Dear FRONTLINE,

I appreciate Frontline's undertaking to present this program on alternative medicine. The report on homeopathy report was incomplete, I believe, because in describing why homeopathic remedies may be believed to contain no active ingredient, it omitted the answer to this quandry which is given in homeopathic literature. The method of production of homeopathic remedies is not simple dilution but involves a process of succussion. This imparts the energy of the ingredient to the remedy. Energy is a quality that is little understood in other fields of science as well, perhaps because it is not considered a physical entity. I write this as a recipient of homeopathic medicine only, not as a practitioner.

Lois White

Dear FRONTLINE,

I am a pediatric physical therapist, and this program addresses some of the issues I constantly run into when dealing with children and their family who have cerbral palsy or austism. In my field, there are so many snake oilman or women, who claim that they can cure CP or autism, that I find it difficult to keep up with all of them and their claims. The elderly man who went to Dr. Gonzalez to cure his incurable disease of pancreatic cancer paid $2800 for his consultation. Not to mention the travel cost and room and board. I know parents who travelled to the Urkrane or Eastern Europe to enroll their children in these new treatment. Not only do they return just as they left, but some return worst than before they left for these countries. The total cost of this new treatment were more than $10,000. And worst of all they can get away with it.

Michael Murray
Hempstead, NY

Dear FRONTLINE,

Frontline reports are usually the most detailed and balanced reports available on television.This report gets an F grade. This report presented some extreme alternative treatments rather than the wide range of sensible advise given by alternative doctors; exercise, change your diet, add some vitamins and supplements as your first line health care.

They didn't mention the incredible history of resistance the FDA has had to vitamins and supplements. The best, most recent example was the case of folic acid and birth defects.

I have two diabetic friends who go to conventional doctors, take seven or eight high side effect drugs, and get almost no emphasis on basic health practices. Therefore neither one exercises, both are very overweight, and there is no mention of less dangerous supplement alternatives. They are gradually moving toward disability and death and their physians treat this drug focus as the only "proven" approach.

clark kent
bellvue, tn

Dear FRONTLINE,

The basic premise of science is that ideas can be tested and if they are replicable by testing they are likely to be "true." When one hears that homeopathy can't possibly work on the basis of it being “scientifically impossible", this is not examination by scientific principles. This is the benighted approach. A real scientist, as physicians are supposed to be, would want to evaluate patient’s claims of positive results by double blind studies—not by blind prejudice.

James Doyle, DO
Boston, MA

Dear FRONTLINE,

I thought your review of the recent "acceptance" of alternative medicine was interesting but as a doctor of chiropractic I believe you should have noted that chiropractic is the largest sought after alternative healthcare, before acupuncture, homeopathy etc. It is always distressing that the media makes everything so sensational and your last two frames of the couple treated by the healers for infertility and the man who died from pancreatic cancer seemed to be an unfair ending to your show,confirming in some people's mind that yes, alternatives are a hoax.

Lisa Cowley
Southold, New York

Dear FRONTLINE,

I am a certified professional midwife who uses homeopathics, and herbs in ticture and capsule form, very often with pregnant and laboring women. I know they help. The science is old - just has not been documented with studies and control groups in modern day medecine enough to convince allopathic medical proponents. I do not need their validating studies to convince me of their efficacy. I use them everyday and know.

Sybille Andersen
Nantucket, Massachusetts

Dear FRONTLINE,

I am a podiatrist who uses acupuncture and homeopathy in my practice. I have found these therapies to be effective and safe. They are cost effective, although acupuncture is not generally covered by insurance.

The problem noted in your program regarding supporting research is complicated by professional bias, percieved financial threats, and difficulty in learning complicated and material foreign to one's training.

Barry Swedlow
Lynchburg, VA

Dear FRONTLINE,

I believe that alternative therapies and dietary supplements are regulated by the free market. If a supplement is not effective, then people will simply quit buying it, just as they would quit buying anything else. The same is true of alternative therapies. However, if we turn to the FDA drug approval process for mandated safety and efficacy studies, that is the same as banning supplements and therapies. Manufacturers do not have hundreds of millions of dollars to run through the FDA drug approval process, in order to market a product. And, absent of proven safety issues, they should not have to. It should be up to the FDA to prove safety issues, prior to regulation. That is the same standard as anything else - if supplements and alternative therapies are to be restricted, there should be a proven scientific reason to do so. To ban them without an established reason for doing so is an infringement on a person's right to choose.

Alternative methods exist because of the same free market reasons in reverse: modern medicine is very often harmful, dangerous and ineffective. More people are killed by modern medicine than almost anything else. The same cannot be said about alternative methods. Let the people decide. If therapies do not work, then people will quit using them. However, if they do work, than those people should not have their choices taken away from them, especially by the forces that they are trying to escape: the FDA, the medical establishment, and the drug companies.

In the case of ephedra - the safety issues have been proven. And, according to DSHEA, the FDA is already mandated to ban that substance. The reasons for them not doing so are obscure, but the truth is: they are mandated to do it and they are refusing to do their duty under DSHEA. DSHEA does not have to be repealed to give the FDA regulatory powers. They already have them. Check into this, and verify it for yourself.

Michael Hudnall
Phoenix, Arizona