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Regular readers of this column may have noticed that it has failed a few times in the past few weeks. I can tell you: I had developed a violent inflammation, with quite alarming symptoms. Such a thing is unpleasant and can also put modern medicine before one or the other small problem.
The first doctor prescribed an antibiotic for me, against which the pathogens that usually cause it are resistant. The second prescribed me two days and a few bad side effects later a suitable antibiotic, however, as it turned out, in too low a dose. One week after the end of treatment, the infection broke out again, again on the weekend. Back to the emergency room, third doctor, one with rabid methods. A third, higher-dose antibiotic with a different mechanism of action really creates the pathogens, the new doctor said.
A hundred years ago, possibly a death sentence
I do not tell this story to scold doctors. On the contrary, it is a success story: just a hundred years ago, the same infection might have killed me. The penicillin was discovered only in 1928, most antibiotics much later. If you are unlucky enough, such an infection attacks untreated other internal organs, called sepsis. In the end, I would have died from agonies of blood poisoning.
Many have lost sight of how much suffering and premature death prevent pharmaceuticals and "conventional medicine" today. One likes to blaspheme a little about them and instead praises "more natural" healing methods. This attitude is especially popular with people who are attached to the misconception of "harmony with nature". Those who want to live "in harmony with nature" die earlier.
And so we come to a decision of the Bavarian state parliament, adopted last week with the votes of CSU, free voters and Greens. The reasonable goal: To reduce the number of deaths caused by so-called multidrug-resistant germs. These are germs against which many antibiotics no longer work, a real, growing danger. In addition to the exaggerated use of antibiotics should be reduced, including in agriculture, which is absolutely desirable.
Globuli against sepsis?
The Bavarian state parliament wants to additionally examine in a "study" whether homeopathy could reduce the useless use of antibiotics. This has long been known: prescribing globules as a placebo is common practice among annoyed doctors whose patients require antibiotics for every cold. These are however quite expensive placebos: Globuli cost the health insurance funds per year according to Kassenärztlicher federation 70 million euro.
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The application from Bavaria cites a "study on the mortality of patients with severe sepsis", according to which a homeopathic treatment may allegedly "be a useful additional treatment for severe septic patients". This should now be checked. This is money thrown out at best, at worst negligent.
Onions against hay fever
If you do not know how globuli arise: First, there is a "primal substance". This can be a plant, such as arnica, but also table salt, bees, toxic mercury and much more. This original substance is diluted with water or alcohol. Shaken. Diluted again. Shaken - until there is hardly any or nothing left of the original substance in the liquid. The thinner the more "potent". With the extremely dilute solution, the small balls of sugar are sprayed. The water supposedly remembers what was in it.
The herbal substances are selected according to the principle of "similarity": onion is considered to be effective against hay fever because onions also make your eyes water. However, homeopathy does not know how the "active ingredients", which are barely or no longer detectable, should actually work. If there is still too much active ingredient left, it can be dangerous.
This is different with antibiotics. That they work is proven, and their mechanisms of action are microbiologically understood in detail. Some prevent bacteria from multiplying, others kill them by destroying cell walls or clogging metabolic channels.
How about an Orgonite Cloudbuster?
So the difference between antibiotics and globules is the difference between science and a belief system. The French health authority has just reviewed nearly 1,200 homeopathic medicines and analyzed more than 1,000 scientific publications. The result (once more): an efficacy could not be proven.
Nothing against the placebo effect: He is powerful and can really help. At least as important is probably that homeopaths take time for their patients. But could not this time be financed differently and, above all, more meaningfully invested than in the discussion of a belief system? And if seriously ill people get into sugar globules instead of medicine, that's simply negligence.
The friends of the gentle medicine can become quite gruff when raising such questions. Friends of homeopathy complain regularly at the Press Council or legally against their critics.
How about a "cloudbuster"?
A Globuli lobbyist recently warned of "violent riots," although there are no signs of any homeopathic critics ready for violence. He also sees parallels between critique of Globul faith and the beginnings of the Holocaust. What should the esoterics say, whose belief systems are not supported by the health insurance funds? Everyone is free to drink only levitated water or set up an "orgonite cloudbuster" for just under 4,000 euros in the garden, but fortunately the solidarity community does not pay for it.
And now the Bavarian state parliament wants to spend hundreds of thousands of euros taxpayer money to prove that sugar globules do not help with sepsis. The CSU has to look something like that, after all, the belief in an invisible magic being part of their brand essence. The fact that the Bavarian Greens also supported the motion is a symptom of one of the party's biggest traditional problems: its esoteric legacies. This torments the Green Youth. This legacy will weigh heavily on the party if it does not catch up soon. A naive notion of "naturalness" will not save us.
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For all democratic parties in Germany, especially at this time: One can not on the one hand, on the one hand, as regards the climate crisis, invoke scholarly findings', and on the other hand, hocus-pocus will continue to give the coat of science. (Aber-) faith is a private matter.
