Una delle cose che mi scioccano di più della Germania è quanto sia diffusa la pseudoscienza nel sistema sanitario.
Fino a un certo punto, ricevo che le farmacie vende l’omeopatia e i cosiddetti rimedi naturali in quanto sono le aziende che cercano di fare soldi e non direttamente responsabili della tua salute. Ma ciò che mi sciocca davvero è quanto sia diffusa l’offerta per questi trattamenti in
Ad esempio, quando scelgo un Assicurazione sanitaria (Assicurazione sanitaria), ho notato che i siti Web di confronto danno un po ‘di importanza al fatto che coprano cose come l’omeopatia, l’agopuntura, la naturopatia, la medicina cinese, ecc. Questo nonostante una tonnellata di prove che mostrano che questi trattamenti non funzionano e che si basano su di loro può ritardare o addirittura prevenire cure mediche adeguate. È pazzesco per me che nel 21 ° secolo, stiamo pagando per ciò che in sostanza è la medicina sciamanica e lo stato lo sta sostenendo. L’assistenza sanitaria è già abbastanza costosa senza lanciare denaro in cose come questa.
Inoltre, quando stavo cercando medici, inizialmente ho cercato di trovare coloro che non offrivano trattamenti alternativi e attaccati alla medicina basata sulla scienza. Ma ho rinunciato rapidamente perché così tanti medici di medicina generale includono una qualche forma "alternativa" trattamento nei loro servizi. Mi è stato anche insistito più volte se volevo aggiungere medicine alternative al trattamento.
Qualcuno sa perché questa è una cosa così grande qui? Ci sono parti o iniziative che cercano di fermare i finanziamenti pubblici per questo tipo di cose? C’è qualche studio che mostra il costo in eccesso nel sistema sanitario?
Aneddoticamente, per quello che ho visto la maggior parte dei tedeschi non sembra preoccuparsi o addirittura sostenerlo, in particolare le persone a sinistra. Ma ovviamente vedi più antivaxxer sulla destra.
EDIT: grazie a tutti per le vostre risposte! Dato il gran numero di commenti, volevo solo chiarire alcune cose:
1. Alcune persone hanno risposto qualcosa di simile "Omeopatia o pseudomedicina è cattiva ma non mettere l’altro sullo stesso gruppo". Devo non essere d’accordo, per semplificare se puoi fare uno studio in doppio cieco e ottenere un effetto su un trattamento più grande del placebo diventa solo medicina. Se non ha alcun effetto, è solo "medicina alternativa" E questo include l’omeopatia, l’accopuntura, la naturopatia, la medicina cinese tradizionale, l’osteopatia e altri. E anche medicina a base di erbe o naturali che funziona è solo una medicina. In inglese consiglio il blog Medicina basata sulla scienza Per una panoramica delle prove e delle possibili critiche. In tedesco, alcuni di voi hanno raccomandato i poliziotti di scienze dei quarks podcast e https://skeptix.org/.
2. Naturalmente non è un problema esalsivo tedesco. Non l’ho mai affermato e sicuramente, è molto peggio in altri paesi. Ma dato che la Germania ha una tradizione e un’influenza scientifica così ricca, sono rimasto scioccato da quanto sia prevalente nel sistema sanitario e normalizzato nella società.
3. Molti di voi hanno commentato l’influenza di Rudolf SteinerAntroposofia e come hanno considerato i nazisti medicina convenzionale come una cosa ebraica e promosso medicina alternativa.
4. Grazie u/Ovviamentesquirrel26 per le fonti. L’attuale ministro della salute ha provato senza successo Rimuovere l’omeopatia dal sistema sanitario,
5. Per quanto riguarda la pendenza politica dei sostenitori, stavo solo parlando anectodicamente, poiché purtroppo molte cose sono politiche, stavo solo chiedendo di capire. Molti di voi hanno sottolineato che, almeno per l’omeopatia, non esiste necessariamente una divisione politica e in particolare i Verdi hanno cambiato la loro posizione su di essa.
Alcuni hanno anche chiesto informazioni sulle fonti per gli antivaxxer e il diritto (intendevo specificamente di estrema destra) e ci sono alcune prove specifiche per Covid-19 come Covid-19 come come Covid-19 come questo studio O semplicemente cerca il tuo candidato all’estrema destra preferita e i loro commenti sulla vaccinazione. Più in generale, secondo questo studiosembra che abbia più a che fare con opinioni e populismo antiestablishment: "Le misure che catturano la convenzionale dimensione dell’ideologia politica sinistra-destra non sono per lo più statisticamente significative".
The Obsession of pseudoscientific medicine (AKA natural or alternative medicine) in Germany
byu/cr2pns ingermany
di cr2pns
36 commenti
Iirc our current health minister was trying to get coverage for these pseudo-scientific treatments taken out of the public health insurance but encountered some pretty hefty opposition behind the scenes so had to drop it.
The sad reality is that things like homeopathy are pretty entrenched because they partially actually originated in Germany as part of the “esoteric” movement about a century or so ago (which also had some deep ties to rightwing/occult/racist ideologies). So there is a small, but sizable group of people who always lobby for it to be accepted and covered by insurance, even though all evidence is clear that this stuff is at best just the placebo effect at work.
The homeopathy industry is thus also pretty sizable, and an average physician cannot really afford to not include these services if they want to get a good number of patients.
It is a cult
If you are fluent in German (or able to watch with auto-generated subtitles), [this video](https://youtu.be/pU3sAYRl4-k?si=GxaiQRIzx_bUANzT) and [this video](https://youtu.be/IK5BZdnqMDU?si=rmZ9qyWtGvzG0gDV) outline the topic really well.
That’s our share of magical thinking.
>Does anyone know why this is such a big thing here?
[Rudolf Steiner](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner)
>Are there any parties or initiatives trying to stop public funding for this kind of stuff?
[Our own Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach](https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/lauterbach-homoeopathie-kassenleistung-100.html)
>Is there some study showing the excess cost in the healthcare system?
[yes](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5600367/)
Homeopathy is one of the biggest scams in medicine.
Like other Said, it was invented here and many people try this as a „Protest against the system“ in the most mundane and meaningles way.
Fun fact: Homeopathy was successfull when it was invented. Mostly because the „normal“ way to treat people then involved so much bloodletting that I assume most doctord were secret vampires then. And Doing nothing was just better
>Anecdotally, for what I’ve seen most Germans don’t seem to care or even support it, especially people on the left. But of course you see more antivaxxers on the right.
I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. There is certainly support for this type of thing among parts of the left and green party. It’s pretty easy to tell a story about big capitalist pharma trying to suppress small natural treatments, which is easily digestible for those groups.
The green party only very recently (within the last two years I think) reversed course on homeopathy. Die Linke also only recently took an official negative stance on it (2021). So there are certainly members that would disagree, and anecdotally, measles outbreaks tended to happen in more left-wing neighborhoods quite frequently.
Germany is not so bad, in my home country it’s much worse. A lot of people still believe in magic, not saying about honeopathy. And it’s also Europe.
That’s a leftover of WW2. Many doctors where Jews and so we had some Problems with our medicine system.
So the Nazis needed a replacement and so the boom of that nonsense began. That is also where the name “Schulmedizin” comes from. In Nazi Time it was “verjüdete Schulmedizin” (Jewish School Medicine) to have a bad name for the proper univeristy degree of medicine.
It’s a discrace to have it still this big in our (and Austrias) health system.
Short answer: the Nazis.
Long answer: the Nazis wanted an alternative to what they considered to be “jewish medicine” (vaccines among other things).
So they falsified a bunch of studies to “prove” homeopathy and anthroposophic “medicine” worked.
And while their regime eventually ended, their magical thinking never really went away.
Homeopathy has absolutely no effect beyond the placebo effect. Homeopathic medicines such as globules contain no active ingredient and are just sugar pellets with crazy „magic“. This is more or less an industry that makes its money with unproven healing methods, hocus-pocus and a pinch of sugar.
You have to make a distinction between “natural based medicine” and “alternative pseudoscience medicine”. The general physicians aka your Dr. med. folks who have an actual med degree, PhD and approbation often ask if you would like to try something plant based instead of harsher antibiotics or chemical solutions first, unless your illness is so severe that only antibiotics or chemicals would help, of course. These plant based drugs do work and are often gentler on the body.
And then there are the “Heilpraktiker” people who are not doctors but claim to be doctors and who are also sometimes covered by insurance and who will prescribe total plant based, salt based whatever bullshit. Avoid them at all costs.
Natural medicine isn’t equal to pseudoscientific “natural” medicine and “alternative healing methods”.
Acupuncture is btw a scientific proven method for pain relief, it’s just not the “cure all and everything” the Heilpraktikers make it out to be. The thing you need to stay away from are the chiropractors, that’s the worst of all pseudosciences that can do a lot of damage.
Historically it’s just super hard to get rid of all the bullshit because these movements started in Germany and have a cult like following that tries to rope in more and more people. It’s a billion heavy industry. It’s also heavily interwoven with right wing ideologies because Hitler did not believe in modern medicine which he named “verjudete Schulmedizin” (jewish (as a slur) school medicine) because many doctors were jews and even banned some modern drugs and vaccines at the time, reversing medical progress in Germany by quite a few years.
Pretty much every country has their own woo, usually with a strong emphasis on whatever was invented there.
That’s why you mostly get chiropractics, osteopathy (don’t @ me) and various snake oils in the US for instance.
Heck the other week I ran across some pseudoscience that seems to be swabia specific.
Sounds like *somebody’s* energy levels are a little low.
I’ve been baffled by this plenty. I also always try to choose doctors that don’t list any alternative medicine as part of their skills – which excludes a lot of them.
However, my steelmanning of it is that while it obviously doesn’t work, it takes a load off of the healthcare system by giving some placebo treatment to all the people that flood doctors with minor problems. I don’t buy that it’s a great way to do it though.
Herbal medicine ≠ homeopathy
In contrast to herbal medicine, homeopathy is not based on medical-scientific principles.
I can of course peel a birch tree, make a decoction from the birch bark and drink it. Thanks to the methylsalicylate it contains, this helps against pain and fever.
But I can also just take an Aspirin™.
It’s truly bizarre and, as with so many things here, Germans often don’t realise how weird it is they believe this nonsense.
I met someone shortly after moving here who said she was a lab technician, then when I asked where she worked and she said in a homeopathy lab I burst out laughing. I honestly thought she was joking. She was not.
It’s so sad, one of the topics I just have to avoid discussing with family members. Hate this esoteric shit so much. My whole life I have been surrounded be esoteric women. I’ve seen everything. From free energy to all kinds of super weird natural remedies to all kinds of esoteric thought schools to new religious prophets to anti vax to completely avoiding doctors. I would love it so much if the people around me would just invest that energy into something like making good jokes. I’ve tried to incentivize them many times. But they just want to go down some rabbit hole over and over again.
As an expat living in Germany since 2022 and being chronically ill with Long Covid, so having a lot of interaction with healthcare, I have noticed the same thing.
The country I come from is by no means first world country, but quackery such as homeopathy or naturheilkunde belong to the very fringe of public discourse where I come from and is by no means seen as acceptable to be proposed by healthcare workers belonging to the official healthcare system.
I really loved [this episode by The Science Cops podcast](https://open.spotify.com/episode/10GvqhIuHz0ohIGlWu6eB1?si=lKbVdqVJR9mp28W_Z4ZJzg) (there are 4 episodes on antroposophic movement, started by Rudolph Steiner), explaining not only how unhinged and completely pseudoscientific the idea behind antroposophic medicine is, but also how antroposophic medicine proponents keep pushing it by buying professorships, publishing bad quality research, lobbying etc
On a side note – the whole obsession with “stress” and institutionalized gaslighting with everything being ascribed to psychosomatics is absolutely abominable in Germany – and as Long Covid-affected patient I can testify to the pseudoscientific discourse being pushed by certain health professionals in public discourse that postinfectious syndromes such as ME/CFS, POTS or Long Covid are psychosomatic, in spite of literally all good quality scientific evidence pointing out in the direction of 100% somatic pathomechanisms underlying these infection-associated chronic conditions, rooted in immune, metabolic, vascular, neurological etc dysfunction. And no – “stress” doesn’t cause autoimmune disease, infections do (in a process called molecular mimicry).
Literally all those people pushing pseudoscientific ideas in the public healthcare discourse in Germany are the ones whose careers and to those careers associated finances are on the line.
Samuel Hahnemann, the “creator” of homeopathy, was German.
Rudolf Steiner was German speaking and spent a lot of his life in Germany, from his stint in the theosophic society over Waldorf schools and his course on biodynamic agriculture. Ever heard about this? Do you buy demeter products? Then you know it.
He went to Switzerland in his last years and founded his temple to Goethe there.
I keep getting bacterial sinus infections. Only thing that helps are antibiotics. The earlier I start the better. As much as the pills suck, it’s the only thing that turns me back into a productive member of society at a reasonable pace. I had to visit a different doctor last time and he sent me off with a prescription of some plant based stuff that has zero studies to show for it’s efficacy and cost a hefty 20 bucks on top. I googled the meds before walking into the pharmacy and spent that money on food instead after I went to a different doc to get the antibiotics.
Homeopathy is a money making scheme that targets the gullible. It needs to be tossed from the Krankenkassenkatalog. If your doc pushes something weird on you, Google it. If it is belladonna bazillion times diluted and kissed by a virgin, you know to either start beef with the doc or just walk out of that office.
I have C-PTSD and my fucking Gynecologist offered to do shock therapy on me against it and gave me a panthlet. That was my first and last appointment there! The fuck!!!
If homeopathy is already shocking you, dont ever read about the Energetiker profession, Orgon therapy or enlivened water (especially Granderwasser) 😂
But, as stupid as it is, its a billion Euro industry and some people making serious money.
have a look at https://skeptix.org/.
A society that is trying to address exactly those issues.
You seem not to differentiate between natural and alternative medicine. Natural medicine is not pseudoscientific as such, many herbs have clinically proven medical effects, and there is a good reason to prescribe them for a range of milder health conditions. There’s no reason to resort to stronger treatment when natural ones will do.
Quite a lot of German doctors prescribe natural medicine and that’s fine. What is, indeed, not fine is that public health insurance covers (even if some insurances do so only to a limited extent) clinically disproved treatments like homeopathy.
Yes, it is crazy. The Austrians did better. After the end of the Nazi regime they also got rid of the „Heilpraktiker“.
The German health system is set up first and foremost to make money.
It’s really not that far removed from the US system other than if you’re poor you’re covered.
Why the health of a nation is in private hands astounds me, but when you realise how many companies are milking it and profiteering from it then it becomes clear.
You seem stressed, wanna partake in some craniosacral therapy? /s
Like most german stuff that sucks balls, this is a Nazi thing:
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hom%C3%B6opathie_im_Nationalsozialismus](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hom%C3%B6opathie_im_Nationalsozialismus)
Also this:
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Deutsche_Heilkunde](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Deutsche_Heilkunde)
Don’t forget, behind all this usually you find a lot of conspiracy theories (Big Pharma, old “wisdom” that is supressed by some “elite” and so on) and at the heart of nearly every conspiracy theorie you’ll find antisemetism if you keep digging (or asking).
So it’s just “natural” that all this bs can go on mostly undefeated in germany.
Until covid, antivaxxers in Germany, and they were many, were squarely on the left.
The tradition of alternative medicine in Germany has a long history, going back specially to the 20s and 30s when Germany was the birth place for everything alternative, from naturism to neural and homeopathic treatment to the westernisation of Eastern spirituality. And it never quite stopped.
At the same time, the German healthcare system and medical academic research in areas of developmental disabilities (for example autism) is basically non-existent and Germans have a completely weird ignorance towards the established standard of care for some of these conditions. For example, autism is treated as a diagnosis without applicable medical care in Germany. Things like ABA therapy do not exist in the German health care system, insurances are not covering them. Search for academic, peer reviewed research papers on autism from authors at German universities and you will find almost nothing.
As a parent of an autistic child, it can be more than mildly infuriating that you can get pseudo-scientific bullshit covered, but scientifically proven therapies to treat autism are not covered.
And now that I have written this, queue the German ignorant minds who will claim that ABA therapy is torture… 😂🤦🏻♂️🤡
It annoys me that insurance covers this shit but not for instance glasses or more dentist stuff. Besides that if people use it because the placebo effect works for them, fine. But yeah, not make me pay for that bullshit cover more useful stuff.
I also wished that our healthcare system wouldn’t fund this bullshit, but I gave up arguing about it a long time ago. I know too many people that swear by homeopathy and other quackery and there is no way to convince them.
It’s always some version of “my …’s … had this chronic incurable disease and then they tried taking sugar pills or stared intensely at salt lamps and now they are cured. It really works!”
People like that never heard of the placebo effect or that their bodies don’t need external help to beat something as basic as a flu, and personal anecdotes always beat science.
It’s frustrating. I prefer to just check which party is for or against it and consider that when voting. Too bad that all parties seem to cave to the pro quackery lobby so I’ll just try not to think about it…
Dont compare natural remedies to homeopathy, please.
Homeopathy is just sugary balls without scientific prove that it works beyond the Placebo effect.
And natural remedies (such as using ginger against inflammation) is – to certain degrees – proven to be helpful and have been used for centuries.
Leftist german healthcare worker here, please don’t throw in TCM and Acupuncture with everything else there- there are actual neurophysiological explanations why that stuff works.
I’m with you on the rest of it, and I think one of the main factors why it is so popular is that those “alternative” practicioners just have a lot more time on their hands to focus on talking/listening to their patients- of course, otherwise you couldn’t sell it. But that personal attention is something that Schulmedizin has traditionally undervalued and neglected to make room for.