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To the editors:
The Fifteen Minutes’ scrutiny “Why Not Scientology”
(Oct. 13), by Annie M. Lowrey, presented only one narrow side of a
disturbing organization. Lowrey’s human-interest journalism approach,
focusing on an individual’s experience with Scientology, ignores the
darker sides of the organization: its pseudo-scientific approach to
medicine that has led to inadequate health care for the children raised
in some Scientologist families; the criminal charges brought against
senior officers of the organization’s leadership, including the
founder’s wife, for harassing Internal Revenue Service officers while
trying to obtain status as a non-profit organization; the hierarchical
structure that only allows members to learn greater “insight” into the
religion’s true beliefs after they have spent significant sums of money
on auditing and other Scientology services; the restrictions on free
discussion of their beliefs among outsiders through the rabid
enforcement of copyrights on their texts. The list goes on. We hope for
more responsible reporting in the future.
MATTHEW R. GEORGE ’07
ALEXANDER N. HARRIS ’08
MATTHEW T. VALENTE ’08
October 12, 2005
The writers are president, vice-president, and minister of truth, respectively, of the Harvard Secular Society.
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