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Hamer once had a medical licence; it was revoked after he was found guilty of malpractice.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.
32 Responses to Another death by quackery
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“She opted to continue the treatment in the Swiss clinic and died of her leukaemia in mid August.”
This was avoidable.
What about the 5999 children, who died of cancer in Europe? Which medical practise was responsible for their deaths?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24706509
Your fallacy today is: tu quoque (aka whataboutery).
How do you see this?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3766382/Nineteen-NHS-trusts-review-chemotherapy-high-death-rates.html
Public Health England reviewed chemotherapy mortality across country
Study looked at 30,000 patients who received cancer treatment
Found 19 trusts had mortality rates in excess of the 95% control limits
Cancer charities said it was vital patients were made aware of the risks
Part of the learning process or acceptable collateral damage.
“Part of the learning process or acceptable collateral damage.” You’d sooner leave people untreated (or give them magic water, which is the same thing) and let them die of their disease?
To put this in perspective, from the article Iqbal links to (it’s in the Mail online, by the way, which is unreliable, to put it very mildly): “Of those receiving chemotherapy to cure them, 2.9 per cent with lung cancer died within 30 days, and 0.26 per cent of those with breast cancer died.”
“Cancer charities said it was vital patients were made aware of the risks.” They are made aware. The article you link to spells out the risks. If you’ve lung cancer and you undergo chemo there’s a 3% chance you’ll die within 30 days. And there’s 10 times lower risk with breast cancer.
With lung cancer there’s about a 60% chance you’ll survive for 1 year, but only about a 10% chance you’ll survive for 5 years (http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/lung-cancer/survival#heading-Zero). Lung cancer is a killer, Iqbal, and your homeopathic nonsense just plain doesn’t help. Neither does your attitude.
@Frank Odds on Friday 09 September 2016 at 09:26
“…t’s in the Mail online, by the way, which is unreliable, to put it very mildly)
OK, Take your pick.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/08/30/chemotherapy-warning-as-hundreds-die-from-cancer-fighting-drugs/
http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/705615/chemotherapy-treatment-cancer-drugs-hundreds-die-public-health
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-findings-on-post-chemotherapy-deaths-using-world-first-phe-cancer-data
“The study found 7 hospitals treating breast cancer and 5 treating lung cancer with an intention to cure where the risk-adjusted death rates (taking into account the new rich data on every patient treated) were outside the confidence limits expected.” (collateral damage.?)
“Chemotherapy is a vital part of cancer treatment and is a large reason behind the improved survival rates over last 4 decades. However, it is powerful medication with significant side effects and often getting the balance right on which patients to treat aggressively can be hard. Studies like this help improve our understanding of how people are affected by chemotherapy in the real world and most importantly help us to treat patients better.”
(after 40 years ” it is powerful medication with significant side effects and often getting the balance right on which patients to treat aggressively can be hard. Studies like this help improve our understanding of how people are affected by chemotherapy in the real world and most importantly help us to treat patients better.” Dismal Learning continues: What were they doing 10, 20, and 30 years earlier? But this is the ONLY way to cure cancer.)
“This is the first time that 30-day mortality following chemotherapy has been investigated on a national level.” Until now all walking out of the hospital door were considered cured of cancer. But should not the analysis period be 180 days?
Iqbal, I give up. Is there anything you comprehend? You are beyond a joke. Please hold your own advice up to a mirror: “It is better to remain silent and let the world believe you are a fool, than to open your mounth [sic] and remove all doubts.”
Good grief. Please read and at least make an attempt at understanding my last comment to you. If you have any difficulties, please just say so.
if he/she would not be so intensely funny, I would have banned him/her some time ago.
I see you quoted the Daily Mail, the most dishonest ‘media’ outlet in the UK (and that’s saying something).
I suspect you are addicted to your anti-fact conspiracies.
Iqbal- You have exposed yourself as an hysterical, lying idiot frequently on this site and others, so I doubt whether I or anybody else say will penetrate your defences. If you were capable of understanding any basic logic, there would be a chance that you wouldn’t even make such a statement in the first place. I do realise that intelligent people are capable of believing foolish things, but it’s transparently obvious that you are on a level way below that.
To put it simply enough that a child could understand it-
How, other than through a process of extreme fanaticism, do you conclude that ‘5,999 children died of cancer, therefore some organisation must have killed them’?
Rather than focussing on how many mortalities there are, why not focus on how many aren’t dying today, as opposed to the ’70s. There is plenty of reason to believe that conventional medicine is effective, considering the fates for mortality from childhood cancer have dropped 66% since 1970.
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/childrens-cancers/mortality
Julie Mellor on Sunday 04 September 2016 at 13:31
This data posted by you has a basis and is correct. But percentages can be misleading. I was looking for data for the number of children reported with cancer in 1970 to compare with 1997. Could not locate this data. Cancer is termed to be a age related disease(?) and there fore this data could be important to discuss the real reason behind the spike and treatment of cancer cases.
“In Missing Microbes, Dr. Martin Blaser reaches back to the discovery of antibiotics, which ushered in a golden age of medicine, and then traces how our subsequent overuse of these seeming wonder drugs has left its mark on our systems, contributing to the rise of what Blaser calls our modern plagues: obesity, asthma, allergies, diabetes, and certain forms of cancer. Blaser’s studies suggest antibiotic use during early childhood poses the greatest risk to long-term health, and, alarmingly, American children receive on average seventeen courses of antibiotics before they are twenty years old.”
Hey Iqbal – my son was treated at Great Ormond St with classic chemo when he was 20 months. Today he’s 15 and healthy. He was given 40% chance – if the BMT and chemo worked. He was given 0% without them.
Your moving goal posts might work for you (its astonishing that you don;’t see that for every answer that blasts you out of the park you just come back with something different: nothing chiming there in your head at all?), but facts are facts – and you really ought to grow up and face some.
So there’s loads wrong with modern medicine and the practices of the pharmaceutical industry. But evidence based treatments are fundamentally effective – and it’s just dishonest (not to say childishly self indulgent) to claim otherwise.
why don’t you switch on your brain before you post a comment?
He might at least have thought to point out that the post is only an anecdote!
Edzard on Sunday 04 September 2016 at 15:07
I asked you a simple question. You could have come up with data for most of the other 5999 children ending up at quacks and dying because of incorrect treatment. This would better prove your point that if they would have instead come to SBM, they would have been saved. Discribing one out of 6000 estimated deaths is the right method of discussion or the purpose was to use an anecdote to discredit other forms of medicine?
It is quite simply the latter, and there fore what Dr. Hans writes about you is reconfirmed: you tamper with data to prove your ideological belief. These are not credentials of a doctor or a scientist, that you claim to be.
“Discribing one out of 6000 estimated deaths is the right method of discussion or the purpose was to use an anecdote to discredit other forms of medicine?” Too late, Iqbal, you’re merely rising to the bait and copying my suggestion. The Prof’s post was focussed on a particular, individual quack, whose ‘theories’ of disease are so ludicrous he has been locked up several times for putting them into practice.
Now, to the core of yet another ridiculous running contretemps with Iqbal Krishna. You started (Sunday 04 September 2016 at 12:34) by posting a link to a paper which begins with the following statements. “In Europe, 6,000 young people die of cancer yearly, the commonest disease causing death beyond the age of 1 year. In addition, 300,000-500,000 European citizens are survivors of a childhood cancer and up to 30% of them have severe long-term sequelae of their treatment.” You pick on the 6,000 annual deaths figure as if it represents medical incompetence. Do you not realize that childhood cancer was historically almost always a fatal disease? Do you have no qualms about cherry picking the fatalities and ignoring the overwhelming (60 to 100 times as many) treatment successes?
You have even gone on to say (Tuesday 06 September 2016 at 05:07) “percentages can be misleading. I was looking for data for the number of children reported with cancer in 1970 to compare with 1997. Could not locate this data.” From your own link, from 300,000 of 305,000 (98.4%) to 500,000 of 505,000 (99%) children with cancer now survive. Your flimsy arguments are pathetic. They resemble someone trying to keep a match alight in a hurricane.
The first two sentences in the paper you linked too say it all: childhood cancer is nowadays rarely fatal for the overwhelming majority of cases, but the postponement of death (some like to say ‘saving of life’) comes at a cost of severe sequelae in as many as 30%, which is why serious research continues to find less damaging treatments. This does NOT include the anachronistic, superannuated pseudoscientific nonsense called ‘homeopathy’.
“The Prof’s post was focussed on a particular, individual quack, whose ‘theories’ of disease are so ludicrous he has been locked up several times for putting them into practice.”
That was a ruse to run down alternative medicine. Does he explain the other deaths many times more in number? https://cpmc.coriell.org/Sections/Education/CancerRisk.aspx?PgId=63 (read “Genetic changes can influence cancer treatment “). The cure for cancer today is “trial and error”.
“Do you have no qualms about cherry picking the fatalities and ignoring the overwhelming (60 to 100 times as many) treatment successes?”
You should read more about cancer treatment and the 5 year rule(?).
“From your own link, from 300,000 of 305,000 (98.4%) to 500,000 of 505,000 (99%) children with cancer now survive.”
Where did you get this data from? For your information, the disease of the old: Cancer: is increasing in children at @1.1% every year. (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emanuele_Crocetti/publication/6867955_Time_trends_of_cancer_incidence_in_European_children_%281978-1997%29_report_from_the_Automated_Childhood_Cancer_Information_System_project/links/0c9605284a80b6ea2f000000.pdf)
In UK it had increased 29% by 2014 over 1970. With population increase estimated at 15%, the net increase is 48%. Even with a cure (?) rate of 65% children dying of cancer is almost the same as in 1970.
“comes at a cost of severe sequelae in as many as 30%,”
This is the hallmark of the allopathic system. The proverbial goose that lays the golden egg. 30% of 500,000 patients on cancer drugs all through their lives.
I am guessing you prefer to let these people die without treatment (which is, by the way, always their option)?
Hello Edzard, the case you mention has been sadly joined lately by a similar case of another young Italian woman, a 34-year old mother of 2, who died of breast cancer despite a 95% recovery chance by curing herself with ricotta cheese and nettle (no joke).
I am Italian, so should you need any help in translating articles in the Italian press, let me know.
http://www.ilrestodelcarlino.it/rimini/cronaca/tumore-morta-mamma-hamer-1.2478452
thanks
could you please post a translation?
First of all, sorry for the delay.
The article’s writing is quite poor in itself, I am rendering it at the best I can.
The caption goes:
“Young mother refuses chemotherapy, dies at 34
The 34-year old had been hospitalized in Sant’Arcangelo. She followed Hamer’s theories and refused to cure herself. No to chemio: she cured herself with nettle leaves.”
“Rimini, the 3rd of September, 2016
A breast tumor that, after surgery, could be healed by undertaking chemotherapy.
The woman, a 34-year old mother of a 10-year and a 8-year child, refused: she died yesterday morning. She had chosen to cure herself following Dr Hamer’s theories and tried to fight the tumor with ricotta cheese compresses and nettle leaves tea. Her family is divided between pain and anger to having tried to convince her in vain; they are waiting to give her their last goodbye in the S. Ermete church, then they are going to decide what to do, how to act, because it seems there was someone advising her on how to apply the theories of the German physician and fight with natural and primitive methods her illness. The clinician who performed surgery on her, Dr. Domenico Samorani, responsible of Breast Surgery in the Sant’Arcangelo Hospital, is fuming.
Q: Doctor, when did you get to know her?
A: She underwent breast surgery 4 years ago. It was a type of tumor that heals in the 93 to 95% of cases, but she had to take chemotherapy.
Q: And she didn’t?
A: No, she said to me she would not undergo chemotherapy from the very beginning.
Q: And what did you answer?
A: I told her bluntly she would die.
Q: Didn’t she react to your words?
A: She told me she would undergo different cures.
Q: Do you know which cures they were?
A: I know she followed Hamer’s theories and she did ricotta compresses and nettle tea. Then I was told that the person who advised her on these dangerous choices even came to this ward.
Q: Did you meet that person?
A: No, they just told me about that. I would have kicked him out of here. The tragedy is that more and more people choose to abandon conventional therapies and follow strange characters’ advice.
Q:So it is not the first time you come across such a case as this?
A: No, in these last three years a dozen or so of women refused chemo and they all died.
Q: Did they give you any reason on why they choose to do so, danger notwithstanding?
A: They are sure to be right, and that conventional medicine is poison. See, many of those women have degrees.
Q: What could we do?
A: It’s what I am asking of you. If I am answering your question is to sound an alarm, not only on a local range [the paper is a local, translator notice], but on a national level. What can we do as surgeons, Order of Physicians, Local Health Service, we as citizens to stop this madness? ”
A reminder to the Italian public of who Hamer really is came last Thursday in the national daily La Stampa’s online edition. A journalist went to Sandefjord (Norway) to catch up with Hamer and question him about the two deaths of Italian women (18-year old girl with leukemia and this 34-year old mother with breast cancer) in the last weeks.
The old man puts himself out of reach and the only thing they get are interviews with neighbors.
Let me know if you need more Italian press translations on these sad events, the fuss has died down in the last days, though.
http://www.lastampa.it/2016/09/08/italia/cronache/nel-cottage-blindato-dove-hamer-cura-il-cancro-con-le-vitamine-QMCH4cEJVEvpd4kT8rM8IO/pagina.html
many thanks for translating this for us
I s there a deeply scientific reason given anywhere as to why it should be ricotta cheese, and not, say, Camembert or Brie? Or perhaps one of the blue cheeses? To return to something that’s been touched on several times, what does this tragic case say about the possibility of educating such people? By all means, let’s not give up, but surely the human condition seems to include a percentage of people who believe in religious/magical ideas whatever the contrary ? I know that surveys generally show that the more educated a population is, the less prevalent is religious belief. But since altmed beliefs are, in all but name, religions, does that mean that religion has just rebranded itself and moved sideways? Only on this occasion towards middle class, often educated people? The trick that altmed seems to have pulled is that it’s managed to present itself as a ‘religion for people who think they’re above religion’. I’m sure quite a few educated, intelligent people tried to help this young woman, but was she, in the end, incapable of being educated? Are chiropractors, homeopaths, reflexologists, faith healers etc the disease, or do they represent the symptoms of a huge amount of plain, ineradicable daftness in the human condition?
No problem at all. A very tiny contribution to help stop quackery spread pain and, sadly, death among those who embrace it. Keep up the good job!
more about this case:
https://www.20min.ch/panorama/news/story/Tochter–18–stirbt-an-Krebs—Eltern-verurteilt-29759379
You count the homeopathic deaths by the single digits, as in one by one. Meanwhile, we count the deaths from allopathic medicine by the thousands.
and there is a post-marketing surveillance for homeopathy?
and what about the concept of risk/benefit balance?
stop behaving like a impetuous child who knows nothing!
We can also count those cured or even helped by homeopathy on the thumbs of one foot though, RG.
Sad fact: the alternative “medicine” scenario grows do fast because to some charlatans, desperate, poor-judging cancer patients are like fat geese waiting to be plucked and baked. Interestingly, they accuse conventional medicine doctors of being money driven.
Anyone knows if there is a well documented picture of how much these quacks make? I meam, a comprehensive one, including faith healers and the ones who sell drugs?
Luciana Malta
To the anti-sCAM community here
Why ill patients might seek out sCAM practitioners. No MD’s would attempt to help him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpNcnM0FkTM
go get your covid vax. rollup, roll up!!!!! hahahahaha