Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) wants to abolish the financing of homeopathic treatments by statutory health insurance companies. Although it is not significant in terms of expenditure volume, it has “no place in a science-based health policy,” Lauterbach told Spiegel in 2022. A policy paper on the financial situation of the health system is now available. “Services that have no medically proven benefit may not be paid for using contribution funds,” writes the Ministry of Health. Therefore, “the possibility of health insurance companies to provide for homeopathic and anthroposophical services in their statutes will be deleted,” as the Tagesschau reports.
Advertisement
On this occasion, we are republishing this report, which originally appeared in Technology Review 6/2016 (can be ordered as a PDF in the heise shop) under the title “The Unhealers”. The text comes from the Correctiv.org pool. Correctiv.org is the first non-profit research center in Germany. It is financed through donations and membership fees.
Hello, my name is Niko Scholze, I am 33 years old and I have cancer. More precisely: Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a tumor that affects the lymph nodes. A year ago I did chemotherapy. The cancer disappeared but now it has returned, unusual for this type of tumor but it does happen. Although I’m fine, I don’t have any symptoms. My doctor is pushing for a new chemotherapy, higher dosage.
Luckily, this is all just made up. My real name is Hristio Boytchev, I am a science journalist and healthy. I’m apparently suffering from cancer in order to put Germany’s alternative medicine to the test. What do spiritual healers and neo-Germanic doctors, shamans and alternative practitioners advise someone who comes to them with an aggressive tumor?
Alternative medicine is booming. Germans spend an estimated several billion euros on this every year. Further estimates suggest that up to every second cancer patient uses it in some form. Yet authorities and doctors know surprisingly little about what happens outside of hospitals.
Heal cancer – even without conventional medicine
We – my supposed college friend Claudia Ruby, in fact she is also a science journalist, and I – set out to meet eight healers who have the reputation of wanting to cure cancer even without conventional medicine. Claudia Ruby filmed the research for her documentary “Cancer – the business of fear”. She organized the visits, the diagnosis letter that I always carry with me, as well as a DVD with computer tomography scans. You can see that the tumor has now also affected the spleen.
On the journey I will hear a lot of contradictory and confusing things about myself, I will have poems read to me and I will undergo spiritual healing. And I’ll get a taste of what it’s like to be afraid. The fear of being terminally ill – and having to make a decision about who to believe. In the small town of Greiz, on the edge of the Ore Mountains, is the “Klinik im Leben”, which promisingly advertises “biological cancer medicine” on its website. In fact, the “clinic” is an inconspicuous yellow apartment building. The waiting room is filled with furniture that seems to come from GDR times, with old ladies sitting on it. In the middle of it all, an illuminated fountain gurgles.
The doctor Uwe Reuter invites us in. He sits behind an iMac on which he sometimes shows me pictures of his therapies. He is around 50, tall and thin, his face looks particularly serious through frameless glasses. I tell him my story.
He listens carefully, and then for a while it seems as if he can’t decide what advice to give me. Finally he has it: I should first do a “diagnostic series” in his clinic, three or even better five days, for around 1000 euros. This includes “electromagnetic measurements” for the “energy balance of individual organs”. Only then could he determine which therapy was indicated for me. “Hypnosis, homeopathy, vitamin B17 infusions” will probably play a role, says Reuter, and “fever therapy” in which I will be injected with dead bacteria.
Healing “must come from within”
“In addition to chemotherapy or alone?” I ask. The doctor says he can’t make this decision for me; I should make it from within. I have to understand that my illness does not come from outside and that therapies only have a supportive effect – healing “has to come from within”.
He says all this casually, in a monotonous mumble. But isn’t there an insinuation hidden in these words that I am to blame for my illness? It’s not a cell that has mutated and grown into a tumor – but something fundamentally wrong with me, with my life, my origins, my attitude, whatever. A pattern of thought that is typical of alternative medicine – and that I will come across again and again on my journey.
In the end, Reuter suggests postponing chemotherapy for a quarter of a year and using his therapy to “put aside everything that prevents healing” – toxins, distractions and fears. The costs? Around 10,000 euros for the entire therapy. Later, Hans Josef Beuth, a microbiologist at the University of Cologne and one of the leading experts on alternative medicine, says: A high price paradoxically increases the credibility of the healers. The more a patient pays, the more they feel that the therapy should be taken seriously. Mr. Reuter must be a very serious healer.
To home page