fraud
It has been reported, at the German Medical Congress (DÄT) a year ago, that it was decided to delete the additional title of homeopathy from the model further training regulations of the German Medical Association. And Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) tweeted applause: “Homeopathy has no place in modern medicine.”
Now the ‘ Bundesverband der Pharmaziestudierenden in Deutschland’ (BPhD), the German Pharmacists Organization, even goes a few steps further. The position paper distinguishes between evidence-based medicine (EBM) and unproven therapeutic methods. According to the BPhD, these include homeopathy, but also anthroposophy, traditional Chinese medicine, and traditional medicines.
Among other things, the BPhD is disturbed by the way homeopathy presents itself as an alternative, because an alternative means “a choice between two equally suitable possibilities” to achieve a goal, and this is not the case. Compared to evidence-based medicine (EBM), homeopathy is a “constructed, illusory concept” and “the principles of homeopathic teachings and principles” are to be rejected as “unscientific”. According to the BPhD, a designation as “alternative” for advertising purposes should no longer be allowed.
They would also like to see a demarcation from naturopathy; the clear distinction between homeopathy and phytopharmacy has been lacking up to now. The advertising attribute “natural” should therefore also be banned in order to prevent equalization in advertising, the position paper states.
Like doctors, pharmacy students point to the lack of proof of efficacy beyond the placebo effect. According to the BPhD, the dogma WER HEILT HAT RECHT, “he who heals is right” would “disregard all processes that work towards healing and glorify the result”. The “gold standard” of EBM – randomized, double-blind studies with placebo control – should in future also have to be fulfilled by homeopathic medicines, experience reports are not sufficient, it continues.
Homeopathic medicines are only registered as medicinal products without indication, which requires neither proof of efficacy nor clinical studies. The BPhD, therefore, demands that a warning be placed on the preparations that they have “no proven efficacy beyond the placebo effect”. Up to now, without this warning, patients have been “deceived about the efficacy”, and there is an “urgent need for detailed public information and counseling on homeopathy since its unjustified reputation poses a danger of not seeking treatment”. The BPhD also demands that the status of homeopathic medicines is withdrawn and that the pharmacy obligation for the preparations is abolished…
“In the health professions, no trivialization of unproven therapeutic procedures should be tolerated, as inadequate counseling or ignorance poses a danger to patients,” the BPhD said.
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When I first read this article – I translated and shortened it for those who cannot read German- I was truly dazzled. These are the suggestions that I have been making for around 20 years now, not specifically for Germany but for pharmacists in general. For many years, the Germans seemed the least likely to agree with me. But now they seem to be ahead of everyone else in Europe!
How come?
I suspect and hope that our recent initiative might have something to do with it.
Let’s hope that the pharmacists of other countries follow the German example.
A team of French researchers assessed whether a conflict of interest (COI) might be associated with the direction of the results of meta-analyses of homoeopathy trials. Their analysis (published as a ‘letter to the editor) is complex, therefore, I present here only their main finding.
The team conducted a literature search until July 2022 on PubMed and Embase to identify meta-analyses of randomized clinical trials assessing the efficacy of homoeopathy. They then assessed the existence of potential COI, defined by the presence of at least one of the following criteria:
- affiliation of one or more authors to an academic homoeopathy research or care facility, or to the homoeopathy industry;
- research sponsored or funded by the homoeopathy industry;
- COI declared by the authors.
The researchers also evaluated and classified any spin in meta-analyses conclusions into three categories (misleading reporting, misleading interpretation and inappropriate extrapolation). Two reviewers assessed the quality of meta-analyses and the risk of bias based. Publication bias was evaluated by the funnel plot method. For all the studies included in these meta-analyses, the researchers checked whether they reported a statistically significant result in favour of homoeopathy. Further details about the methods are provided on OSF (https://osf.io/nqw7r/) and in the preregistered protocol (CRD42020206242).
Twenty meta-analyses were included in the analysis (list of references available at https://osf.io/nqw7r/).
- Among the 13 meta-analyses with COI, a significantly positive effect of homoeopathy emerged (OR=0.60 (95% CI 0.50 to 0.70)).
- There was no such effect for meta-analyses without COI (OR=0.96 (95% CI 0.75 to 1.23)).
The authors concluded that in the presence of COI, meta-analyses of homoeopathy trials are more likely
to have favourable results. This is consistent with recent research suggesting that systematic reviews with financial COI are associated with more positive outcomes.
Meta-analyses are systematic reviews (critical assessments of the totality of the available evidence) where the data from the included studies are pooled. For a range of reasons, this may not always be possible. Therefore the number of meta-analyses (20) is substantially lower than that of the existing systematic reviews (>50).
Both systematic reviews and meta-analyses are theoretically the most reliable evidence regarding the value of any intervention. I said ‘theoretically’ because, like any human endeavour, they need to be done in an unbiased fashion to produce reliable results. People with a conflict of interest by definition struggle to be free of bias. As we have seen many times, this would include homoeopaths.
This new analysis confirms what many of us have feared. If proponents of homeopathy with an overt conflict of interest conduct a meta-analysis of studies of homeopathy, the results tend to be more positive than when independent researchers do it. The question that emerges from this is the following:
Are the findings of those researchers who have an interest in producing a positive result closer to the truth than the findings of researchers who have no such conflict?
I let you decide.
There are debates in acupuncture-related systematic reviews and meta-analyses on whether searching Chinese databases to get more Chinese-language studies may increase the risk of bias and overestimate the effect size, and whether the treatment effects of acupuncture differ between Chinese and non-Chinese populations.
For this meta-epidemiological study, a team of investigators searched the Cochrane Library from its inception until December 2021, and identified systematic reviews and meta-analyses with acupuncture as one of the interventions. Paired reviewers independently screened the reviews and extracted the information. They repeated the meta-analysis of the selected outcomes to separately pool the results of Chinese- and non-Chinese-language acupuncture studies and presented the pooled estimates as odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI). They calculated the Ratio of ORs (ROR) by dividing the OR of the Chinese-language trials by the OR of the non-Chinese-language trials, and the ROR by dividing the OR of trials addressing Chinese population by the OR of trials addressing non-Chinese population. The researchers thus explored whether the impact of a high risk of bias on the effect size differed between studies published in Chinese- and in non-Chinese-language, and whether the treatment effects of acupuncture differed between Chinese and non-Chinese populations.
The researchers identified 84 Cochrane acupuncture reviews involving 33 Cochrane groups, of which 31 reviews (37%) searched Chinese databases. Searching versus not searching Chinese databases significantly increased the contribution of Chinese-language literature both to the total number of included trials (54% vs. 15%) and the sample size (40% vs. 15%). When compared with non-Chinese-language trials, Chinese-language trials were associated with a larger effect size (pooled ROR 0.51, 95% CI 0.29 to 0.91). The researchers also observed a higher risk of bias in Chinese-language trials in blinding of participants and personnel (97% vs. 51%) and blinding of outcome assessment (93% vs. 47%). The higher risk of bias was associated with a larger effect estimate in both Chinese language (allocation concealment: high/unclear risk vs. low risk, ROR 0.43, 95% CI 0.21 to 0.87) and non-Chinese-language studies (blinding of participants and personnel: high/unclear risk vs. low risk, ROR 0.41, 95% CI 0.23 to 0.74). However, the team found no evidence that the higher risk of bias would increase the effect size of acupuncture in Chinese-language studies more often than in non-Chinese-language studies (the confidence intervals of all ROR in the high-risk group included 1, Table 3). The researchers further found acupuncture appeared to be more effective in Chinese than in non-Chinese populations.
The authors concluded that the findings of this study suggest the higher risk of bias may lead to an overestimation of the treatment effects of acupuncture but would not increase the treatment effects in Chinese-language studies more often than in other language studies. The difference in treatment effects of acupuncture was probably associated with differences in population characteristics.
The authors discuss that, although searching Chinese databases can substantially increase the number of eligible studies and sample size in acupuncture reviews, the potentially higher risk of bias is an argument that needs to be considered in the inclusion of Chinese-language studies. Patients, investigators, and guideline panels should be cautious when adopting evidence from acupuncture reviews where studies with a high risk of bias contributed with a high weight to the meta-analysis.
The authors observed larger treatment effects of acupuncture in Chinese-language studies than in studies published in other languages. Although the treatment effects of acupuncture tended to be greater in studies with a high risk of bias, this potential overestimation did not differ between studies published in Chinese and in other languages. In other words, the larger treatment effects in Chinese-language studies cannot be explained by a high risk of bias. Furthermore, our study found acupuncture to be more effective in Chinese populations than in other populations, which could at least partly explain the larger treatment effects observed in Chinese-language studies.
I feel that this analysis obfuscates more than it clarifies. As we have discussed often here, acupuncture studies by Chinese researchers (regardless of what language they are published in) hardly ever report negative results, and their findings are often fabricated. It, therefore, is not surprising that their effect sizes are larger than those of other trials.
The only sensible conclusion from this messy and regrettable situation, in my view, is to be very cautious and exclude them from systematic reviews.
The German Heilpraktiker (HP), a non-medically trained practitioner of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM), has repeatedly been the subject of my posts. In a nutshell: the profession was created by the Nazis and was originally destined to disappear within one generation. But this did not happen, and today there are ~100 000 HPs who are allowed to treat almost any condition without mandatory training or experience. Many HP schools exist but you can also become an HP without formal training.
Now a report has been published by undercover journalists investigating these HP schools in Germany. Here I have summarized a few crucial passages for you (if you read German, I strongly recommend reading the original article):
There are more than 150 HP schools in Germany. On average, training costs several thousand euros. There is no uniform and state regulation for the training. The curricula are mostly created by the schools themselves.
In addition to medical and psychological content, the schools often offer seminars that are not based on scientific knowledge. The curricula sometimes include courses such as astrology, homeopathy, or so-called quantum healing. HP organizations give indeed training guidelines. However, these are not met by about 83% of the schools.
The students were isolated at the HP school from their environment and urged to break off contact with their families. “Without us you are nothing. That came so often and I then, unfortunately, believed in it, because I was alone. If I had had no one else from school, then I would really have been completely alone,” explains a former student in an interview. “During that time, I also thought for the first time: Are we in some kind of cult here?
The school’s principal rejects the cult accusation: “We have been confronted with the allegation that we are a cult for some time and have always dealt with it very openly because we are not a cult. The principal also denies other accusations made by former students, saying that the allegations of suggestion, coercion, compulsion, or sweeping statements are simply false. He said he would be happy to face them “in a personal conversation outside the public eye to answer their questions.”
In order to get to the bottom of the treatment methods, the reporter also had herself treated by the principal of the school in an undercover self-experiment. In the first session, she determined that the reporter’s sciatica had been passed on to her by her mother, which is why she should sever her ties with her. In the second session, she recommended that she no longer visit her cancer-stricken grandfather. When the principal learned that the ill grandpa was of the zodiac sign Cancer, she concluded, “Cancer gets cancer.” The cancer, she said, was due to the fact that he had done nothing for his soul. And further, the patient runs the risk of adopting the grandfather’s cancer symptoms when she visits him.
The Hamburg health authority, which is listed as a “supervisory authority” on the school’s homepage, explains in response to an inquiry that no official supervision exists for HP schools. To obtain permission for opening a school, no training is necessary. Neither possible training courses nor institutions offering such training courses are regulated by the state.
The journalist also asked the Federal Health Ministry whether it sees the need for action and legal control. The Ministry’s response was evasive: “If necessary,” the HP law should be reformed in the future.
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This is shocking news for many Germans who believe that HPs are well-trained healthcare professionals. However, those who have read my recently published book cannot be surprised. Poor training is only one of a myriad of deficits of HPs. It is time that the government realizes that the current is unacceptable and endangers public health. It is time, in other words, that the government does something about the HP profession.
Seventeen years after S.K. lost his thyroid gland to cancer, he was promised a miracle by Kyung Chun Oh, an acupuncturist based in the Toronto area: acupuncture could regrow the vital organ. Oh told his patient it would only work if S.K. stopped the thyroid medication he’d been on since his surgery in 2003.
Within just a few months the patient had to be admitted to hospital with a life-threatening case of hypothyroidism. His thyroid had not regenerated. “It was fortunate that the patient did not die,” a college panel wrote in a disciplinary decision, suspending Oh’s license for 12 months. “Telling the patient that he should not take his thyroid medication was irresponsible and had disastrous repercussions.”
The panel found that Oh had engaged in professional misconduct in multiple ways:
- he had provided unnecessary treatment,
- he had failed to advise his patient to consult a medical doctor when he learned that S.K. was suffering
from symptoms that he knew or ought to have known indicated an urgent medical problem, - he had treated a condition that he ought to have known that he did not have the knowledge, skills, or judgment to treat,
- he had failed to keep records in accordance with the standards of the profession,
- he had falsified a record relating to his practice,
- he had made a claim about a treatment that could not be supported by reasonable professional opinion (the claim that acupuncture combined with cessation of thyroid medicine could regrow a surgically removed thyroid gland, and the claim that S.K.’s thyroid gland was regrowing).
This is clearly an extreme incidence of misconduct and one would hope that such cases occur only rarely. But looking at the points listed above, I get the feeling that similar yet less severe cases of misconduct happen regularly in the practices of SCAM practitioners:
- most so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) treatments are unnecessary,
- SCAM practitioners refer patients only rarely to doctors,
- SCAM practitioners often treat conditions that they fail to understand adequately,
- SCAM practitioners frequently make unreasonable claims.
According to a German court ruling, the homeopathic remedy Meditonsin for colds may no longer be advertised with certain statements. The Higher Regional Court in Hamm, Germany made it clear that it shares the opinion of the Regional Court in Dortmund, which had sentenced the marketing company to desist from making statements such as “rapid and reliable reduction of the intensity of the typical cold symptoms”. Such statements falsely generate the impression that therapeutic success can be expected with certainty. The court made it clear that the company’s appeal against the previous ruling was unlikely to be successful. The company subsequently withdrew its appeal today – and the judgment is now legally binding.
The lawsuit filed by a consumer organization was thus successful. It had criticized several statements as unfair and inadmissible advertising. The Dortmund court shared this view in September 2022 – and according to the spokesman, the Higher Regional Court in Hamm now followed the argumentation of the lower court.
The statements that
- “good efficacy and tolerability were once again impressively confirmed by a pharmacy-based observational study”,
- and “all cold complaints showed a clear improvement in the course of the disease”,
were deemed to be misleading advertising. They must therefore be omitted, the ruling stated.
Meditonsin is currently being advertised as follows:
For support of the immune system at the first signs of a cold to help the body build up the defense against pathogens effectively.
In addition, conditions are made more difficult for the intruders – through an effective medicine: the well-known Meditonsin® supports your defenses and naturally fights the onset of inflammation of the ears, nose and throat with pure homeopathic ingredients.
If applied early and correctly, Meditonsin® helps to ensure that the typical unpleasant symptoms have no chance to develop. Because Meditonsin® is particularly well tolerated and protects the organism, it is for both adults and children alike – a family medicine in the best sense.
Meditonsin contains two homeopathic ingredients in the D5 and one in the D8 dilution. To the best of my knowledge, there is no sound evidence that the remedy is effective for anything.
It is not only practitioners of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) who can be fraudulent charlatans. The study of medicine does not protect you from joining in. Here is an impressive case in point:
It has been reported that a former doctor convicted of fraudulently submitting nearly $120 million in claims related to the 1-800-GET-THIN Lap-Band surgery business has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison.
Julian Omidi, 58, of West Hollywood was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Dolly M. Gee. The judge also imposed a five-year probation period on Surgery Center Management LLC, an Omidi-controlled Beverly Hills-based company. In the coming weeks, Gee is expected to hold a separate hearing to decide on restitution and forfeiture in the case, along with setting a fine for the Beverly Hills company.
“Mr. Omidi made millions at the expense of the multiple victim companies he defrauded, and he violated his oath to ‘do no harm’ by callously misleading patients about the need for a sleep study and subsequent weight loss surgery,” said Donald Alway, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.
Omidi controlled several entities in the GET-THIN network. Prosecutors say Omidi incentivized employees to ensure patients underwent sleep studies and then falsified the results to show that patients had obstructive sleep apnea to help them qualify for insurance coverage for the weight loss surgery. Those results were then filed with insurance companies to pre-approve the Lap-Band weight-loss surgeries. The 1-800-GET-THIN business received approximately $41 million for those procedures, according to prosecutors. While not all patients were approved to receive the surgery, prosecutors say GET-THIN would bill the patient roughly $15,000 for each sleep study, totaling $27 million in payments from insurance providers.
Omidi and his Beverly Hills-based company, Surgery Center Management, were found guilty of 28 counts of wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Omidi was also found guilty of two counts of making false statements relating to healthcare matters, one count of aggravated identity theft, and two counts of money laundering after a 48-day trial in downtown Los Angeles.
“As found by the jury, the defendant Julian Omidi deliberately and repeatedly acted with an eye towards business and profits, rather than in the interest of GET-THIN’s medical patients, by inducing patients to undergo medical treatment premised on fraud rather than medical necessity, including surgeries that carry significant risks and life-long health impacts,” said U.S. Atty. Martin Estrada. A series of Los Angeles Times columns from 2010 to 2014 detailed how five patients died after they received Lap-Band surgeries at clinics affiliated with 1-800-GET-THIN. During a 2009 inspection, the Department of Health and Human Services found unsanitary conditions, inoperative scrub sinks, one-time-only equipment being reused, and several other deficiencies. The inspector shut down the clinic for a day, but further action was not taken at the time.
Omidi’s medical license was revoked in 2009, and he was arrested. In 2014, federal agencies seized more than $110 million from the 1-800-GET-THIN network in securities and funds.
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This is a spectacular case, of course. Yet, I fail to see how it differs in principle from the many instances we see on a daily basis in the realm of SCAM. Let me give you just a few examples:
- A chiropractor diagnoses subluxation and subsequently treats his patient with a series of spinal manipulations.
- A naturopath uses iridology to diagnose a weakness of the liver and subsequently treats it with herbal remedies.
- An acupuncturist diagnoses a blockage of chi and follows it up with a series of acupuncture sessions.
- A Heilpraktiker employs bioresonance to diagnose an intoxication which he then treats with a detox program.
The strategy is always the same:
- Charlatans use bogus diagnostic methods.
- They make bogus diagnoses with them.
- They then start expensive and often dangerous treatments.
- They make good money by defrauding the system.
Could someone please explain what the difference in principle is between the case of the fraudulent surgeon and the average SCAM practitioner?
I am pleased to announce that our regular contributors ‘DC‘ as well as ‘mimi‘ both correctly guessed the person responsible for the quote about informed consent that was the subject of yesterday’s post. Congratulations to both; that certainly wasn’t easy!
The quote is by Karl Brandt.
Who was Karl Brandt?
Brandt was a young and evidently gifted doctor when, during a series of coincidences, he became a member of Hitler’s ‘inner circle’ and acted as one of Hitler’s personal physicians (originally, he had wanted to join the team of Albert Schweitzer!). Hitler liked the good-looking, ambitious Brandt and thus gave him greater and greater responsibilities and power. Amongst other things, Brandt managed to become in charge of the German euthanasia program which killed about 70 000 patients who the Nazis considered to be ‘useless eaters’ and unworthy of their support. It had the cynical purpose of freeing up hospital beds for the war and cleansing the German gene pool. Brandt also was responsible for many of the unspeakably cruel and immoral medical experiments in the concentration camps.
After the war, Brandt was put on trial in Nuremberg. The trial became known as the ‘Doctors’ Trail‘. Twenty of the 23 defendants were medical doctors (Viktor Brack, Rudolf Brandt, and Wolfram Sievers were Nazi officials). They were accused of having been involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia. Brandt insisted that he had never done anything wrong, had followed orders, and had been guided by the highest morals, solid medical ethics, and his determination to do the very best for the German people.
During his interrogations, he stated the sentences that fascinated me when I first read it: ” On the one hand, there are experiments that are carried out for or with someone on a voluntary basis; on the other hand, there are those that take place against the will of the person concerned. A further subdivision indicates whether they are particularly dangerous or comparatively harmless and without any potential for danger. A further distinction must be made as to whether the result of the experiment is important or whether it is merely a ridiculous game played by a scientifically educated person. These six criteria form a kind of guideline that enables one to say YES or NO from a medical point of view.”
The quote is cited in the book by Ulf Schmidt which is extremely well-researched and worth reading for anyone with an interest in the subject. In my view, it gives a unique insight into the thinking of someone who clearly was bright yet power-hungry, scrupulous and deeply immoral:
- experiments “against the will of the person concerned” always were unlawful, immoral, and unethical according to the guidelines that existed at the time;
- “particularly dangerous” experiments should have never been considered;
- research that is merely a “ridiculous game played by a scientifically educated person” is pseudoscience and not ethical.
Brandt tried to present himself as the ‘honest’, upright Nazi who did what he did because of a deep conviction and because he wanted the best. He seemed to have fooled others and possibly even himself. Several influential personalities rallied to his support. Yet, the judges at Nuremberg did neither believe his version of events nor were they inclined to pardon his behavior. Brandt was found guilty of:
- War crimes: performing medical experiments, without the subjects’ consent, on prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, in the course of which experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts. Also planning and performing the mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, stigmatized as aged, insane, incurably ill, deformed, and so on, by gas, lethal injections, and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums during the Euthanasia Program and participating in the mass murder of concentration camp inmates;
- Crimes against humanity: committing crimes also on German nationals;
- Membership in a criminal organization, the SS. The charges against him included special responsibility for, and participation in, Freezing, Malaria, LOST Gas, Sulfanilamide, Bone, Muscle and Nerve Regeneration and Bone Transplantation, Sea-Water, Epidemic Jaundice, Sterilization, and Typhus Experiments.
Brandt was executed on 2 June 1948.
The discussions around informed consent at the Nuremberg ‘doctors trial’ brought this subject into a renewed focus and eventually led to the formulation of the now famous ‘Nuremberg Code‘.
A German newspaper reported the experience of two journalists who went undercover to consult several practitioners of so-called alternative medicine to receive treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma. Here are several passages from their important article (my translation, my bolding)
… Doctor Uwe Reuter invites us in. He is sitting behind an iMac on which he sometimes shows me pictures of his therapies. He is around 50, tall and lean, his face looks particularly serious through frameless glasses. I tell him my story. He listens attentively, and then it seems for a while as if he can’t decide what to advise me. Finally, he has it: I should first do a “diagnostic series” in his clinic, three or even better five days, for about 1000 Euros. This would include “electromagnetic measurements” for the “energy balance of individual organs”. Only then can he determine which therapy might be indicated in my case. “Hypnosis, homeopathy, vitamin B17 infusions” will probably play a role, says Reuter, and a “fever therapy” in which I will be injected with dead bacteria.
“In addition to chemotherapy or alone?”, I ask. The doctor says he can’t make this decision for me, I should make it from my “inside”. I have to understand that my illness does not come from the outside and that therapies only have a supporting effect – the healing “has to come from within”.
… In the end, Reuter suggests postponing chemotherapy for a quarter of a year and using his therapy to “push aside everything that prevents healing” – toxins, distractions, and fears. The cost? Around 10,000 Euros for the entire therapy…
[Next doctor is] the well-known alternative doctor Klaus Maar in Düsseldorf… His wrinkled face is dominated by a large nose, his hair is enviably thick and black for a man of his age. “Well,” he says in his comforting voice, “why don’t you describe what happened to you?” I am nervous. Will he believe that I am terminally ill? I stammer and tell my story. He listens to me, looks at me, answers calmly, and takes his time – and attention that few orthodox doctors can afford today, which is one of the reasons that drive people into the arms of alternative healers.Finally, Maar advises a “heat therapy” in which the tumor is heated locally. Yet Klaus Maar is still one of the more serious healers. He does not directly advise against chemotherapy, but warns about the side effects. In the end, he recommends postponing it for a fortnight and starting the 8,000-euro heat treatment as soon as possible. “But don’t delay, don’t blame me and say I delayed the chemotherapy,” Maar says. I guess that’s his way of hedging his bets: If he were to successfully dissuade me from chemotherapy, my family could sue him one day. I come across such phrases again and again.
… next visit; the alternative practitioner Ursula Stoll specializes in “Germanic New Medicine”. Ryke Geerd Hamer, a former doctor, founded this doctrine in the early 1980s as a reaction to “Jewish” orthodox medicine. No wonder it enjoys great popularity in völkisch circles. Hamer’s abstruse and dangerous theories led to the withdrawal of his license. He continued to practice illegally, however, and several of his patients died… Even Ursula Stoll thinks he was crazy – but not his theory… Stoll practices in Öhringen, an idyllic little town north of Stuttgart, in her nondescript detached house. She wears a white shirt and horn-rimmed glasses, her brown hair pinned back in a plait, an accurate governess with a stern look.
As I tell her about my suffering, she quickly interrupts me: “What is cancer?” she asks. We have to get rid of the term. There is no such thing as cancer. All I have is a swelling of the lymph nodes in my neck. That’s all. The cause: a self-deprecation of a professional nature. In my case, there is also an existential fear, and like a fish on land, I store water in my body in order to survive. Hence the swollen lymph nodes. Metastases? There are none. The medical report? She skims over it casually and asks: Did you sweat when you were sick? Did the sweat smell? Did it have a color? Where exactly was the itch?
I tell her about the lecture I gave and that my boss didn’t like. Yes! That could be the reason for the cancer. She says my symptoms are a reaction to this slight, my body is trying to heal itself, but the first chemotherapy interrupted and disrupted the process. Her advice to beat the cancer: I should move back in with my parents, life as a single person is too much for me, Berlin is a terrible city anyway… I ask again about chemotherapy. “I personally wouldn’t do it,” she says, “and for my children and my parents I would decide the same.” There it is again, this nappy-soft formulation with which the healers evade their legal responsibility. One more question: isn’t it dangerous to forego chemotherapy? The alternative practitioner Ursula Stoll: “Humans can withstand a lot.”
… Since the spiritual healers Wolfgang Bittscheidt and Teresa Schuhl were favorably discussed on German TV, their practice in Siegburg near Bonn has enjoyed great popularity: appointments are made only months in advance. When we are asked into the treatment room, it is dark, the blinds are half closed. A candle burns on the dark wooden desk. Teresa Schuhl is blond, has blue eyes, and seems cool and aloof, gesticulating strangely with her hands. She whispers more than she speaks; I have to lean forward to understand her. Her advice? “If you were my son right now, I would say, hands off chemo!” For herself, she would decide the same. “One possibility is vitamin B17. Have you heard of it?”
I have heard of it. The so-called vitamin B17 is in fact not a vitamin at all, but a toxic substance, related to prussic acid. It is currently experiencing a boom in the alternative scene and has no proven benefit for cancer. Several people have died from overdoses.
Schuhl is now poking around in my spiritual life and in the relationship between me and my parents. She also suspects a trauma behind my cancer. “The thyroid represents the hormonal. The balance between male and female. Do you know where you belong? Male or female?” What is she trying to say?
“I come from Tajikistan,” he says, “where they say: sickness is a sacred time. When you are sick, God talks to you. He tells you what life really is. What we live is not life, it’s shit. Sickness asks us to make a change.” He continues, “Death is the most beautiful thing there is. Like a trip to the Caribbean. Why are we afraid of it? On this tortured planet here?”
After this introduction, my head is spinning, but now the actual treatment begins. I lie down on a couch. Schuhl runs her hands over my stomach and holds my shoulder. At the same time, she says prayers. She changes into the extinct Aramaic that is sometimes used in Christian services. Then she leaves me alone. Later, her partner, a licensed doctor, recommends that I read up on vitamin B17, come to them once a month and light a candle in a church in Cologne. I walk out of the practice befuddled…
The practitioners protect themselves legally. They make the patients sign contracts stating that the patient has been informed about orthodox medicine and that they reject it willy-nilly, even though the information is often not worth mentioning. What would be the solution?
… The doctor Achim Schuppert in Bonn suspects mobile phone radiation as the cause of my tumor and wants to measure my magnetic aura. It was important to him to “exclude electrosmog as a possible damaging factor”, he writes later.
Lothar Hollerbach, who runs an alternative practice in a Heidelberg city villa, gives a philosophical lecture: “We are spiritual beings and only for a short time in a mobile home we call a body.” Every crisis is a lesson, he says, but perhaps that lesson is for the next life. One of the things he recommends to me for recovery is Rudolf Steiner‘s lectures. How many patients has he successfully treated? He doesn’t count them, Hollerbach waves off. And after all, it’s not just about surviving. Some of his patients could have led a totally different life “in the next incarnation”. For those who long for death – his practice is highly recommended…
… The “medical director” Elke Tegel, a blonde alternative practitioner, leads me through the bright house, shows me the “inner world travel room” where traumatic situations are processed, the room for “healing music“, and also the impressive machine for “high-frequency therapy“, in which electrical energy is supplied to the cells. Costs: 13670 Euros for five weeks.
Cancer, says the alternative practitioner, is “suppressed anger and suppressed resentment”; Hodgkin’s lymphoma in particular is about guilt. She asks: “Where do you feel guilty? Guilty of being a man?” Later she advises a “biological chemotherapy” of highly concentrated vitamin C. This, she says, is far superior to conventional chemo. She confuses my well-treatable Hodgkin’s lymphoma with the fundamentally different non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. And justifies herself: “With us, it’s not about diagnosis, that’s not of interest.” …
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What I like about this report is that they exposed both doctors and non-medically trained practitioners, i.e. Heilpraktiker. We see yet again that the study of medicine does not protect people from becoming dangerous charlatans. Yet, there are important differences between doctors and Heilpraktiker:
- Only a very small proportion of doctors would treat Hodgkin lymphoma with ineffective quackery, whereas the proportion with Heilpraktiker would, I guess, be not far from 100%.
- Doctors will get struck off for such behavior, whereas this happens to Heilpraktiker as good as never.
During the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, Ayurvedic herbal supplements and homeopathic remedies were promoted as immune boosters (IBs) and disease-preventive agents. This happened in most parts of the world but nowhere more intensely than in India.
The present study examined the clinical outcomes among patients with chronic liver disease who presented with complications of portal hypertension or liver dysfunction temporally associated with the use of IBs in the absence of other competing causes. This Indian single-center retrospective observational cohort study included patients with chronic liver disease admitted for the evaluation and management of jaundice, ascites, or hepatic encephalopathy temporally associated with the consumption of IBs and followed up for 180 days. Chemical analysis was performed on the retrieved IBs.
From April 2020 to May 2021, 1022 patients with cirrhosis were screened, and 178 (19.8%) were found to have consumed complementary and alternative medicines. Nineteen patients with cirrhosis (10.7%), jaundice, ascites, hepatic encephalopathy, or their combination related to IBs use were included. The patients were predominantly male (89.5%). At admission, 14 (73.75%) patients had jaundice, 9 (47.4%) had ascites, 2 (10.5%) presented with acute kidney injury, and 1 (5.3%) had overt encephalopathy. Eight patients (42.1%) died at the end of the follow-up period. Hepatic necrosis and portal-based neutrophilic inflammation were the predominant features of liver biopsies.
Ten samples of IBs, including locally made ashwagandha powder, giloy juice, Indian gooseberry extracts, pure giloy tablets, multiherbal immune-boosting powder, other multiherbal tablets, and the homeopathic remedy, Arsenicum album 30C, were retrieved from our study patients. Samples were analyzed for potential hepatotoxic prescription drugs, known hepatotoxic adulterants, pesticides, and insecticides, which were not present in any of the samples. Detectable levels of arsenic (40%), lead (60%), and mercury (60%) were found in the samples analyzed. A host of other plant-derived compounds, industrial solvents, chemicals, and anticoagulants was identified using GC–MS/MS. These include glycosides, terpenoids, phytosteroids, and sterols, such as sitosterol, lupeol, trilinolein, hydroxy menthol, methoxyphenol, butyl alcohol, and coumaran derivatives.
The authors concluded that Ayurvedic and Homeopathic supplements sold as IBs potentially cause the worsening of preexisting liver disease. Responsible dissemination of scientifically validated, evidence-based medical health information from regulatory bodies and media may help ameliorate this modifiable liver health burden.
The authors comment that Ayurvedic herbal supplements and homeopathic remedies sold as IBs, potentially induce idiosyncratic liver injury in patients with preexisting liver disease. Using such untested advertised products can lead to the worsening of CLD in the form of liver failure or portal hypertension events, which are associated with a high risk of mortality compared to those with severe AH-related liver decompensation in the absence of timely liver transplantation. Severe mixed portal inflammation and varying levels of hepatic necrosis are common findings on liver histopathology in IB-related liver injury. Health regulatory authorities and print and visual media must ensure the dissemination of responsible and factual scientific evidence-based information on herbal and homeopathic “immune boosters” and health supplements to the public, specifically to the at-risk patient population.
