programme on herbal medicines
which really got me going most,” said Colquhoun. “It is as
if evidence-based medicine and reason started to go out of
fashion in the 1970s and 1980s and mysticism came in. We
have to bring reason back.”
He added
that a gathering of members of the Royal Society, Britain’s
most prestigious scientific body, is to be convened next
month to promote the merits of conventional science.
The
scientists will call on Lord Rees, the society’s president,
to take a leading role. They will raise concerns that more
than 50 universities now offer three-year bachelor of
science degrees in alternative medicine. “This is no longer
a fringe game played by new age people,” said Colquhoun. “It
is beginning to erode intellectual standards at real
universities.”
Despite
the criticisms, the BBC is understood to be in the process
of commissioning a further series.
A
spokesman said yesterday: “We take these allegations very
seriously and we strongly refute them. We used two
scientific consultants for the series, Professor Ernst and
Jack Tinker, dean emeritus of the Royal Society of Medicine,
both of whom signed off the programme scripts. It seems
extremely unusual that Professor Ernst should make these
comments so long after the series has aired.” The spokesman
said Tinker had indicated he remained happy with the tone
and content of the films, stating: “Fellow medics at the
Royal Society, including one eminent professor, said it was
the best medical series they had seen on television.”
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