As I live partly in France, I often report about what is going on in this country in relation to so-called alternative medicine (SCAM). Here are a few recent posts:
- France outlaws practices which expose patients to a serious health risk
- Dispute about so-called alternative medicine practitioners in France
- Homeopathy in France: going, going, gone!
- Osteopathy in France: widely accepted yet based on little more than wishful thinking
- Alleged sexual misconduct serves a blow to osteopathy in France
- Homeopathy in France: a triumph of reason over profit
- HOMEOPATHY IN FRANCE: Cure cancer with homeopathy? “Let’s get real. We are doctors.”
- Random thoughts on my first SCAM-research conference in France
In general, it seemed that France was becoming more rational in its attitude towards SCAM. But now Franceinfo reported worrying developments:
Patrick Hetzel, the newFrench Minister for Higher Education and Research seems to have a less than academic approach to science. He has in the past taken positions on the fringes of the scientific consensus, supporting, for example, the use of the treatment praised by Didier Raoult during the Covid-19 crisis, or defending homeopathy.
In October 2020, Patrick Hetzel supported an amendment to the French Social Security Financing Bill (PLFSS) aimed at ‘creating a body specifically dedicated to evaluating complementary and alternative medicines, including homeopathy, and setting a reimbursement rate’. A month later, he co-signed a bill aimed at introducing a two-year moratorium on the reimbursement rate (15%) for homeopathy, rather than delisting it, so as not to upset the industry. These proposals were rejected and homeopathy, whose effectiveness was deemed ‘insufficient’ by the French National Authority for Health (HAS), has not been reimbursed in France since January 2021. To reach its opinion, the health authority scrutinised a number of studies on nearly 1,200 homeopathic medicines. ‘There is a scientific consensus that homeopathy should not be prescribed. At best it is useless, at worst it detracts from a useful treatment’, points out Jean-Michel Constantin, President of Sfar.
At the same time, Hetzel has fought to have chronic Lyme disease recognised as a disease through a bill tabled in September 2023. However, the chronic nature of this disease remains controversial, based as it is on a ‘scientifically unproven’ hypothesis, as denounced by the French Academy of Medicine in 2017.
More recently, during the debate on the bill to combat sectarian aberrations, Hetzel spoke out against creating an offence of ‘inciting abstention from medical care’. He cited a ‘legal reason’ before offering a curious view of science: ‘When you look at how scientific advances are made, very often the paradigm shifts (…) are made by people who are in the minority. So let’s be extremely careful about trying to develop a kind of dogma that would be that of an official science. I think that’s extremely dangerous’, he warned before the Assembly.
This anti-science rhetoric has not gone unnoticed. ‘Taking part in the debate on article 4 of the bill on sectarian aberrations [finally adopted], implying that official science is totalitarianism, and leaving the choice of alternative medicines to patients who have no discernment, I find that annoying. Especially for a minister whose remit includes scientific research’, laments Pierre Ouzoulias. ‘I’m struck by the fact that every time he takes a stand, it’s with conspiracy theories. This accumulation paints the picture of someone who doesn’t understand how knowledge evolves in the world of science.’
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Let’s hope the new development does not signal a general U-turn, that the appointment of Patrick Hetzel is just a little glitch, and that France will nevertheless continue on its path towards rationality.
17 Responses to Bad news for France: Patrick Hetzel, the new Minister for Higher Education and Research seems to be an anti-scientist
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This caught my eye:
Au contraire, mon ami … Virtually all paradigm shifts are the result of ‘dogmatic’ scientific research (i.e. applying the scientific method in a strict and rigorous manner) of novel findings and ideas.
It is extremely rare for just a handful of scientific contrarians to come up with new and effective medical insights and treatments. I can recall only one case where this happened: the discovery of the role of H. pylori in causing gastric ulcers by Barry Marshall and Robin Warren. And these people were – quite contrary to current-day ‘brave maverick doctors’ – dyed-through-the-wool scientific researchers.
… and ‘paradigm shifts’ are extreme rareties themselves.
There are as many “paradigm shifts” as the individuals who made them: Newton’s method, the Foster-Seely discriminator, Ackermann steering, Bose-Einstein condensation, the Higg’s boson and on and on.
To the contrary, huge monolithic bodies might refine something such as the Human Genome Project but *only* individual minds such as the skill of Franklin and the imagination of Watson and Crick make the actual breakthroughs, not to mention Mendel or Darwin.
Medicine is the worst for dogmatism e.g. the way it treated Marshall and Warren as you pointed out above and the way it treats anyone today who does not follow the dogma.
I don’t think you have a clue what a paradigm shift is.
@Old Bob
What you are demonstrating here is called fractal wrongness. You clearly failed to understand anything that I said.
No, medicine is not dogmatic AT ALL. If it were, we would still be stuck with treatments such as bloodletting and with doctors who only worked following ‘old knowledge’, or possibly with lots of water-shaking clowns still meticulously following Hahnemann’s work. And thus we would still have infant mortality in double digit percentages, and an average life span of maybe 55 years.
In fact, medicine has made an almost insane amount of progress over the past 150 years – progress that would have been utterly impossible in a dogmatic system. We now know the cause of a huge number of conditions, and based on that, we also have developed optimal treatments for many of those conditions. AND WE ARE STILL MAKING PROGRESS TODAY.
With only extremely few exceptions, this has NOT been the result of a few brave, smart individuals coming up with spectacular solutions out of the blue, but of endlessly continuing, painstaking work of many, many very smart people, all working together, trying not only to come up with new ideas, but also checking if those novel ideas are any good.
And you know what? Most of those novel ideas, even from very smart people, are complete and utter duds. And THAT is why science is very sceptical when someone steps up from out of nowhere and makes spectacular claims, especially without good evidence. And THAT is why even seasoned researchers like Marshall and Warren initially met with severe scepticism when they presented their theory in 1983. So what did they do? Did they claim that they were ‘censored’? Did they accuse the medical and scientific establishment of dogmatism? Did they play the ‘Big Pharma Protecting Profits’ card? Did they wallow in the unsung genius role?
Nope, nothing like this at all. They put in another year of hard scientific work, and as a result came up with very convincing evidence for their claims. And starting in 1985, just 2 years after being rejected, their work was recognized for what it was, and fully accepted by all of the medical world – not in the least because peptic ulcers could be treated far more effectively than ever before. The rest is history, including several big awards, culminating in a Nobel Prize in 2005.
But I guess you are thinking of Covidiots such as Pierre Kory and other arrogant fools, who to this day refuse to admit that their ideas – no matter how novel and sometimes even plausible at the time – were and are wrong. These dumb people deserve every bit of scorn and derision they receive. Not for being wrong, but for failing the most important test of being a scientist: admitting when you are wrong.
The government spent $60,000,000 and five grand juries trying to jail one man for the crime of discovering a quite successful cure for brain cancers whereas the actual intention was to jail him to prevent him defending his patents from being used by the FDA – there is no dispute that his method works, even by the FDA. The FDA wanted to use his discovery for itself *because* it works.
Another example is Pasteur vs Bechamp. Pasteur plagiarised Bechamp to the extent that even Today few know it:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bechamp-Pasteur-Chapter-history-biology/dp/0980297605/
This is the dogma of today’s medicine: that Pasteur was right.
And yet even Pasteur, on his deathbed finally admitted “It was the terrain” i.e. it was not vaccination but the “terrain” of the host (i.e. everything, the food, the cleanliness, the environment etc). And the proof of this is the terrible health of Americans who spend more on their health system than any other country – it’s the terrain: Bechamp was right, Pasteur was wrong: The Amish have excellent health, living off the land directly, whereas Americans have terrible health living from UPF + medical drugs to mask the symptoms. The latest being ozempic: you can have your cake and eat it, another medical dogma: that health is produced by drugs.
But the worst dogma of all is the “safe and effective” lie about the covid-vaccine and vaccines generally. If vaccination was a cure-all, then the FDA schedule of 72 shots for the young should produce the best health for Americans, not the worst.
None of the vaccines before covid has ever been tested by a randomised, double-blind controlled trial. The covid-vaccine was the first and that lasted only a few months and deliberately did not include pregnant women, and yet the “safe and effective” dogma is used to persuade pregnant women to take it!!!
you are hilarious: is there a conspiracy theory that you do not subscribe to?
“They put in another year of hard scientific work, and as a result came up with very convincing evidence for their claims. And starting in 1985, just 2 years after being rejected, their work was recognized for what it was, and fully accepted by all of the medical world – not in the least because peptic ulcers could be treated far more effectively than ever before. The rest is history, including several big awards, culminating in a Nobel Prize in 2005.”
This off course is routine part of the success story that supposedly solved a problem without realizing that many new problems are being created.
And not for the first time. This is the outcome of the myopic understanding of the human body and the “scientific medicine”.
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/179/6/1523/964963
Absolutely! We are just discovering how little we really are, compared to our microbiome.
I used to have chronic sinusitis and colds all the time + acid reflux. After I reduced my sugar consumption, the indigestion gradually vanished over several years, then after getting stage IV prostate cancer, I changed my diet again from mainly oils to mainly water-based + drinking large quantities of carrot juice and green juices and recovered perfect health. Again, this took a year.
I still have the cancer, but this is my seventh year and I am quite old, so that no longer bothers me… It’s the microbiome + environment, foodwise etc i.e. the terrain. Who knows, it may turn out that all old men have it, but only those in the cities, eating badly and not taking enough exercise notice it and die of it whereas country folks, doing their gardens and eating their own produce and walking the dog don’t notice it.
@Krishna
Your comment once again betrays your total ignorance in what makes good science. You even misrepresent the findings and opinions of your own Personal God, Martin Blaser.
Marshall and Warren identified H. pylori as a major cause of ulcers, and the point here is that the rest of the medical world – including Martin Blaser, who thought that the idea was ‘preposterous’ – at first did not accept this finding. Later, Blaser changed his mind, and not only accepted the findings of Marshall and Warren, but actively contributed to important research in this area. He researched the role of H. pylori in numerous diseases, including gastric cancer. Along the way, he discovered that H. pylori also appeared to have beneficial effects, something that no-one could have foreseen. And this time, Blaser was the one who met with scepticism – but again, more and better scientific evidence once again changed everyone’s mind about his findings, which are now quite accepted. This course of events is in other words a great demonstration of how science works and continually improves our knowledge over time.
FYI, Marshall and Blaser also gave a joint presentation on the subject:
https://nihrecord.nih.gov/2022/04/15/scientists-reveal-good-bad-and-ugly-h-pylori
Do you have any idea how insulting this is to millions of hard-working scientists and doctors who made and are still making life better for literally billions of people? This only serves to demonstrate that you are the one who doesn’t understand even the least bit about health, sickness and the human body. Or about science.
But let’s just put it like this: can you point out even one similar success story involving e.g. homeopaths or acupuncturists? Or to put it in somewhat blunter terms: has there ever been even one quack whose ideas were later vindicated, and who ended up making a major contribution to medicine and/or science?
I can’t think of even one.
It seems to me that Patrick Hetzel has no idea what a paradigm shift means. Or he uses the term colloquially. Which would still be embarrassing for a qualified business economist and university teacher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigmenwechsel
neither has OB!
I agree.
A “paradigm shift” in medicine looks like this (antineoplastons):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqYOUW3lhIY&t=35s
Shifts occur via research which is published for others to verify. And duplicate.
Burzynski has never published anything.
He is a foul grifting quack who gloms off the most vulnerable. He should be in prison.
https://theotherburzynskipatientgroup.wordpress.com/
@OB You only need to watch two minutes of this video to understand why the good policeman is dead wrong about his endorsement of Burzinsky.
I have no hope you will ever understand this but two facts the man relates prove that he is wrong. 1. His daughter is dead. 2. His daughter received real albeit cruel treatment that may have prolonged her life before being brought to the charlatan who dispenses proven useless “antineoplaston treatment”.
Stanislaw Burzynsk is quack and plastic shaman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burzynski_Clinic