Monthly Archives: September 2016
Did you know that:
- All diseases are really just psychological conflicts.
- Conventional medicine is a conspiracy of Jews to decimate the non-Jewish population.
- Microbes do not cause diseases.
- AIDS is just a normal allergy.
- Cancer is the result of a mental shock.
These are just some of the theories of RG Hamer realized in his Germanic (or German) New Medicine.
Hamer once had a medical licence; it was revoked after he was found guilty of malpractice. Subsequently, he continued treating patients as a ‘Heilpraktiker‘. He has been in court many times, sentenced repeatedly and imprisoned at least twice. There is an abundance of information about Hamer available on the Internet (for instance here), and I am therefore not attempting to repeat it here. Yet to give a quick impression of Hamer’s mind-set, I translate what he is quoted stating: ” … I do not even believe in the holocaust…I also do not believe that man was on the moon and, much worse, that the Twin Towers were brought down by Arabs, but hardly anybody believes that today…”
Hamer’s treatments have been associated with several deaths. The most recent case has only just been reported in this article from the Austrian newspaper ‘Der Standard’. As it is in German, I will summarize the essence here:
An Italian couple apparently had refused to let her daughter’s leukaemia be treated with conventional medicine (which usually is life-saving in this condition) but insisted that she receives Hamer’s methods of cancer therapy (which are not evidence-based). They therefore took her to a Swiss clinic where she apparently received cortisol and vitamins. After the interventions of Italian doctors, the parents were forbidden to take charge of their daughter’s care. Meanwhile, however, the daughter, Eleonora Bottaro from Padova, had reached the age of 18 and was therefore legally allowed to decide about her treatments. She opted to continue the treatment in the Swiss clinic and died of her leukaemia in mid August.
Some aspects of this new case are reminiscent of the one of the Austrian, Olivia Pilhar. In 1995, this girl, then aged 6, was diagnosed with a Wilms’ tumour. The parents withheld conventional treatments from her and opted for Hamer’s methods as an alternative. When the authorities intervened, the parents took their child to Malaga where she was treated according to Hamer’s weird ideas. Following a court order, the child eventually did receive proper medical treatment and survived her disease. Her parents received a suspended prison sentence of 8 months in Austria.
Sadly, alternative medicine hosts many miracle healers like Hamer. They have in common that
- they create their own bizarre ideas about healthcare which are neither plausible nor evidence-based;
- they mix them with a rich dose of conspiracy theory;
- they tend to sue those who expose them for what they are;
- they manage to amass a sizeable following of often quite fanatical believers;
- they exploit them by selling false hope;
- they manage to create some sort of cult;
- they do financially very well with their quackery;
- they endanger the health of consumers and patients who have the misfortune to come into contact with them;
- they are undeterred by medical ethics, the law or the authorities.
These people disgust me beyond words. Yet, even in this company of rogues, Hamer is special – not least because of his rampant racism. He claims, for instance, that conventional medicine is guilty of the “most hideous crime in the whole history of mankind” and alleges that Jews have killed around two billion people with morphine, chemotherapy and radiation.
Highly diluted homeopathic remedies are pure placebos; that statement is by no means new and has been discussed here so many times that it hardly needs repeating. It follows that those who, in the face of overwhelming evidence, claim that such remedies are efficacious for any condition or symptom are misleading the public.
What, in the realm of homeopathy, could be worse?
The answer is fairly clear, I think: those who promote homeopathy for immunizations; i.e. those ‘experts’ who advocate HOMEOPROPHYLAXIS; they are clearly worse, much worse.
On this blog, I have repeatedly warned consumers of this nonsense (see for instance here, here, here, here and here), yet the Internet remains full of promotion of this dangerous quackery. Few charlatans are as despicable as the author of this recent article:
…Energy medicine is becoming more sought after and used. Homeopathy is one such form of energy medicine used by over 500 million people worldwide. Within homeopathy is the practice of a safe and natural disease prevention method called homeoprophylaxis, or “HP.”
HP involves the safe use of either diluted and potentized disease products or materials from animal, mineral, or vegetable sources to elicit an immune response in order to educate the immune system before encountering a disease. Due to the ultra-high dilution, the final product contains no molecules of the original source, rendering it completely harmless. It is energetic instead of material and operates by way of its frequency.
Energetic Medicine
This energetic frequency “educates” the immune system to recognize a disease when met in the environment and effectively mount an immune response in the most natural way. As Albert Einstein once said, “Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”
Just like cell phones receive a radio frequency, interpret it, and deliver it to the user in a form that can be understood, HP delivers the energetic spectrum of a targeted disease. The human body, just like the phone, is able to receive and respond to the energetic signature and produce a beneficial response.
This signature is delivered on tiny sugar pellets, by mouth, one disease at a time, and is devoid of adjuvents, preservatives, or antibiotics of any kind. It is not grown on foreign mediums, but contains only the frequency of the disease.
This is how illness occurs in nature. Pure and simple. The developing immune system contracts a disease, mounts an immune response, resolves the illness, and is left with lifelong immunity to a specific virus. No chemicals, no confusion, no system overload! HP confers all of the benefits with none of the risks…
Is HP for Me?
With any aspect of your health, or the health of your children, it’s essential to do your homework and carefully gather all the information you can before making choices. HP is not a “replacement” for vaccination. It is a conscious method to enhance immunity that employs energetic principles. Applications for epidemics and childhood diseases are based upon sound homeopathic principles and common sense. It is utilized and appreciated by many people around the world and shown to be safe and effective…
The time will come when we recognize that trying to eliminate disease is an infantile attempt to declare superiority over other lifeforms. The human body is 9/10ths bacteria, viruses, and other organisms that live symbiotically within us. Living in harmony with these organisms is the only answer to the survival of our species. HP honours this relationship. More people are finding it as they seek a better way…
END OF QUOTE
And here are the facts about HP:
- there is no reason why it should work; it is not biological plausible,
- there is no clinical evidence that it does work,
- the stories HP-fans tell us about epidemics where HP has been employed successfully are unconvincing nonsense,
- this means that HP is not evidence-based,
- to mislead people into thinking otherwise is criminally irresponsible, in my view,
- such bogus claims could cost the lives of millions, if HP truly became wide-spread.
I cannot think of anything in the realm of homeopathy that is more irresponsible than the promotion of HP.
The ‘Deutsche Apotheker Zeitung’, a paper for German pharmacists, rarely is the most humorous of publications. However, recently they reported on a battle between the EU and the European producers of homeopathic remedies – a battle over mercury which has, I think, hints of Monty Python and the Flying Circus.
The EU already has strict regulations on the use of mercury, for obvious reasons, they apply particularly to medicines. The law in this area is now 8 years old and is about to be replaced by a new one which is even stricter. A draft has been recently published here.
The new law would prohibit all mercury in medicinal products, except for some used in dentistry. For the homeopathic and anthroposophic manufacturers, this is not good news because they have many remedies on the market that have the word ‘mercury’ on the label. Consequently, they fear that the sale of these products might be impeded or even become impossible in the EU.
„Quecksilber und Quecksilberverbindungen stellen für manche homöopathische und andere traditionelle Arzneimittel einen unverzichtbaren Bestandteil dar“ (Mercury and mercury compounds are an essential ingredient of some homeopathic and other traditional medicines) .. “Es steht keine Quecksilber-freie Alternative zur Verfügung, die als aktiver Bestandteil in der Therapie mit homöopathischen oder anderen traditionellen Arzneimitteln verwendet werden könnte“ (There is no mercury-free alternative that could be used in these medications”) wrote the Dachverband der Arzneimittelhersteller im Bereich der Selbstmedikation (AESGP) (a lobby group of the homeopathic manufacturers) in a comment adding that „Diese Produkte sind seit Dekaden auf dem europäischen Markt und gehören zum Arzneimittel-Werkzeugkoffer” (these products are on the market since decades and belong to the medical tool-kit)… and that these products contain merely tiny amounts of mercury – even the largest manufacturers of these remedies only require a few milligrams for their production.
The plea of the manufacturers therefore is for an exemption from the new law which would allow the trade of mercury-containing remedies in future. They even have the support of some health politicians; for instance Peter Liese CDU favours an exemption for homeopathic medicines. The next meeting of the EU committee on public health will vote on the matter.
Personally, I can imagine the following dialogue between the EU officials (EU) and the lobbyists of the homeopathic industry (LOHI):
EU: We are very sorry but, because of the toxicity of mercury, we will not allow any of it in medicines.
LOHI: But we have always used it and nobody has come to harm.
EU: We don’t know that, and we have to be strict.
LOHI: We appreciate your concern, but we use only very, very tiny amounts; they cannot cause harm.
EU: The law is the law!
LOHI: Actually, the vast majority of our products are so dilute that they do not contain a single molecule of the ingredient on the bottle.
EU: That’s interesting! In this case, they are not medicines and we will have to ban them.
LOHI: NO, no, no – you don’t understand. We potentise our medicines; this means that the ingredient that they no longer contain gets more and more powerful.
EU: Are you sure?
LOHI: Absolutely!
EU: In this case, we will ban not just your mercury products but all your phony remedies. Because either science is right and they are fraudulent, or you are correct and they are dangerous.
