Collagen Corp. and ABC's 20/20
This article was originally published in The Gray Sheet
Executive Summary
At a March 30 session of the HIMA annual meeting, John Stossel, reporter for the ABC television program 20/20, said he will consider doing a story that provides data from studies indicating that use of Collagen's Zyderm/Zyplast injectable collagen products is not associated with autoimmune disease. A Stossel report on the Feb. 22, 1991 broadcast of 20/20 highlighted claims from individuals who believe that Collagen's products have caused autoimmune disorders ("The Gray Sheet" March 4, 1991, p. 6). Noting that plaintiffs attorneys told him that use of Collagen's products "would lead to all kinds of autoimmune disease," Stossel told the HIMA gathering that "given that the product is in a lot of places, you would think [autoimmune disease] would start showing up all over, and so far it hasn't. And if that continues down the road, and collagen is widely accepted, then I think...I should do a followup story" on how "the emphasis of our story was wrong".